The Role of a Non-Profit Coordinator

Transcription

1 OPERATIONAL COLLABORATION WITHIN SINGAPORE S NON-PROFIT COMMUNITY

2 INTRODUCTION Despite government efforts to provide a social safety net, it is the nonprofit sector that ultimately determines how well Singapore s most vulnerable residents will receive the assistance they need to improve their quality of life. The volunteers and professional staff who provide the direct, handson support to atrisk populations enhance the lives of so many people and offer them a future that otherwise might be denied them. While the efforts of individual organizations can be very successful, when working as an integrated community these groups can have an even more powerful impact on society, often without incurring significant additional costs. There are already some collaborative efforts at the strategic level, such as leadership development and knowledge sharing opportunities offered by the Center for NonProfit Leadership. Taking that idea down to the operational level can allow groups to take advantage of unused capabilities and identify the need for growth to support previously unrealized community needs. One area where operational collaboration can have an almost immediate impact is in the area of problem identification. Volunteers and staff from nonprofit organizations (NPOs) work regularly with atrisk populations who often experience multiple challenges rather than just the one for which an NPO team member is interacting with them. This puts NPOs in a position to identify opportunities for intervention by other organizations, and possibly do so early enough that the situation can be dealt with before it becomes more serious and more costly to address. As useful as this can be, it is difficult to implement. NPO staff and volunteers would first need to be able to recognize the signs of additional problems, which are not always obvious, and be on the lookout for them. They would need to be aware of the other NPOs in the community and their capabilities, and have an easy way to reach out to them. Unfortunately, this sort of culture within the NPO community does not exist. The problem is not that staff and volunteers do not want to maximize their assistance beyond what their own organization does; anyone who takes time to work with nonprofits is likely to want to help as much as they can. The problem is that no system exists to support that desire. The challenge, then, is to create such a system. MULTIPLE CHALLENGES FACING ATRISK POPULATIONS Nonprofit organizations tend to focus on a specific issue. They might address a physical or mental impairment, such as vision, hearing, or autism. They may provide basic survival services, such as food or shelter. Many support victims of disease, such as HIV or mental illness. Others might deal with nonhuman problems, such as finding adoptive homes for stray dogs. There is a wide range of services provided by the nonprofit community, and many of those who receive assistance from one might be in need of support from several. NPOs are in an excellent position to recognize those needs. 1

3 For example, an agency that provides transportation to elderly people living alone might come across other problems. The service recipients could also be suffering from elder abuse, or be the victim of financial scams or other problems, or be dealing with a disability. The caregiver who visits them is in a great position to observe signs of other problems. Similarly, a family that comes to Willing Hearts soup kitchen to receive free meals might be suffering from other problems related to their financial challenges. The stress of their situation might contribute to domestic abuse, there may be physical or mental illnesses that limit the chances of employment, or children may be missing out on If we are to get better at collaborating for the public good in [the] future, then we perhaps need different tools and kinds of support. Our experience suggests that frontline staff are frequently among the biggest advocates for collaboration, co- production and sharing of resources and expertise. UNDP Global Centre for Public Service Excellence, Collaborative Capacity in Public Service Delivery (2015) school. Individuals who interact with the family at the soup kitchen may have an opportunity to discover these challenges and help the family get the support it needs. One of the key difficulties in making this happen is that NPO staff and volunteers tend to focus on the challenge at the center of their organization s mission. This is perfectly natural; all agencies cannot be all things to all people. It is the development of their expertise in addressing specific problems that allows these organizations to be so effective individually. They have received funding based on the specific needs they support, and their personnel are trained to use their limited time and resources to address specific problems. Rather than trying to turn individual caregivers into onesizefitsall problem- solvers, it would instead be helpful to create a culture in which NPO members proactively look for, and recognize the signs of, other problems, which are then communicated to other experts for their attention and intervention. How does that culture emerge? If we consider culture to be the expectations about normal behavior, and shared values and priorities, then a culture often emerges from the structures and procedures that are put in place. If we create processes to support a community goal, then the behaviors of people as they follow those processes become the norm, and that establishes our expectations for how to function. In this case, what are the systems that we need in order to support problem identification by collaborating between NPOs? Well, consider what NPO staff and volunteers need in order to make this easy to do: Awareness of other NPOs, their missions, and their capabilities Efficient system of communication between NPOs Protocols that suggest when an NPO should be contacted for support By creating a structure that supports these needs, we can make it easy for NPOs to reach out to each other when they identify additional problems with their clients. We need to 2

4 make this a relatively easy thing to do, because if it is too bureaucratic or has too many requirements, it will be hard to get people to do it in the first place, and the new behaviors are unlikely to catch on. A STRUCTURE FOR COMMUNITY COLLABORATION What systems need to be in this structure? First, we need individuals in each organization whose primary role is to be a source of knowledge about their own NPO and a link to others. Next, they need an easy means of reaching out to those other organizations. Understanding when to contact other organizations requires some training on their roles and the conditions under which they typically intervene. Finally, a dedicated knowledge portal could provide seasonal and timesensitive information on a proactive basis, and also serve as a way of sharing knowledge on an ondemand basis. All of this could be done by volunteer efforts or with support from the National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre (NVPC), so that organizations can increase their impact with minimal cost. HEWLITTPACKARD S KNOWLEDGE ADVISORS The function of a Knowledge Advisor is interpreted with some variations in different geographies...in summary, though, the advisors are responsible for four activities: Helping users search for information, especially when the requester is outside the HP firewall. Maintaining awareness of all types of collateral, such as proposals, references, information about HP solutions and partners, new product developments, project information, etc. Making people and community connections, so that experts can be leveraged for maximum effect. Training general users in the use of KM [knowledge management] tools, including installation, artifact submission, search techniques and general maintenance. ( Community Support Coordinator One individual in each NPO could be identified as a Community Support Coordinator, the expert on that organization who addresses inbound requests and also serves as the primary communication link to others in the community for outbound messages. They could help volunteers in their own NPO understand signs of potential problems beyond the scope of their organization, and diagnose the need for outreach to another group when volunteers raise concerns. This person could be a volunteer, rather than hiring an additional staff member, as this role could be performed on an asneeded basis rather than every day. The ideal coordinator would be an experienced volunteer or departing staff member who wishes to stay involved with the organization, but in a new capacity. Having a person be dedicated to this knowledge and liaison role allows everyone in the organization to know who to contact for outbound support requests, and provides the rest of the nonprofit community with a known point of contact. Allowing 3

5 them to focus only on this role, rather than having it be an extra duty for a volunteer or staff member doing other things, will emphasize the importance of collaboration and will encourage them to become an expert rather than simply getting to this function when they can find the time. Private sector firms have benefitted from similar positions. These knowledge advisors have an individual role (being an expert in an area) and a collaborative role (sharing that knowledge among multiple parties). Offering a comparable capability in the nonprofit community can help boost their profit (which for NPOs could be defined as mission accomplishment at the lowest possible cost). Communication Links The Community Support Coordinators need an uptodate directory of the other coordinators in all participating organizations. This could be designed within a smartphone app that could be easily updated with new contact information as people change or new NPOs join the community. The app could include a contact form that comes up automatically to make reaching out to other organizations as easy as possible to improve the chances of people actually doing it rather than having to access a directory, then separately draft an that may or may not include all the necessary information. Creating the app might be a good project for a school group, or perhaps a startup that hopes to gain some early CSR experience. Maintaining the contact information in the app would require a specific person or organization (such as NVPC, for example) to have that responsibility. The key to making all of this work is to make the informationsharing process as easy as possible so it becomes part of the normal way of doing business. Initial and Recurring Training Community Support Coordinators need to understand the breadth of capabilities available from different NPOs, and the conditions under which they should reach out to other groups. What are the signs of domestic abuse? Who do we contact if we suspect a mental illness problem? If we see children at home during the day, should they be in school, or are the schools on holiday? Initial training should include an introduction to how to deal with inbound requests for assistance and how to reach out for support. It also needs to include an overview of the other NPOs and the situations in which outreach to them is warranted. Recurring training should include discussions about experiences and lessons learned, introductions to new NPOs, and issues that may be more of a concern at certain times (e.g., depression during the holiday season, housing problems during the rainy season). Recurring sessions could be organized similarly to NVPC s VC Connect platform. Interactive Knowledge Portal The key to making these relationships and the outreach to other NPOs work is to make the process as easy as possible. A critical element of that is knowledge management. One step 4

6 toward doing that well is to have a single source of information about NPOs, the issues they address, and the symptoms of problems that should trigger outreach. Some of the information there might include: a searchable, wikistyle directory of NPOs that can be edited by the Community Support Coordinators in each organization contact information for Community Support Coordinators initial and recurring training materials, such as PowerPoint presentations, Slideshares, and recorded webinars a lessons learned area where NPOs could post stories about what worked well, and what could work better The most useful knowledge portals use a push system that sends information out rather than waiting for users to pull information from the site. This offers a pair of advantages: first, it allows information to be distributed on an asneeded basis, such as to address seasonal concerns or announce important changes, and second, it encourages greater interaction with the site so that using it becomes a norm more quickly. This requires someone to manage the portal, which could be a function of NVPC, or could offer a volunteer opportunity to a school group or private company. WORLD VISION S KNOWLEDGE PORTAL Knowledge Space [is] a collaboration portal with tools for workflows, alerts, and discussion around documents and dynamic mapping tools. Today, not only did these things far exceed the capabilities of , they revolutionized World Vision's entire system of communication, empowering its global community of humanitarian workers to better serve their communities. In an emergency response situation, for example, each emergency site assessment team has the power to enter and edit data for which they are specifically responsible. This data is then automatically updated on a map, providing immediate feedback and realtime access to online data to colleagues across the world. Hence, the portal was also able to introduce World Vision's many geographically dispersed teams to a greater sense of ownership and connection to the larger organization. ( Creating the portal could offer a good opportunity for tertiary students, such as at an ITE or polytechnic, to create and manage a system. They could also develop a smartphone app to more easily access the portal from a mobile platform. Portals are becoming more common in the private sector, and so this offers a useful learning experience for students who hope to work in corporate IT or in software development. Opensource software exists to create community portals. 5

7 It is worth noting that the knowledge portal will have little impact if no one uses it. Too many companies buy technology for collaboration without first having an environment that supports collaboration. The portal will be a vital source of information, but only if processes exist that encourage its use. CONCLUSION Singapore s nonprofit community makes a huge difference in the lives of many people. There will always be more that can be done, and so the trick is to find a way to do it while incurring minimal additional costs. Making use of existing capabilities is the way to do that, and collaboration can provide the synergy that allows existing organizations to accomplish more together than they currently do individually. Most organizations would agree this is a worthy goal, but their focus on their particular social issues often precludes effective cooperation. Combining the effects of various organizations sounds good, but it needs to be made as easy as possible or it will never happen. By designating a single point of collaboration within each NPO, we have the opportunity to continue developing the expertise of each organization while creating an operational link to the rest of the community. Such capabilities have proven to be effective within private sector organizations, and could offer similarly strong results for the nonprofit community. Providing those coordinators the training and tools they need could be done by volunteers so the resulting synergy could be realized without incurring significant additional cost. Getting buyin from the nonprofit community and having operational collaboration become the norm will not happen overnight. A change like this takes time to become the regular way of doing business. However, by making the processes simple, and ensuring coordinators have the resources they need to share information and expertise easily, it will be possible to use Singapore s existing nonprofit capabilities to dramatically improve the lives of even more of its citizens. 6