Corporate Social Responsibility (Part 2)–Not for Profit Organizations

 

Yes its time for part 2. After very good comments from you all and discussion with fellow students I decided to post this to explain my views about this subject in more depth. I thank all of them who shared their views and contributed.

What has changed? As I spoke to some NGO’s and people working in non profit industry I sense there is a major shift in Non profit sector. Now people and businesses are no longer giving donations and expecting nothing in return. Now donors want to know how Non profit organization is going to use it with emphasis on how they will be self sustainable in years to come. People are now realizing that you can not indefinitely bail out poor or under privilege,its not practical and World economy going through tough times and corporate donations drying up this is way forward for self sustained Not for Profit movement.

So now there is demand from donors that Non Profit organization makes enough profit to survive without external help. So this is a major shift in thinking. Shift from “Giving people food” to “Teach them how to fish”.

I like the way it is shaping up as I totally agree that Organization should be self sustainable to make an impact in society.  Now I see NGO’s creating innovative revenue models to make profit to survive. Some people argue that such mentality will only take organization towards profit making and will distract them from their main purpose, but my argument is organization will continue to work on its purpose if it survives. If World economy do not recover quickly then we will see half of the NGO’s shutting their operations or holding back on expansion plans which will be great setback to those who need help.

The shift will also cause major effect in management of Not for profit organizations. Today Organization’s Management was wholly focused on philanthropy but now they have to tackle revenue, deficit, forecasting, planning tasks. I don’t know how things will go but my sense is you will have Not for Profit companies fighting with for profit companies for talent. So It’s a major challenge for businesses as they fight with attrition. Not for Profit sector will give tremendous satisfaction factor to work force which for profit companies hardly give and Once Not for profit companies start using community services and local businesses to generate revenue they can surely offer more compensation to people working for them.

It will be really interesting to monitor this development. I have decided to keep a watch on this and I will update once I find some real life example.

Disclaimer: The ideas mentioned are not unique and have been used in real life. Many NGOs are already working on this model. Also the opinion is not based on any actual data to prove it.

Signing Off

Nikhil parchure