Political Science

Three existing non-government organizations have proven to be highly efficient and effective in sustaining growth in their endeavor to help the neediest people in their communities by means of undertaking strategic planning to achieve their organizational goals and objectives. They are the Triangle Community Foundation, the Harlem Childrens Zone, and the City Year.  These organizations have formulated strategies towards accumulating more funds to sustain their social services programs.  Each necessitated upholding new strategy for continuous improvements in response to the existing internal and external conditions that affect each of them.

The Triangle Community Foundation whose mission is to expand private philanthropy in the communities of the greater Triangle area took organizational development as a strategy towards building wider partnership. In particular, the foundation utilized the donor services organization model which provides larger opportunities for donors to engage in grant making decisions, contrary to previous scheme in which most of decision-makings were done by the board and the staff of the foundation.  The result is TCF had doubled its assets to over 20 million compared to the 10 million increase in asset which it gained in seven years (Triangle Community Foundation, p.3, 2001).

The Harlem Childrens Zone, on the other hand, took measurement and evaluation as the organizations strategy in pursuing excellence. As a social service organization helping poor families and children in the community of Harlem, the organization conceptualized an integrated program model which required major restructuring in terms of management, measurement systems, and program goals. To realize this, the organization hired Bridgespan, a leading for-profit strategy-consulting firm, to assist in the overall organizational planning (Grossman  Curran, p. 4, 2004). At first, it took a hard time for each team to collaborate with each other in order to maintain one focus and one direction. In the end, after careful integration of various elements, it formulated a business plan built around evaluation and measurement scheme or metrics to make sure that goals and objectives are attained (ibid, p. 6).

The City Year Enterprise has the most smooth-sailing growth since its establishment in 1981 as evident in its success that attracted national attention which included the federal government that pledged to fund its local service programs (City Year Enterprise, p. 1, 1996).  In 1992, it was confirmed therefore that City Year was already a major provider of national service opportunities and high impact service (City Year Enterprise, p. 1, 1996), which only signified that more initiatives must be done to meet the demands for growth to help more people. Given the fact that it had been continuously expanding, as at that time they already catered services to places beyond Boston, it needed more funding to support its 650 corps in many cities across the United States. As a response, as an innovative move, City Year piloted in 1995 an initiative to diversify its revenue to generate more income.  This time, it resorted to business related partnership with Timberlake to start advocating enterprise. The expansion therefore made this nonprofit organization into a leading participant in the national service movement through the initiatives made to increase its revenue. It started its fundraising efforts with private sectors followed by corporate or team sponsorships wherein the sponsors had direct link with the activities as well as with the decision making in City Year, especially in finding sources for the organization.

Comparison and Contrast
To compare, the Triangle Community Foundation and the City Year Enterprise have some similarity in terms of strategy and program plan. Specifically, the Triangle Community Foundation and the City Year took the concept of camaraderie with their donors or sponsors by giving them opportunity to involve in planning and decision-making. TCF called this partnership entrepreneurs partnership while CYE called this partnership corporate or team sponsorship. TCF instituted the Entrepreneurs Partnership, a membership association composed of major donors that are required to commit cash or asset to the foundation with expected benefits to receive from the foundation.  CYE, on the other hand, maintained good relationship with their team sponsors through conducting various activities together such as planning, graduation ceremonies, and many others. Both of them were already tracking towards increasing their funds and sphere of influence because of successive achievements.

Likewise, not all of them were able to design new strategies and approaches as smooth as the other because of underlying factors that required time and careful scrutiny such as in the case of Harlem where it needed to gather and merge together its various departments before setting new plan because, in the first place, its organizer did not take initiative to do management plan ahead of time. Reorganization was conceptualized in order to unify the efforts of the different departments in the organization and the result of which was an ambitious plan to completely design metrics for evaluation purposes.  This is contrary to Triangle Community Foundation and the City Year Enterprise when both had already established culture and values from the time they started their operation. That commitment to hold on to these values and culture remained strong despite temptation to be influenced by others.  Harlem was at this point in need of a true realization of one objective and one focus to amalgamate efforts through establishing one mission or corporate goals and objectives.
In addition, Triangle Community Foundations approach is different from City Year Enterprises approach in keeping their sponsors.  TCF encourages possible donors to join in their group through the organizations option called Entrepreneurs Philanthropic Venture Fund a fundraising activity that engages new entrepreneurs to participate in philanthropy before they had actually achieved liquidity (Triangle Community Foundation, p. 5, 2001).  Donors then donate money that form the stock and half of it will go to loan pool which can be used by the members when they need it. City Years approach is different it decided to apply the principle of teamwork among its sponsors through which sponsors feel total involvement and responsibility about the success and failure of the organization. CYE in turn provides all the communication needed to make the sponsors informed all the time, such as invitation to meetings or special gatherings.

Among these three organizations, in my perception, the City Year Enterprise has the most effective management strategy because primarily of the achievements it has accumulated in the past years since it started operating. It was able to encourage individual sponsors, followed by government funding, team sponsorship and finally corporate investment which are proven successful up to this time. I think it is because of the undying commitment of its organizers to maintain the principles and the spirit of accountability over its achievements. Then, as a national organization, it also has challenged many larger business institutions to take part in donating, among them are McDonald, Timberland Company and Digital Equipment Corporation. It was able to bring people closer to the organization in form of cash and donations through other strategies such as shirt and logo display and many others. Finally, from its name, City Year is already an enterprise that generates income through various projects such as Ripples and a joint venture with Timberland. Its strategy and approaches are important things to consider when starting or managing nonprofit organization.