Eric Darsow and Dr. Warner Woodworth, Organizational Leadership and Strategy

Project Purpose and Output

Many nonprofit organizations in South Africa sacrifice their autonomy and mission focus in exchange for the secure funding source of government service provision. The purpose of this project was to investigate and develop management techniques whereby nonprofit organizations in South Africa can effectively serve as both government watch dogs and quality government services providers. Since nonprofit organizations are critical components of the social services infrastructure in South Africa, investigating ways to maximize their impact on target communities while still creating an invigorating and meaningful work environment can have significant positive impact on society. I collected field data in East London, South Africa from September to December 2008. Following data analysis, I will write a full-length senior thesis and honor thesis will be compiled during the 2009 calendar year and readied for publication in 2010.

Data Collection and research context

I collected data through participant observation and unstructured interviews with organization staff at RSEF , a 23-staff member nonprofit organization based in East London. While RSEF’s primary focus is on educational development and end-user computer training, the organization often accepts work in a variety of semi-related fields such as project management, HIV/AIDS workshops, music classes, and community libraries. In addition to my research within the organization, former organizational employees and government department officials were also interviewed to support and complement the primary data. In total, I conducted 32 interviews (over 45 hours of tape) and recorded 245 pages of field notes.

Organizational background

Through years of consistent, high-quality work, RSEF has become a choice service provider for the Eastern Cape Department of Education ( DoE) and consequently receives a large percentage of their total revenue from this one government department. Since RSEF pays staff salaries and overhead costs primarily by bidding for and winning service provision contracts from the government, the organization has developed a dependency on the DoE for its survival. This dependence has led to bidding for work from the DoE for the primary purpose of paying bills instead of advancing a particular organizational mission or contributing intentionally to positive change in South African communities.

Furthermore, since the organization is so dependent on the DoE, RSEF’s management often finds itself engaged in administering an array of unrelated projects for the government which lack a cohesive connection to a broader organizational mission and vision. This type of piecemeal, sporadic project work often leaves staff feeling overworked, underappreciated, and disconnected from the social changes they are passionate about enacting. Thus, through my day-to-day work with the organization, these issues of effectively managing government work from the standpoint of project management and human resources became the dominant struggle for managers and staff alike. The following two research questions emerged as critical for addressing this complicated management challenge:

1. How can the organization become more self-determining in terms of its projects choices while still harnessing the valuable revenue stream of government tenders?
2. In what ways can the organization contribute to improvements in the government departments’ functioning while not jeopardizing its valuable position as a trusted service provider?

Organizational self-determination and internal communication

In order for the organization to pursue a cohesive portfolio of related projects, a shared vision and mission must first exist to give high-level direction to such a plan. My research suggests that non-management staff at RSEF do not feel included in the high-level planning of the organization and instead perceive management to be making decisions behind closed doors and then passing down directives for the staff to carry out. Yet management staff has expressed frustration in the non-management staff’s lack of participation in critical thinking exercises relating to the organization’s overarching strategy. I suggest that neither management nor non-management staff were intentionally creating distance between one another. On the contrary, the staff that I worked with at RSEF were extremely committed to positive organizational development and community change. The “management gap” arose not because of power-hungry leadership or apathetic staff but may be due to rational, explicable breakdowns in positive, structured communication between staff and management.

As a remedy, I suggest that RSEF (and organizations experiencing similar tensions) create structured spaces in which strategic questions can be discussed on a continuing basis. Such a process could take the form of weekly staff meetings to discuss one or two particular strategic questions the organization is facing. Furthermore, project staff from different departments could be encouraged to think critically and strategically about how staff can work together to encourage unique community changes not originally specified in the government project plans.

Nonprofits as service providers and government watch-dogs

Nonprofits have historically served as intermediaries between citizens and their government by advocating for improved service provision for the poor, increased responsiveness by elected officials, etc. Yet because so many South African nonprofits are receiving large sums of money from the government, they are inclined to remain silent on issues of government project failure, corruption, or incompetency. Thus nonprofits refusing to “not bite the hand that feeds” has lead to critical gaps in society’s social infrastructure. Through my consultation with the RSEF staff, I suggest that the role of nonprofits as watch dogs is not impossible in a service provision context, but rather advocacy needs to be approached differently from the past. For instance, instead of the traditional methods for influencing government such as waving signs and petitioning, service provision nonprofits could work through their existing relationships with department officials to discuss possible changes in government practice and, simultaneously, offer their own services for participating in needed changes through administering new projects, heading up a research team, or creating new types of community structures.

Conclusions and lessons learned

This research project has facilitated my own professional development in a way that will also be potentially helpful to South African nonprofits working with the government. In summary, I learned that nonprofit management is not just about rolling out a project or getting a report written. Organizational managers should be equally concerned with creating a work environment that harnesses the staff’s own individual passion for social change in a way that also furthers the organization’s mission and vision.