Management of Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO)

In the last post, we learned what a non-governmental organisation (NGO) is. This post briefly explains the management of the NGO.

Introduction
Participatory Programme Planning and Management
How to initiate participatory planning
Financial Management of an NGO

Introduction

Harold Koontz argues that , “Management is an art of getting things done through and with the people in formally organized groups. It is an art of creating an environment in which people can perform and individuals and can co-operate towards attainment of group goals”. Taylor, defines “Management as an art of knowing what to do, when to do and see that it is done in the best and cheapest way”.

The goal of management is to get things done. It is anything that focuses group activities towards the fulfilment of specific pre-determined goals. As the world's resources become increasingly scarce, the process of collaboratively collaborating with and through others to achieve the organization's goals is becoming increasingly important.

Luther Gullick has given a keyword ‘POSDCORB’ where P stands for Planning, O for Organizing, S for Staffing, D for Directing, Co for Co-ordination, R for reporting and B for Budgeting.

Planning:

It is the core function of management. It has to do with laying up a plan for the future and determining in advance on the best course of action for the accomplishment of previously established objectives. According to Koontz, “Planning is deciding in advance - what to do, when to do & how to do. We can get to where we want to go by using it. A plan is a future course of actions. It's a test of your ability to think critically and solve problems. Planning is determination of courses of action to attain desired goals. As a result, planning is nothing more than a methodical process of formulating strategies for achieving set objectives. Planning is important to guarantee optimal usage of human & non-human resources. Being aware of and anticipating potential problems is one of the many benefits of strategic planning.

Organizing:

Building productive relationships between physical, financial, and human resources in order to fulfil an organization's goals is what we mean when we talk about "organising." To paraphrase Henry Fayol, "to organise a firm is to supply it with everything needed for its running, namely raw material, tool capital and staff's." To organise a business entails determining and delivering human and non-human resources to the organisational structure. Organizing as a process involves identification of activities, classification or grouping of activities, assignment of roles, delegation of authority and creation of responsibility, harmonising authority and responsibility linkages.

Staffing:

Staffing is the process of putting people into place and keeping them in place within an organisation. Staffing has gained more relevance in the recent years due to improvement of technology, increase in size of organisation, complexity of human behaviour etc. The main goal of staffing is to ensure that the correct people are assigned to the right jobs, i.e., square pegs in round holes. An important part of management's involvement in staffing is to ensure that the organisational structure is adequately staffed by ensuring that employees are properly selected, evaluated and developed to fulfil the duties outlined in the structure. Staffing encompasses manpower planning (estimating man power in terms of searching, pick the individual and giving the proper place), recruitment, selection and placement, training and development, remuneration, performance review, promotions and transfer.

Directing:

This is the part of management's job where the techniques of the organisation are put into action so that the goals of the organisation can be fulfilled. Planning, organising, and staffing are all preliminaries to actually executing the task, therefore it's regarded the "life-spark" of the company that gets the wheels turning. The management function of influencing, leading, overseeing, and encouraging subordinates in order to fulfil the organization's goals is known as direction. Communication, leadership, and motivation are some of the factors that make up a good director's job.

Supervision: Subordinates are supervised by their superiors in this sense. It's the process of keeping track of and giving instructions to the people doing the work.
Motivation: Motivating involves igniting a passion for one's task in one's subordinates. Incentives can be positive or negative, monetary or non-monetary.
Leadership: As a process by which a manager guides and influences the work of subordinates in a desired direction, leadership can be described as such.
Communications: Communication is the exchange of ideas, facts, and other kinds of data between two or more people. It acts as a link between different viewpoints.
Controlling: It means measurement of accomplishment against the standards and adjustment of deviation if any to assure achievement of organisational goals. The objective of controlling is to guarantee that everything occurs in conformities with the norms. An efficient system of control helps to predict deviations before they really occur. He defines controlling as the process of determining whether or not sufficient progress toward objectives and goals is being made before taking action to address any deviations, according to Theo Haimann. Monitoring and correcting subordinate performance in order to ensure that the company's goals are achieved is what Koontz and O'Donell define as "controlling". Therefore controlling comprises few processes such as establishment of standard performance, measurement of actual performance, comparison of actual performance with the standards and finding out divergence if any and remedial action.

Participatory Programme Planning and Management

Participatory planning

Participatory planning is a process by which a community commits to accomplish a certain socio-economic objective by consciously identifying its problems and creating a path of action to remedy those problems. Experts are required, but simply to serve as a conduit for the conversation. Moreover, no one loves to join in something which is not of his or her own conception. No matter how technically good the plans developed by outside specialists are, they will not motivate the general public to take part in their implementation.

Awareness building on principles of participatory planning

Development should be viewed more as a bottom-up transformation than a top-down one. Instead of managing the development process in accordance with plans, goals, objectives, targets, and schedules, it is preferable to manage it as a natural organic process. This implies that goals and targets may change, so their timing should be tentative and flexible to allow for adaptation to local conditions.

Development initiatives should focus on supporting local organisations rather than the bureaucracies of the state and federal governments. The capacity of new programmes to improve local development management should be considered. Start with a few plans to address some pressing issues in your community to boost confidence and experience there.

Local organisations support the development process, with village panchayats, primary cooperatives, religious, young people's, community-based users', and self-help groups taking the lead. More crucial than ensuring that local institutions understand all the finer technical details is ensuring that the development process is founded in a solid local institution. Comparatively speaking, it is simpler to arrange outside technical assistance than to encourage social involvement and willing public participation in the development process. Strong local institutions are essential as support positions, regardless of their technical expertise and educational background. The development process must be based more on self-assurance and learning than on specialists and training, as is evident from the foregoing. More so than being skilled professionals, it is crucial for those making choices at the local level to enjoy the complete support of the community they serve. This suggests that departmental technical staff should collaborate with regional organisations rather than pass judgement on the plans created by these organisations.

The participatory planning process has an impact on how a traditional local development planner operates. People are frequently excluded from the planning process by current decentralised planning methods, which severely restricts their ability to produce the desired results locally and feeds into decision-making inclinations toward centralization.

How to initiate participatory planning

Determine community needs, especially for rural poor families: The best method to learn what people need and what they believe are potential answers to their problems is to ask them directly. Additionally, it increases people's awareness of and readiness to participate in any subsequent activity. But first, you need to find a common ground of understanding with them before you ask them what they want. Conflicting interests are inevitable within a community. To create consensus, you need a unique set of abilities and honesty. A pro-poor development initiative must be guaranteed continuous community backing. The consultations and debates must include participation from local government representatives, CBOs, volunteers on the ground, teachers, women, and retired individuals.
Gather fundamental information: Following the establishment of local contacts, it is necessary to gather, with the assistance of the populace, fundamental information about the neighbourhood, its characteristics, the availability of resources, its socioeconomic standing, and other pertinent details. The objective is to establish a real baseline picture that will aid in defining goals and assessing changes the project has had later on. Assisting local officials and NGO workers in gathering and confirming information from various sources is helpful at this point. Respecting people's opinions and skills is essential if you want to get their cooperation. The community as a whole should be the emphasis, and its dedication to aiding the underprivileged should be sought after. A useful approach for gathering and analysing participatory data is participatory rural appraisal (PRA).
Establishment of working groups: To create status reports and discuss viewpoints, it is beneficial to establish working groups with local officials. The working groups' objectives include data comparison and analysis, inference-making, and the identification of action priorities. By granting more local planning responsibilities and establishing positive working relationships between technical planning specialists and the locals, this is intended to increase clarity and promote engagement of locals, particularly the rural poor. Giving careful consideration to the roles that participants in the tasks—individuals, groups, and committees—will play is important. Conflicts and disagreements may occur during the process, which is not in and of itself a bad thing, but they must be properly handled and controlled at each level of decision-making.
Establishing the goals: The first step in participatory local planning is to clearly define the goals that must be accomplished. These goals should be expressed in concrete terms, such as increasing the I incomes of specific households, ii) crop production, and iii) literacy among locally elected women officials. It's possible that the goal won't always be quantifiable, especially if it entails shifting attitudes. To assist people understand how much has changed, it still helps to be as explicit as you can.
Selecting a strategy: This is the hardest element of participatory local planning since it entails determining and mobilising the resources required as well as selecting the planning techniques. It is crucial to identify both locally accessible resources and those that must be sourced from outside. (individuals with resources such as money, raw materials, or expertise); b) if resources will be available when needed; and c) who should be approached, who will approach, and with whose assistance these resources can be obtained. Think about different local planning strategies, such as I whether to hire trained personnel from outside or hire local people as trainers for the jobs, (ii) whether to focus on several small household-based units or one large unit, and (iii) whether to contract a job to private individuals or do it on a cooperative basis. Once a plan of action has been decided upon, it should be described and conveyed in straightforward words to all local stakeholders to prevent misunderstanding.
Ensuring feasibility: At this point, the working groups should think about how practical the objectives are. Assumptions and conditions regarding the availability of resources, managerial skills, and technical experience must be reasonable. Proposed activities must also be economically viable, and the local market must be able to take in the predicted products. Finding potential project beneficiaries and determining how the benefits would be distributed to them are crucial.
Creating the work plan, which outlines the "what, who, when, and how" of local project implementation and serves as a pattern for decentralised project management. The work plan should include the following details in a straightforward tabular format:
(i) all project-related activities;
(ii) the names of the person(s) in charge of each activity;
(iii) the start and end times for each activity; and|
(iv) the tools needed to carry out the activities. In order to effectively monitor and evaluate each action, it should also specify the results that may be expected from each step of the process.
Creating the budget: The project budget is created by assigning a monetary value to the material and human resources. The price is further broken down by each time period as well as by availability, including whether it can be found locally or needs to be obtained from outside. Government loans or loans from financial entities are examples of external resources.

Steps in implementation of local development projects

Designating a project coordinator: The organisation or agency in charge of the project should designate a project coordinator after employing staff and technical personnel for various positions in accordance with the schedule. The coordinator might be recruited from within the community or hired from outside if they have the necessary commitment and leadership experience.
Establishing a project implementation and monitoring committee, which will include the project coordinator, local community members, and a funding agency representative. Its function is to act as a crisis management team and daily implementation supervision.
Reorienting project planning employees for the tasks at hand requires staff training.
Transparency: This quality is crucial to maintaining public interest in and support for the project in order to ensure its smooth progress. Keep resource allocation and procurement completely transparent. Public displays of project information, including its budget and funding sources, can be found around the project area. It is more crucial to ensure transparency by including more and more locals in various activities and holding daily or weekly briefings to update community leaders on current events and issues. The quality of the inputs that are bought and used must be ensured with care.
Anticipating challenges: The project coordinator needs to be aware of potential problems, be able to foresee challenges, and take proactive measures. To ensure the timely availability of workers, especially technical personnel, advance preparation is required. There should be contingency plans in place.
Timely release of cash: Lack of finances or insufficient funding frequently causes implementation to be delayed. Commencement may be delayed by a number of administrative procedures, postal delays, etc. If there are several financing sources, it is even more important to make sure that all formalities for Terms and Conditions agreements are completed correctly and that progress reports are sent on time, as these are required for the timely release of fund instalments. The project coordinator should make sure there are sufficient resources for both the project's activities and employee compensation. It's crucial to have flexibility built into the project design to account for delays. The best strategy to guarantee prompt delivery of fund instalments is to stick to the regulations and instructions of funding agencies and the project timetable.
Monitoring: Monitoring is crucial for timely and effective project execution. Monitoring gives information so that the work plan and budget can be adjusted as needed. As a result, the project work plan is frequently the basis for monitoring schedules. In essence, it serves as a tool for funding and project implementation organisations. Timetable, cost, and procedure are some of the key monitoring indicators. The work plan has already made mention of these. The project implementation committee must analyse monitoring reports, paying particular attention to details about delays, their scope and effects, the need for corrective action, and the person or organisation in charge of them. This not only identifies the error but also absolves project management of responsibility for the delay. Honest evaluation of the effects of a delay, underuse, or overuse of funds results in prompt corrective action. It also aids in developing a solid case for more funding in the event that the delay was brought on by the late release of money and led to an increase in project costs.
Accountability and Integrity: Funding agencies keep a careful eye on the implementing agency's capacity to maintain a high degree of financial credibility. Therefore, monitoring focuses on costflows, and any instances of under- or over-expenditure should be brought to the funding agencies' quick attention. With them, it should be openly discussed in order to decide on the best course of action. With the village community, implications of a delay or cost overrun might also be explored in order to look into the possibility of enlisting local support to cover the additional costs. In the long term, integrity pays off.

Financial Management of an NGO

An NGO's financial management Every organisation need funding. Along with employees, finances take up the majority of managerial time. Four fundamental components of sound financial management are as follows:

Keeping Records

Basic records that detail the income and expenses of an NGO form the basis for all accounting. This refers to the agreements and letters for payments made as well as the confirmations and bills for goods purchased. These fundamental records demonstrate the reality of each and every transaction. They form the basis of accountability. The management must take care to thoroughly file and secure all of these records, which is crucial. The manager must also see to it that the accountant records each transaction's specifics in a "cashbook." This cashbook displays a list of the amount, the items purchased, and the dates. The correct accounting system is in place in the organisation to monitor the cash flow if the fundamental records are kept in excellent order and each transaction is recorded in a cashbook.

Internal Control:

Ensuring that the organisation has effective controls in place to prevent financial mismanagement is the manager's second crucial responsibility in preserving the business's finances. Controls must always be customised in a different method for every business. However, the following are some controls that are frequently employed:

Keeping cash in a safe place (ideally in a bank account).
Making sure that all expenditure is properly authorized.
Following the budget.
Monitoring how much money has been spent on what every month.
Employing qualified finance staff.
Having an audit every year.
Carrying out ‘bank reconciliation’ every month. It means checking that the amount of cash you have in the bank is the same as the amount that your cashbook tells you that you ought to have.

This last control is particularly important. It proves that the amounts recorded in the cashbook and the reports based on it are accurate

Budgeting:

An organisation must create precise budgets in order to know how much money it will require to carry out its operations. This is necessary for good financial management. A budget can only be effective if it is created by carefully estimating how much will be spent on the intended activities. Clearly defining what needs to be done and how it can be done is the first step in creating a healthy budget. After making a list of every activity, determine how much it will cost and how much revenue it will bring in.

Financial Reporting:

Writing and reviewing financial reports constitutes the fourth pillar. A financial report lists the receipts and outlays for a specific time period. Similar transactions are added together to make financial reports. Financial reports provide an overview of the data in the cashbook. In order to categorise transactions, this is typically done using a system of codes.