Fall 2010 Survey Results
www.npmanagement.org
This web site offered the opportunity to respond to a short survey
beginning in the Fall of 2010.
Only people who are involved in nonprofit, nongovernment
organizations were invited to complete it.
Responses were small in number, but continued to be received into
early 2011. This report
presents some of the more interesting findings from the survey.
Survey items sought the respondents’ positions within their
organizations, as well at their organizations’ types and perceived
financial state. Items also
targeted perceptions about the organizations’ leaders, and the education
of those leaders.
The two largest groups represented in the survey were "An employee
(executive leadership)" comprising 29% of the sample and "A board member
(board of directors)" at 21%.
The Social Welfare sector was most strongly represented (42% of
respondents) with Education in second place (29%).
Survey Results
When survey takers were asked to respond to the item “Since last year,
the demand for my nonprofit’s service has”, their answers were:
Decreased significantly
0%
Decreased slightly
4%
Stayed about the same
13%
Increased slightly
54%
Increased significantly
29%
In response to the survey item “Since last year, my organization’s
funding has”, they responded as follows:
Decreased significantly
8%
Decreased slightly
33%
Stayed about the same
42%
Increased slightly
17%
Increased significantly
0%
The comparison of changes in funding and demand are displayed in the
chart below. The numbers on
the Y axis are percentages.
Put simply, 83% of respondents reported that demand for their
not-for-profit organization’s products or services increased to some
extent over the past year while 83% reported their funding stayed the
same or decreased over the same period.
If the law of supply and demand applicable to most for-profits
applied to these not-for-profit businesses, the lines would usually be
roughly parallel to one another.
That is, as demand (or need) increases one would expect funding
to increase, and when demand decreases a decrease in funding would be
expected. Instead, they
cross rather dramatically.
Thus, it is apparent that nonprofits do not operate in a free market
environment. Rather, there
are powerful constraints at work in this market.
Examples of such constraints are the politically established
level of willingness for government to fund services or carry debt.
Likert scaled items were assigned weights in a manner that was intended
to reflect the strength of the respondents responses.
Thus, the polar ends of the Likert scales were assigned weights
of positive or negative 3, while the intermediate responses were given a
weight of positive or negative 1.
For example, survey item number 7 was “Our top executive is a
good leader” and respondents were asked to choose from the following
five response options (assigned numeric values are provided under each
option):
Strongly
Strongly
Disagree
Disagree
Neutral
Agree
Agree
-3
-1
0
1
3
Correlations Within Responses
The average ratings of top executives according to their organizations’
financial status were as follows:
|
Financial Status of Organization |
Rating of Top Executive’s Leadership |
|
In financial distress and in danger of closing |
-1 |
|
Having noticeable financial problems |
0.29 |
|
Appears to be making ends meet |
0.88 |
|
Financially Healthy |
1.25 |
|
Enjoying a large surplus |
No responses |
Thus there appears to be a roughly linear correlation between the
financial status of the nonprofit organization and opinions regarding
the leadership of the top executive.
Respondents’ ratings of their top executives appeared to vary when
broken down by rater’s role in the organization.
The average ratings of top executives according to the position
of the rater are:
|
Position/Relationship of Respondent to Nonprofit |
Rating of Top Executive’s Leadership |
|
Employee (Middle Manager) |
0 |
|
Employee (Executive Leadership) |
0.29 |
|
Board Member (Advisory Board) |
0.67 |
|
Other |
1 |
|
Board Members (Board of Directors) |
1.2 |
|
Volunteer |
1.25 |
It is difficult to identify any particular trend here.
However, it is understandable for boards of directors to be among
those who rank the top executive the highest since they are the ones who
hire and choose to retain those executives.
Similarly, it is not surprising for volunteers to rate the top
executive highly because they could easily have stopped volunteering if they
found
they did not think much of the top executive.
In other words, if they were unhappy about the direction a top
executive had chosen for an organization, there is a good chance they
are not volunteering their services at that agency any more.
On the other hand, executives and middle managers – ostensibly those who
know the most about the day-to-day operations of the organizations –
tended to offer lower ratings of the top executive.
The survey did not inquire as to whether or not the respondent
was the top executive at his or her organization, so it is conceivable
that some of those offering these low ratings actually might have been
the top executive.
Ratings of top executives were also broken down by education. Those with
degrees solely in the subject area of the nonprofit (e.g.- a doctor at a
medical facility, a teaching degree at a school, a history degree at a
museum, etc.) did quite poorly (-0.25).
Those who had only Bachelor’s Degrees in Business were rated even
lower (-0.5). However,
those with MBAs were rated quite highly (+1.75).
Those with degrees in Public Administration received similar high
ratings. It would appear
that those graduate courses might really contribute to the creation of more successful
executives.
While this survey with responses numbering only in dozens should not be
seen as the final word on any of the targeted topics, it is believed
that its results suggest areas for additional research.
In particular, the relationship between a top executive’s
leadership ability and the organization’s financial state should be
explored. While this survey
clearly showed a direct relationship between organizational financial
strength and the rating of executive leadership, it is impossible to
determine causality based on the data available here.
First among these is the question of the chicken and the egg.
Is the leader rated poorly because the organization’s financial
status is poor? Or is the
financial status of the organization tenuous because the executive
leadership is poor? Are
there other measurable factors that better predict both?
Overall, this small (seven questions) survey was not designed to be a
definitive work on nonprofit management.
However, it did validate some hypotheses to a degree that shows
they are worth evaluating further.
In addition to the apparent tie between perceived leadership
ability and organizational financial status, correlations between
leadership ability and education also warrant additional work.
And, of course, the inverse relationship between demand and
funding is in need of considerable exploration.
We wish to thank all of those who participated in this survey.
NPManagement.org will continue to present surveys from time to
time when the editorial team seeks to investigate topics that might be
of both interest and benefit to our visitors.