Assignment 2: Executive Summary Presentation

Running head: PROFESSIONAL PROPOSAL 0

Professional Proposal

Name

Institution

Date

Mission, Vision, Values, and Ethics Statements

Mission Statement: “To build a healthier society through protection, empowerment and establishment of a sense of collectivism.”

Vision Statement: “We seek to establish a humane community free of violence and discrimination by improving the quality of life.”

Values Statement: “Our operations are inspired by a spirit of collectivism and harmonious living. We strive to uphold the greatest levels of ethical uprightness by training or employees to observe workplace diversity and remaining motivated.”

Ethical Statement: “We subscribe to the clinical code of ethics by mandating our employees to desist from conflict, uphold rational decision making and display the best of conduct within and beyond the agency.”

Addressing the Main Issue

This human services agency will strive to provide assistance in terms of welfare, rehabilitation, housing and accessibility to health for those who need critical medical attention. These are problems that are irregularly distributed in the targeted population due to disparities in the economy. The agency will strive to address these problems by using three main approaches. The first approach is to directly help the victims through well-trained employees in the agency. Through a well-designed recruitment process, the agency will seek to hire competent individuals who will be able to advance the agency’s objectives and goals directly to members of the community. This will help to address a greater proportion of the problems targeted by the agency.

The second approach is to use affiliated institutions to make specific services accessible to victims within the society. For example, patients who require medical attention but are not privileged or are not able to afford these services will be facilitated by the agency to get help from healthcare institutions affiliated to the agency. Additionally, for families which cannot get sufficient food to support their siblings, the agency will coordinate with government food provision programs to ensure that these families are considered and fed. The nature of partnerships in this case will be determined by the type of problem the agency is trying to correct or address. The third approach will involve sensitizing the community and members of the society to assist in different ways to support the court5se of the agency or cultivate the spirit of collectivism (Schmid, 2004). This agency will utilize the society as a potential source of resources and a tool to nurture the spirit of collectivism that will ensure people help each other in addressing the target problems.

Demographics

It is very important to study the demographic trends within the target population as they relate to the problems addressed by the agency. This is the only way the agency will justify its relevance in the provision of specific services to the targeted population. To begin with, the agency will identify a target population by defining the region it will operate. This will be relative to its physical positioning in a central niche where members of the society and victims will find it easy to access. Assuming a population of about 3000 people, there are a number of demographic parameters that the agency must sought to use in allocating and designing its services. To begin with, understanding the cultural distribution of the population based on matters such as religion, customs and beliefs will help the agency understand the preferences and perspective to the services the organization will provide (Hyde, Multicultural development in human services agencies: Challenges and solutions, 2004). For example, the agency will use the demographic statistics to evaluate the number of women who are victims of domestic violence or the number of youths addicted to drug abuse.

Once this statistic is deduced, the agency will strive to identify the families affected by the problem and help them. For instance, the agency must provide a containment center where young adults addicted to drug abuse can be offered psychological help. Additionally, victims of domestic violence must be housed and helped to gain meaningful employment from where they can lead a better life. The agency will use demographic studies to identify the numbers. Starving families will be supplied with food. However, for the agency to ensure that only the people in need of their services get them, demographic statistics are important. Most importantly, knowing the exact proportion of the population affected by a specific problem will be very helpful in communicating logic to the government and other humanitarian organizations. This approach will ensure that the services offered by the agency are effective because they are offered to the appropriate members of the community.

Funding Proposal

Human service agencies are characteristically non-profit organizations, this means that resources can be a problem if the agency serves a greater population. Therefore, the designing of a funding proposal is very important for the progress of any human service agency. However, the first step is to evaluate the resource requirements of the human services agency. This particular human service agency serves a considerable population of about 3000 people. However, the agency offers a number of services among them housing homeless people, offering social welfare to all vulnerable families, assisting victims of domestic abuse, coaching young girls and boys as well as rehabilitating drug addicts. This wider service portfolio means that the human services agency has a greater population of victims to deal with (Pynes, 2008). Considering the amount of resources at the disposal of the agency, it is logical that a funding proposal is required. The formation of this agency was actuated by an international humanitarian organization that offered the initial resources required by the agency.

The agency has strived to engage in a number of financial activities to boost its potential. Being a non-profit organization, its financial engagements are greatly limited for the purpose of achieving a tax-exempt status. There is however a significant void in the amount of physical and human resources required to provide adequate services to the target population. For example, the agency runs a food distribution program to starving families within the target region. Food available to the agency is not sufficient to actively cater for all the starving families. This means that the agency must source for financial resources to facilitate the acquisition of more food products for the additional families. This is mostly the case with other important supplies like drugs for the sick and financial help for vulnerable families. Another important deficiency is in terms of human resources. The human services agency has about 20 full time employees who are actively distributed to different roles. In most cases, the human services agency falls short of manpower in most of its programs. There are a number of volunteers who partner with the agency employees to distribute resources and tend to the vulnerable.

Having done a needs assessment for the human services agency, it is now easier to develop a funding proposal. To begin with the need for extra resources, the agency must find multiple funding sources to increase its chance. There are a number of humanitarian and non-governmental organizations that fund human service agencies. By submitting a proposal to each of these organizations, it is possible to receive sponsorship from them. Another significant source of funding is from the government. A government is mandated with the responsibility of caring for the vulnerable members of its communities. In this case, the government can use the human services agency to achieve its objectives by funding it. The human services agency will therefore accomplish this responsibility through the resources offered by the government. For instance, the human services agency can be used by the government to distribute food to starving families.

While it is possible that governments may have personalized systems with which do accomplish these tasks, human service agencies can as well seek support from the government directly. Finally, the human service agency can solicit resources from the society. This will involve sensitizing the society on the importance of adopting a collectivistic approach. As a result of this approach, there are a wide variety of ways that the agency can fund its activities. For instance, donations from members of the community can help improve the lives of others. Additionally, community members and support institutions like schools, churches and social groups can come together to help fund the human services agency (Hyde, 2004). By establishing a strategic plan with which to approach each of these sources, the human services agency can design a funding proposal that will support its activities.

Community Partnerships

Partnerships are the epitome of a collaborative effort towards a common problem. The human services agency can utilize partnership with members and groups within the community to advance its mission. To begin with, given the lack of manpower, the agency can form partnerships with social groups for women to help achieve some of its programs. Women self-help groups are social groups that see women come together to improve their lives and empower themselves. The human service agency can utilize this as an opportunity to partner and achieve the same goal. This is aligned with the agency’s objective of helping and empowering women who have been victims of domestic abuse. This will help simplify some of the agency’s challenges. Another partnership involves stable institutions like schools and churches. These are institutions in a normal society that offer social help to members of the community.

There are many ways in which the objectives of the human services agency can be aligned with the objectives of these institutions. For example, the agency can partner with schools to assist children coming from families prone to domestic violence. An understanding of how domestic violence affects children will be of greater benefit to both entities. This introduces the possibility of partnering with research agencies within the community to understand the culmination of social problems (Austin, 2003). Human service agencies require accurate information to properly characterize their objectives and performance. Communal research stations help to identify the number of women facing domestic abuse or the number of drug addicts within the society. Such a partnership will be very important for the agency in budgeting and forecasting its operations.

Board of Directors

The leadership of an organization or agency plays a vital role in ensuring the institution achieves its goals and becomes successful. The board of directors forms the leadership of the agency. The board will shoulder the responsibility of making critical decisions and managing the consequences. At this level, it is very important to ensure that managerial decisions are well-articulated and strategized. To ensure that the board of governors is capable of managing the critical decisions of the agency, the profiling of the board members must be done with great attention. The first attribute that will be used to identify board members is their experience in managerial decisions related to human service agencies. A board of governor must have significant experience in fostering qualitative decision making in the teams they are assigned to.

An experienced member of the board will be able to foresee the implications of a decision before it is taken. Secondly, such an individual is capable of making quality contributions to decision making process. Directors must also have experience in dealing with the problem that this agency will set out to address. This type of exposure is very important as it will help the board of directors to develop strategies that will help the agency edge forward. Finally, ethics and moral behavior is a fundamental factor when evaluating the qualification of an applicant to the level of directorate. Essentially, this is an organization that is built on ethical standards which must be kept and nurtured during service provision. The board of directors will represent the agency to the stakeholders. Ethical standards are therefore important in evaluating each individual’s commitment to the agency’s ethical standards and moral culture.

Staffing Plan

In establishing a staffing plan, it is very important to build a multi-cultural platform where individuals who represent their cultures can work harmoniously in the agency. The human service agency has a well-articulated portfolio of activities and responsibilities for its workers. The agency’s human resource management is responsible for identifying resource needs and ensuring that victims and agency workers get the resources they require. This role places this position at the central point in the coordination of critical agency operations. The three fundamental things that the human resource manager would use when hiring new employees are; personality characteristics such as dedication, hard work and efficiency, job skills and ability to tutor others (Daley, 2012). Personal characteristics will be evaluated by seeking to understand how other employers characterized the employee (Balfour & Neff, 1993). Having worked with other people, before, the previous employer will be able to offer insights on the employee’s personal features.

On the other hand, job skills like Microsoft Office Programs, inventory control or experience with handling children can be tested within the human services agency. This is often done by subjecting the prospective employees to agency operations and evaluate how they perform. Another alternative would be to use a simulated environment to test the potential of the applicants (Larson & Hewitt, 2005). This will be mostly applicable with testing whether the applicants are able to tutor others or not. This is aligned to the mission and vision of the agency because volunteers from the society must be trained by capable employees from the agency. Evaluating accountability in employees is done by setting performance goals. It will be easier to evaluate accountability if the agency sets clear roles and performance goals for each employee (Kim & Lee, 2007). Therefore, the outcome of their efforts will provide information on their performance and accountability.

To provide an overview of what the employee of the agency will look like, this report will provide an overview of two positions in the organization. The human resource manager, as depicted above is key to strategic staffing operations in the organization. Therefore, the human resource management position will be occupied by an individual who has great experience in coordinating the way other people work, recruitment, motivation and retaining of employees. The objective of the agency is to establish a mutual relationship between employees. As the human resource manager will handle employees from different cultural backgrounds, cultural responsiveness is a critical parameter during recruitment. Secondly, a normal agency worker must have the passion of helping others and handling people with different types of social problems. As the agency will characteristically deal with people whose welfare or health is challenged, the workers must have the potential to handle people with these problems as stipulated by the agency.

Benchmarks and Milestones

A benchmark can be defined as a point of reference or standard performance that is used by an organization to evaluate its performance. Every human services agency must evaluate its performance to establish if it is accomplishing its mandate. On the other hand, a milestone is an occurrence, accomplishment or status used to identify with high levels of performance. A milestone is often an indicator of quality performance in organizations. This agency will develop its own benchmarks and milestones to help track its performance. This agency will perform benchmarking as a tool for continuous improvement of the agency’s services. The following operations will use this process to gauge performance and progress in accordance to the organization’s goals and objectives; evaluation of its quality program, a change in management, a change in strategic direction, improvement of operations as well as venturing into new services (Martin & Kettner, 1996).

The most fundamental operation in benchmarking is the determination of the management’s commitment to the agency’s goals and objectives. Since the agency operates within the framework of an organization, determining the influence managers have on junior employees and the agency’s culture is of great importance. The management’s commitment is a reflection of the level of success the agency will most likely achieve. In this context, each member of the management committee must show passion for their respective roles and represent the culture of collectivism that is reflected in the agency’s mission and vision statements. Secondly, benchmarking will involve evaluating the ethical viability of the agency’s leadership. This is a non-profit organization, therefore, any element or issue that taints its ethical framework will vastly harm its course. Most importantly, this agency will strive to achieve a tax exempt status to help with budgeting and sourcing resources, this means that ethics is a significant tool in benchmarking the performance of employees and the management.

One of the milestones that the organization will seek is to achieve greater outcomes in promoting the welfare of the target population. For example, if the number of women affected by domestic violence reduces by a specific percentage, the agency can use this as a milestone in recognizing its performance (Hoefer, 2000). Additionally, governments usually record the performance of human service organizations in helping improve the welfare of citizens. Under this framework, the organization can utilize its annual performance in these award systems to evaluate its performance. For instance, its position in the government’s list can be used as a milestone. Each year, the agency will strive to better its services and climb up the list to become the best human service agency in the region or country.

Legal and Regulatory Issues

The human services agency will operate within an environment that is governed by legal systems. Therefore, it is logical that there are specific legal aspects and regulations that will impact its services. To begin with, an agency must seek consent through certification to operate within the legal space of the government. This means that the agency will strive to seek certification to operate as a human services agency and a non-profit organization. One legal issue that will apply to the agency’s services is the attainment of the tax exempt rule. As a non-profit organization operated on the sole p-platform of providing welfare service, it can seek a tax exempt status. However, the organization must ensure that it explicitly qualifies in all the requirements stipulated by the law. If this is not the case, the organization must pay its proportion of taxes as stipulated by the government. Secondly, the law prohibits any form of discrimination or unethical activities propagated by organizations. The human services agency must ensure that its strategies, approach and design of services are built within a cultural inclusion profile that does not discriminate or promote inequality among members of the society (Guo, 2006). On the other hand, the organization must follow regulations regarding the provision of public services to the community. Governments have dedicated agencies commissioned with the mandate of regulating public involvement. Given that this is the domain of this human services agency, abiding to this regulation is a step- towards conformance that must be well articulated.

References

Austin, M. J. (2003). The changing relationship between nonprofit organizations and public social service agencies in the era of welfare reform. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 32(1), 97-114.

Balfour, D. L., & Neff, D. M. (1993). Predicting and managing turnover in human service agencies: A case study of an organization in crisis. Personnel Administration, 22(3), 473-486.

Daley, D. M. (2012). Strategic human resource management. Public Personnel Management, 120-125.

Guo, B. (2006). Charity for profit? Exploring factors associated with the commercialization of human service nonprofits. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 35(1), 123-138.

Hoefer, R. (2000). Accountability in action?: Program evaluation in nonprofit human service agencies. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 11(2), 167-177.

Hyde, C. A. (2004). Multicultural development in human services agencies: Challenges and solutions. Social Work, 49(1), 7-16.

Kim, S. E., & Lee, J. W. (2007). Is mission attachment an effective management tool for employee retention? An empirical analysis of a nonprofit human services agency. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 27(3), 227-248.

Larson, S. A., & Hewitt, A. S. (2005). Staff recruitment, retention, and training strategies for community human services organizations. Paul H Brookes Publishing Company.

Martin, L. L., & Kettner, P. M. (1996). Measuring the performance of human service programs. Sage.

Pynes, J. E. (2008). Human resources management for public and nonprofit organizations: A strategic approach (Vol. 30). John Wiley & Sons.

Schmid, H. (2004). The role of nonprofit human service organizations in providing social services: A prefatory essay. Administration in Social Work, 28(3-4), 1-21.