SWOT Analysis and Recommendations for Global United Way

The scope of the current analysis deals with Global United Way. The Global United Way was started in 1887 in Colorado USA. It is a non-profit organization established with a motive of identifying welfare problems in society and coming up. A comprehensive SWOT analysis for the organisation is conducted along with providing certain recommendations for improvement.

RUNNING HEAD: HUMAN SERVICES
HUMAN SERVICES

Executive Summary
The scope of the current analysis deals with Global United Way. The Global United
Way was started in 1887 in Colorado USA. It is a non-profit organization established with a
motive of identifying welfare problems in society and coming up. A comprehensive SWOT
analysis for the organisation is conducted along with providing certain recommendations for
improvement.
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Table of Contents
Executive Summary...................................................................................................................3
Introduction................................................................................................................................4
Organization Accomplishments.................................................................................................4
Sponsors of United Way WA.....................................................................................................5
Challenges faced by non-profit organizations............................................................................6
Challenges faced by United Way WA.......................................................................................6
SWOT ANALYSIS....................................................................................................................6
Strengths of the organization.....................................................................................................7
Weaknesses................................................................................................................................7
Identify Opportunities................................................................................................................8
Threats........................................................................................................................................8
Application of appropriate organizational TheorY....................................................................8
How can the organization start using this theory?.....................................................................9
Proposal for a new initiative......................................................................................................9
Recommendations toward its implementation...........................................................................9
Identification of stakeholders...................................................................................................11
Strategies to use to advocate the approval of the new initiative..............................................11
Conclusion................................................................................................................................13
References................................................................................................................................14
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Introduction
The Global United Way was started in 1887 in Colorado USA. It was founded by a
rabbi, two ministers, priest, and a Denver woman. It is a non-profit organization established
with a motive of identifying welfare problems in society and coming up with suitable actions
on how to solve them. This team came together to come up with solutions to the various
issues that were facing the community (Bezjian, Holmstrom & Kipley, 2009). They also
aimed at collecting funds for charities and coordinating various wellbeing services however
the organization collapsed. Come 1986 some Perth businessmen founded United Way WA in
Australia (Ackerman & Auten, 2008). This was to cater for the increasing needs of the
society and charitable requests (Fleming and Tappin, 2009). United Way mainly aims at
caring for people and ensuring good lifestyles. The United Ways aimed at providing great
opportunities to the community to ensure societal well-being by meeting their basic needs
which are Income, health, and Education. They considered the three as the most critical assets
in the society (Eikenberry, 2008). Education was thought to give skills and knowledge to
young people. Therefore, students got good jobs and income and also meet the basic needs of
their families. United Way also came up with very many programmes in the health sector
meant to improve health service
Organization Accomplishments
The following are some of the organization accomplishments undertaken by the
organisation.
 Community Engagement: United Way focuses more on the issues facing the society
thus they are involved in community services. They aim to find and understand the
various issues facing the community and come up with essential strategies to solve
them.
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 Customer relation management: United ways always ensure good relationships with
their customers (Fleming and Tappin, 2009). They mainly check at the demands of
the customers who are the community members and ensure that they help them
become financially stable and independent
Sponsors of United Way WA
The organization receives corporate donations from corporate partners’ organization.
The organization also accepts donations from workplace giving (Eikenberry, 2008). This is a
situation where employees make contributions to the Australian tax office which is usually
deducted as fee .lastly is that the organization receives funding from corporate volunteering
(Fleming and Tappin, 2009). These are employees who volunteer to do a specific project for
the local community. The organization also collects funds from Football competitions, Easter
food hampers and casual dress Fridays; these sponsorship funds usually finance projects from
origin to the end. The organization usually runs projects globally thus is not easy to run such
a non-profit privately funded organization all by themselves.
` United Way WA cannot be in a position to offer health, income and education for
society and individuals on their own thus they have 2.6 million volunteers and some 9.6
million donors meant to improve the lives of people in the community. For example, the
organization has volunteering groups such as corporate connect, education volunteering, and
skilled volunteering (Fleming and Tappin, 2009). Corporate connect is a team of volunteers
whose members choose to work on different projects in society without being paid
(Ackerman, & Auten, 2008). Education volunteers also provide quality education to children
and other members of the society without expecting pay. On the other hand, skilled
volunteers usually use their skills to handle the different issues in the society. United Way is
mainly involved in giving, volunteering and advocating.
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Challenges faced by non-profit organizations
One of the significant problems of the organization is that they encounter issues with
their business structures (Johnson, 2010). For example, after the 2008 economic recession,
many people were not willing to donate their funds while the needs of society also increased.
Another major issue faced by non-profit organizations is leadership successions. Non-profit
organizations are usually led by outstanding leaders however most of them are not good
decision makers'. They are likely to come up with a project which will later fail to lead to
wastage of resources. Change management also happens to be a massive issue in the non-
profit making organization. Many organization face a lot of problems in this area because
they usually change their board members more often thus losing consistency
Challenges faced by United Way WA
One of the significant challenges faced by this organization is losing donors. If they
don't put up to their business structure they usually loose donors. On the other hand, many
organizations are moving from strategic philanthropy (Ackerman, & Auten, 2008). Moreover,
this organization relies more on the old economy business structure thus they are not used of
following new business techniques (Bajaj, & Heim, 2008). There is always a large trust gap
when dealing with a non-profit organization where not many people can donate their
resources to be used in society
SWOT ANALYSIS
SWOT is defined as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats faced by an
organization. Strengths and weaknesses are internal parts of the non-profit organization
which it has control of while opportunities and threats are external factors of the non-profit
organization in which it does not have control of. An organization can use SWOT analysis to
gain a competitive advantage. This is a situation where the organization uses its strengths to
take care of its threats (Eikenberry, 2008). While it also uses its opportunities to deal with the
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weaknesses. Strengths are defined as those qualities that help an organization accomplish its
mission. Strengths are either tangible or intangible. Weaknesses are those factors that do not
assist an organization to accomplish its task or achieve its full potential. On the other hand
opportunities usually, occur in the environment in which the organization operates. Threats
arise when factors in the environment are likely to affect the profitability and reliability of an
organization
Strengths of the organization
 Availability of funds through donations
 It is a well-known organization globally thus building a lot of trust with the public
 Availability of volunteers globally thus making it easier for organizations to run
programmes effectively.
 It has support from the Australian government
Weaknesses
 There has been emergent of many charity organization thus making donations very
few
 The organization seems homeless because it does not have a permanent location
 On the other hand, many people are not responding to programmes set by the
organization for example school going programmes `
 The organization programs are normally affected by economic recessions `and
changes of policies in a country
 Sometimes it is difficult to manage many programmes across the globe
 The organization mainly relies on donations. If an organization is not in a position to
be sure of the funds it has, it cannot be able to plan effectively.
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Identify Opportunities
The significant opportunity of this organization is that it receives a lot of government
incentives. The organization gets grants which they can use to cater for costs. They also
receive a lot of tax deductions and exemptions.
On the other hand, many organizations support their activities
Threats
 Threats are factors that threaten the survival of a company or non-profit organization.
The primary threat to this organization is the economic downturns which affect the
financial position of the organization as well as bringing a lot of issues in the society
 There is a lot of competition from other non-profit organizations all trying to deliver
the same projects to society and trying to win donations. It makes people confused
about which charity organization they should donate for thus making money to be
divided into small portions
Application of appropriate organizational TheorY
United way WA should embrace the organization theory of change combined with
SWOT analysis (Bakija, & Heim, 2008). Theory of change mainly involves coming up with
strategies that assist you to achieve your goals as an organization. It helps one to know the
activities the organization is engaged in to achieve the goals set or there are other ways an
organization should consider (Aldrich, 2009). The theory of change helps in connecting the
targets with the activities as well as identifying potential risks in the plan by looking at the
assumptions in each step. In this organization theory of change connects the different projects
that the organization is running and how they are related.
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How can the organization start using this theory?
They need first to identify the main problem they need to solve and also the goals they
want to achieve in the long-term. They also need to know their target audience and where
they need to be located as specific as possible. Secondly is that they need to work from the
outside right from problem definition towards achieving the long-term goal (Castaneda,
Garen, & Thornton, 2008). The organization needs to know the people that are most affected
by the issues they have set and the people who will assist in getting the work done. The
organization needs to think of where they need to start their work .also think of practical steps
that you can take towards achieving your goal.
Proposal for a new initiative
I would advise the United Way to start an intuitive on stopping children trafficking.
Although we don't have enough data as evidence of children and human trafficking, these
issues have emerged in recent years. Human trafficking is thought to be brought by lack of
awareness, poverty, and conflict. There is a need for people to come up with steps on how to
stop these criminal activities in multilateral, Bilateral and national level. Many programs have
been set by other organization trying to deal with the problem, but they have been
unsuccessful because they try to deal with the observable effect rather than the significant
causes of the problem. United Way WA needs to run this intuitive with better strategies in
place. Some of the strategies it should consider are as follows
Recommendations toward its implementation
The increased children trafficking is thought to have been caused by the growing
demand for labour, in some countries .however it seems to be a very complicated issue since
it is also thought to be associated with globalization and technologies.
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They should take a focus of children trafficking as a criminal offense against human
beings and call for punishment to those found trafficking children
United way WA needs to run an awareness campaign of what are children trafficking
and generally human trafficking and the laws and human legal rights attached to it. They
should look at the most affected nations of origin and destinations and seek the government
to tighten the laws and regulation about the child and human trafficking. They should also
come up with strategies on how they can rescue children being trafficked before they get into
the countries of destinations. Thus they should come up with rescue centres for those children
that have been victims of human trafficking. They also need to encourage human beings to
value other human beings
Take a human right focus by assisting those people who are found victims of human
trafficking
The organization should seek to assist those people who have been victims of human
trafficking by giving them the necessities and also assisting them to locate their homes and
facilitate their travel. They should also offer counselling to the affected persons to help them
get their lives back to normal. Like I stated earlier the organization need to come up with
rescues centres. They also need to teach and create awareness for our children on the
importance of education so that they don't get to be coerced. The organization need to get
ambassadors in place who are not only qualified but also motivated
Holistic approaches
Coming up with long-term strategies for this issues will require holistic approaches
addressing every aspect of human trafficking. This kind of approach will call for promotion
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protection of human rights specifically those who have been victims of trafficking. They also
need to include prevention criminalization and punishment of human traffickers
Identification of stakeholders
Stakeholder are those people who have an interest in your non-profit organization,
and they include foundations that give grants, donors, board members and many 0rther
people such as vendors or even suppliers.
All of these individuals and groups can be affected by what your organization does or
even help determine what your non-profit does. Non-profit organization stakeholders are
divided into three categories which are a constitutional, contractual and third party. The
constitutional stakeholders include the board members or trustees who can be further being
referred to as management committee. The constitutional stakeholders are significant in
managing the institution. They should always avoid having a conflict of interests.
On the other hand contractual stakeholders in a non-profit organization usually
include the funders the paid staff a team or a group that is known to have a relationship with
the organizations. Lastly, we have the third party stakeholders which include people and
groups that get to be affected by the activities of the no-profit organization (Aldrich, 2009).
They usually include the citizen, local government and businesses.
Strategies to use to advocate the approval of the new initiative
Get to know those people who are affected or interested in the project and be in a
position to explain your initiative effectively
Every initiative is made up of many stakeholders. A team must carefully analyse the
conditions of those that will be affected by the initiative. How there are affected, their interest
and their reactions. Initiatives are thought to bring changes which later translate to
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opportunities (Bakija, & Heim, 2008). However, opportunities are not enough to make
stakeholders accept your initiative. Giving a context around the reason for your initiative and
why such changes need to be made is what makes your project to be accepted or rejected by
the stakeholder
Deal with resistance effectively
Initiatives will always face resistance. However, the questions stand how to respond
to resistance in the right manner (Bakija, & Heim, 2008). Resistance sometimes is brought
about by the feeling of fear, insecurity, and anxiety about doing a new thing. One mistake
people make when dealing with resistance is not talking about the negative side or the
disadvantages of the initiative. People start developing a gut of something negative being
concealed (Basil, Ridgway & Basil, 2008). This is likely to cause more resistance thus one
must learn to communicate effectively about the negative side of the initiative
Inform stakeholders individually.
As we have discussed there is excellent importance in giving the stakeholders the
background of the project. Stakeholders also look forward to seeing how the said project will
be beneficial to them. Thus as a project manager, you must come up with an effective
communication plan that addresses the needs of stakeholders only (Aldrich, 2009). The needs
of stakeholders should be addressed in a four-step approach. First, you need to explain to the
stakeholders what will not change around them. Secondly is what the group is likely to lose
because of the project. Thirdly is how they will benefit from the project and lastly should be
opportunities and the advantages of the project overall
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Conclusion
In conclusion, although non-profit making organizations do not pay taxes, they
usually act like a business. Just like the business organization United way WA operates from
the point of guessing or informed strategy. The owner of the business knows the importance
of doing research generating revenues and maximizing resources. Non-profit organizations
can benefit from the same by use of the SWOT analysis.
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References
Ackerman, D., & Auten, G. (2008). Tax Expenditures for Noncash Charitable Contributions.
NBER Chapters, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
Aldrich, T. (2009). "Benchmarking the fundraising performance of UK charities,"
International Journal of Nonprofit Sector Marketing, V 14 (November), 353-364
Bakija, J., & Heim, B. (2008). How Does Charitable Giving Respond to Incentives and
Income? NBER Working Papers, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
Basil, D., Ridgway, N., & Basil, M. (2008). Guilt and giving: A process model of empathy
and efficacy. Psychology & Marketing, 25(1), 1-23.
Bezjian, J., Holmstrom, W., & Kipley, D. (2009). Creating Not-For-Profit Organizational
Legitimacy During Periods of Economic Constraints and Diminishing Donor
Resources. Quarterly Business Renaissance, 4(4), 49-67
Castaneda, Garen, & Thornton, . (2008). Competition, Contractibility, and the Market for
Donors to Nonprofits. Journal of Law Economics & Organization, 24(1), 215-246.
Eikenberry, A. (2008). Fundraising in the new philanthropy environment: The benefits and
challenges of working with giving circles. Nonprofit Management & Leadership,
19(2), 141-152.
Fleming, M, and Tappin, R. (2009). "Face-to-face donor cancellation rates (attrition):
establishing a benchmark, "International Journal of Nonprofit Sector Marketing, V 14
(November), 341-357.
Johnson, G. (2010). Marketing Learning the United Way. Chief Learning Officer, 9(5), 42-
47.Public Sector Marketing, 20(1), 119-138.
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