Non-Profits can take a cue or two from business
The guiding principle of business is the law of survival. Maximize value for shareholders and customers (profit, price and quality) or the business sinks by the unrelenting discipline of the capital markets. The competition between Dell, Hewlett Packard and Apple Computer, Toshiba and others to survive in the computer industry is just one daunting example of the hundreds and thousands of products created across the globe.
Nonprofits however, have been somewhat insulated from the business pressure to perform, and the UN is not exempt from this equation either. However, as business creates value, some of those values transfer to governments to improve their own performance. I doubt an efficient business and an inefficient government can coexist easily. As industrialists and government personnel sit on boards of nonprofits and the UN, it creates a ripple effect for senior executives to improve the performance of their own organizations (nonprofit or government).
Taking a cue from business, value creates by the sequence of activities and information flows that a company and its suppliers must perform to produce, market, deliver and support its products and services. In this value chain process: speed, price and quality go hand-in-hand in triangular fashion. In the same way that business does, nonprofits must also focus on its customer base and add speed to the quality of its processes. When a nonprofit customer (beneficiary) waits, no one goes out of business but only the suffering of humanity prolongs.
To get speed and flexibility, nonprofits and governments must de-bureaucratize their systems and procedures and make them as efficient as business. When a business organization can acquire a product in two days why must a nonprofit take 30 days? Donors like to see the greatest social return for every unit of currency spent in the nonprofit sector. At the same time, donors must provide enough resources for the nonprofit organization to meet the mandate put forth by the donors. However, donors must allow nonprofit organizations to argue the critical choices they must make to execute executive board mandates and not bully the nonprofit sector due to its dependence on donations.
Nonprofits (and the UN at large) must avoid overlap and focus on just what is important to them. Mission creep is no stranger to many nonprofit organizations and the United Nations. Some mission creep comes from donors who stipulate by way of tied projects, for which sometimes, nonprofits may not refuse due to income reasons. When there is a conflict between needs-based requirements and donor-intentions, then social development suffers the consequences. Some UN agencies are hard-pressed to serve the developing world when donor-based funding misallocates social development.
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