Assignment:
Respond to the following discussion:
Respond by offering alternative perspectives of how you might revise the strategic plans your colleagues discussed.
The Sarah & Marjorie Scholarship Foundation was founded two years ago as a nonprofit in Ghana to support children of high school going age who are not in school and have difficulty in payment of their school fees, realize their dream of high school education. It is a charity community serving organization with a mission to raise funds from churches, corporate organizations and philanthropists to fund selected children. The vision of the organization in short and long-term strategies is to be the best and leading nonprofit globally.
Initial effort to place the goals of the S&M has been done through strategic planning process, formulation, adoption and implementation of strategies that have come through deliberation and disciplined approaches in valid decision making to see the organization succeed, (Bryson, 2011). SWOT analysis revealed areas that S&M can take advantage of to continue to stay in business with its competitors and also areas that it can work hard to overcome weaknesses and threats through internal and external good working relationship using collaboration, cooperation and coordination among stakeholders.
The appropriate time to effectively take advantage of the Change Cycle of strategic planning is now when S&M is ready to evaluate issues that were addressed in strategies for enactment of previous policies and those that were not addressed. Changes in time, situations and environment have affected the initial strategies and addressing new issues will help maintain strategies that have worked well for the organization and those unsuccessful ones that should be dismissed. Drucker (2011, pg. 8), asserted that non-profit believe and have the attitude that they support society and it is difficult sometimes for them to let go of strategies that are not successful, in that most nonprofit do not have the courage to face up to critical choices to make hard choices to let go of strategies that have not worked to support the organization’s mission.
Success of mission and vision of S&M depends largely on performance management or result-based management. Stakeholders’ expectation, top management decision making and manager’s achievement of goals are critical to the organization.
Currently at S&M a critical issue that is of major concern and has not been properly addressed is budget allocation. Though the organization supports selected children the cost varies depending on the school yearly and as a result parents and children sometimes connive to take advantage of this by altering original school documents to reflect more funds than is needed. This issue can and will addressed effectively by liaising and effectively communicating with management of various schools to be more informed. Also effective record keeping on every student will help to protect from misappropriate or disbursement of funds.
The creation of a unit or department to capture and handle yearly expenditure of every student for the three year period and also liaise with the schools will also help overcome this challenge. The use of Sun Tzu strategies to plan for the future with development of a scenario plan and crisis management to avoid any future disasters and consider knowledge learnt and built from previous experiences to improve the process of short and long-terms future plans expecting to ask the right questions to solve those new issues and indicate decision making reliant on insight gathered with intelligence and communication. (Free Management Library, n.d)
References:
Bryson, J. M. (2011). Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations: A guide to strengthening and sustaining organizational achievement (4th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Druker, P. F. ( 2011) Managing the Non-Profit Organization. New York, Routledge
Free Management Library. (n.d.). Basics of identifying strategic issues and goals. Retrieved January 15, 2015, from
https://managementhelp.org/strategicplanning/issues-goals.htm