Nonprofit Organizations, and Human Resources Management

Staffing decisions are among the most important decisions that nonprofit organizations make. Just as businesses and organizations of all sizes and areas of operation rely on their personnel to execute their strategies and advance their goals, so too do nonprofit groups. It follows, then, that nonprofit organizations need to attend to the same tasks as profit-seeking companies do when they turn to the challenges of establishing and maintaining a solid work force. To accomplish this, nonprofit organizations have to address the following six personnel issues, as delineated in the Small Business Administration publication Human Resources Management:

• Assessing personnel needs
• Recruiting personnel
• Screening personnel
• Selecting and hiring personnel
• Orienting new employees to the organization
• Deciding compensation issues

"An effective non-profit manager must try to get more out of the people he or she has," wrote Peter F. Drucker in Managing the Non-Profit Organization. "The yield from the human resource really determines the organization's performance. And that's decided by the basic people decisions: whom we hire and whom we fire; where we place people, and whom we promote. The quality of these human decisions largely determines whether the organization is being run seriously, whether its mission, its values, and its objectives are real and meaningful to people rather than just public relations and rhetoric."

ASSESSING ORGANIZATION NEEDS

A key component of any endeavor to build a quality core of personnel is an honest assessment of current and future internal needs and external influences. Leaders and managers of nonprofit organizations should study workload history, trends in the larger philanthropic community, pertinent changes in the environment in which they operate (layoffs, plant closings, introduction of a new organization with a similar mission, legislative developments, etc.), personnel demands associated with current and planned initiatives, operating budget and costs, and the quality and quantity of the area worker pool, both for volunteer and staff positions. Moreover, all of these factors need to be studied within the framework of the organization's overarching mission statement. As many nonprofit leaders have noted, adherence to other general business principles (sound fiscal management, retention of good employees through good compensation packages, etc.) is of little solace if the organization loses sight of its mission—it's reason for being—in the process.

Writing in Human Resources Management, Gary Roberts, Carlotta Roberts, and Gary Seldon noted several fundamental business principles concerning assessment of personnel needs that apply to nonprofits as well. These principles include:

• Fill positions with people who are willing and able to take on the job.
• Providing accurate and realistic job and skill specifications for each position helps ensure that it will be filled by someone capable of handling the responsibilities associated with that position.
• Written job descriptions are essential to communicating job expectations.
• Employees who are chosen because they are the best available candidates are far more likely to have a positive impact than those who are chosen on the basis of friendship or expediency.
• Performance appraisals, when coupled with specific job expectations, help boost performance.

"The process of selecting a competent person for each position is best accomplished through a systematic definition of the requirements for each job, including the skills, knowledge and other qualifications that employees must possess to perform each task," the authors concluded. "To guarantee that personnel needs are adequately specified, 1) conduct a job analysis, 2) develop a written job description, and 3) prepare a job specification."

RECRUITING, SCREENING, AND SELECTING ORGANIZATION WORK FORCE

Recruiting

For many nonprofit organizations, publicizing its very existence is the most important step that it can take in its efforts to recruit staff and volunteers alike. This is especially true if one wishes to encourage volunteers to become involved. Volunteers are the life-blood of countless nonprofit organizations, for they attend to the basic tasks that need performing, from paperwork to transportation of goods and/or services to maintenance. Writing in Quality Management in the Nonprofit World, Larry W. Kennedy noted that "they supply valuable human resources which, when properly engaged, can be worth tens of thousands of dollars in conserved personnel costs to even the smallest organizations."

Nonprofit groups rely on two basic avenues to publicize their work and their staffing needs: local media (newspapers, newsletters, radio advertising, billboards, etc.) and other community organizations (municipal governments, churches, civic groups, other nonprofit organizations, etc.) Many nonprofit groups have found that contact with some community organizations, particularly churches and civic groups, can be particularly rewarding since these organizations already have members that may be predisposed toward lending a hand.

Screening and Selection

The interviewing process is another essential component of successful staffing for nonprofit groups. This holds true for volunteers as well as for officers, directors, and paid staff. Indeed, Larry W. Kennedy remarked in his book that "volunteers should be recruited and interviewed systematically the same way you would recruit paid staff. An orderly and professional approach to volunteer management will pay off handsomely for your organization. What you do in the recruitment phase of your work will set the standard for volunteer performance. If you are disciplined and well organized, you will often attract more qualified volunteers."

Managers of nonprofit organizations should make sure that they do the following when engaged in the process of staffing, screening and selection:

• Recognize that all personnel, whether they are heading up your organization's annual fundraising drive or lending a hand for a few hours every other Saturday, have an impact on the group's performance. Certainly, some positions are more important than others but countless nonprofit managers can attest to the fact that an under-performing, unethical, or unpleasant individual can have an enormously negative impact on organization morale and/or organization reputation in the community. This can be true of the occasional volunteer as well as the full-time staff member.
• Use an application form that covers all pertinent areas of the applicant's background.
• Ensure that your screening process provides information about an individual's skills, attitudes, and knowledge.
• Try to determine if the applicant or would-be volunteer is interested in the organization for legitimate reasons (professional development and/or advancement, genuine interest in your group's mission) or primarily for reasons that may not advance your organization's cause (loneliness, corporate burnout, etc.).
• Objectively evaluate prospective employees and volunteers based on criteria established in the organization's job specifications.
• Be realistic in putting together your volunteer work force. "Managers cause most of the problems with volunteers by making unreasonable assumptions about their intentions and capabilities," wrote Kennedy. An organization that sets the bar too high in its expectations of volunteers (in terms of services provided, hours volunteered, etc.) may find itself with a severe shortage of this potentially valuable resource.
• Recognizing that would-be volunteers and employees bring both assets and negative attributes to your organization, nonprofit groups should be flexible in accommodating those strengths and weaknesses. "If you want people to perform in an organization, you have to use their strengths—not emphasize their weaknesses," said Drucker.

Organizations that pay attention to these guidelines will be far more likely to enjoy positive and lasting relationships with their volunteers and staff than those who fill their human resource needs in haphazard fashion. As Kennedy said, "the time to begin evaluating the probable reliability of human resources is prior to their insertion into your internal structure."

 1 | 2 | 3  NEXT