Blackburn center swot analysis

SWOT analysis for a non-profit has several advantages, but one of the most important ones is that it aids the organization in fine-tuning its strategies and objectives to promptly attain its long-term success (Akingbola, 2015). The Blackburn Center is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting social change by speaking out against gender abuse. The organization's goal is to eradicate all forms of sexual and domestic violence by promoting human rights for all, eradicating its causes, and ensuring the safety and wellbeing of those who have been harmed and those who have survived it.
Strengths
Blackburn Center is one of the few non-profit organizations in the United States with a reputation of offering the best guidance and counseling, gender protection initiatives, diverse services that suit clients.

Strong brand: Blackburn Center began in 1976 in Westmoreland County as an organization for fighting sexual and domestic violence and for many years, the organization has grown into a strong brand in Pennsylvania and the United States as compared to other organizations offering the same services.

Demonstrated the social impact of the organization: Blackburn has served many clients in Pennsylvania state, and many of the clients that the organization currently gets are referrals which are an indicator that the organization has heavily impacted the society (Tschirhart & Bielefeld, 2012).The community around Pennsylvania can attest to the work done by the center.

Volunteers who work for the center on behalf of victims of violence: some attorneys and artists dedicate their time to serve the victims of violence thus enabling the center to save on some costs.

Weaknesses

Lack of staff expertise or best employees to man key positions at the center: the organization is unable to attract the best employees especially for the major positions because of the stiff competition from corporate organizations who offer lucrative salaries to hire best employees (Tschirhart et al. 2012).

Inadequate funding: the organization's main source of funding federal and state funds which the organization has to compete with other organizations in Pennsylvania. This funding is not sufficient to run all the programs, and sometimes the organization operates with a deficit budget just like other non-profit organizations do (Tschirhart et al. 2012).

Opportunities

Since the center is focused on fighting gender and other forms of violence, the government fully supports the course. This provides a chance for Blackburn to get funding from the government and other stakeholders to fight violence.

Grants and donations from the private sector: many people and corporations are passionate about the fight against gender-based violence, and they are willing to partner with Blackburn which provides a funding opportunity.

Cause marketing is another opportunity: Through the partnership with business corporations, the corporations partnering with the center can buy sale products, and part of the purchase price goes towards supporting Blackburn Center (Tschirhart et al. 2012).

Threats

Vulnerability to economic crises: whenever an economy performs poorly, the first expenditure that people cut is charitable giving and the same applies to federal and state funding (Tschirhart et al. 2012). Cutting the sources of funding impacts on the activities of the center negatively.

Higher standards of integrity and higher expectations: non-profit organizations tend to be highly held accountable because of the social transformation mandate that they have (Tschirhart et al. 2012). The organization, therefore, must avoid any form of impropriety because even a minor scandal is very damaging in the image of the organization.

The ever increasing competition from upcoming non-profit organizations strains the center financially.



Employee recruitment and retention

Coming up with and keeping a highly competitive and efficient non-profit staff is a huge challenge in today's world and according to the 2015 non-profit employee survey, more than 50% of the non-profits were planning to recruit new employees compared to 36% of the business corporations. Many non-profits do not have a recruitment and retention strategy which makes it tough to have an effective staff. The following are some of the strategies to hire and build an effective staff for non-profits. A non-profit employment survey conducted in 2014 and 2015 revealed that more than have of the non-profit organizations do not have a recruitment strategy as shown in figure 1 below.



Figure 1



Clear communication of the vision and mission

Research reveals that 60 percent of non-profit employees opted to take their employment positions not to secure jobs but rather to help the public (Edgington, 2015). Comparing this statistic with employees in public and private sector, only 20 percent took employment positions to help the public. Most of the non-profit employees cite mission of the organization as a motivating factor for them working in those organizations (Edgington, 2015). This implies that any non-profit organization's greatest asset is its mission and the organization must communicate how it brings a difference in the community.

Make all recruitment vacancies open and easy to apply for the public

The application and recruitment process speaks a lot to employees about the reputation of the organization. Recruitment process should be organized and transparent so as not to turn off potential employees and talented experts because many people love transparency in recruitment. Apart from the transparency in the recruitment exercise, the organization, should also set aside a recruitment budget so that recruitment experts can be consulted and be given an opportunity to assist in the recruitment exercise. Figure 2 below indicates the percentage of non-profit firms that have a recruitment budget as of 2015 employment survey.



Figure 2

From the figure, a greater percentage of 67% of the non-profits did not have a recruitment budget with only 26% having the budget and 7% of the organizations were not sure whether the budget exists or not (Nonprofit, 2015).

Create a realistic benefits and compensation package that is competitive

The most common challenge of staff retention is low salaries, but the cost of staff turnover is extremely high to the non-profit organization. The main reason why salaries for non-profits remain low and uncompetitive is that of the lack of information about current salaries being offered in the market and non-willingness to pay more because management feels non-profit organization does not have money for business organizations (Friesenhahn, 2016). Blackburn Center should do a salary research on what non-profit organizations pay their workers, and this will enable them to set competitive salaries that attract best-talented workers. Blackburn Center should revise or come up with an employee retention strategy because the 2015 non-profit employment survey recorded that most non-profit organizations do not have retention strategies in place (Nonprofit, 2015).





Figure 3

From figure 3 above, 85% of the non-profit organizations did not have formal employee retention strategy, and only 15% had put the strategy in place (Nonprofit, 2015). This statistic is so alarming because organizations that succeed in recruiting and building efficient staff have retention strategies.

Measurement of employee performance and results

The first tool of performance measure benchmarking whereby a non-profit organization compares its performance and practices with other organizations in the same line of duty (Poister et al. 2015). Blackburn should identify other non-profit organizations dealing with the fight against gender violence to establish the baseline for measuring its performance and come up with best practices to improve the performance of employees.

Goal setting and implementation of the performance measurement system is the next stage for any non-profit organization (Poister et al. 2015). Blackburn should check the reporting requirements of funders so that demands of the funders are met to make it easier for the next grant application. For instance, the number of clients that an employee handles within a month and how many of the clients of gender violence bring feedback to the center.



References

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Akingbola, K. (2015). Managing human resources for nonprofits. Routledge.

Blackburn Center | Standing Together to End Violence. (2017). Blackburn Center | Standing Together to End Violence. Retrieved 26 March 2017, from http://www.blackburncenter.org/about-blackburn-center

Edgington, N. (2015). How to Build A Stellar Nonprofit Staff. Social Velocity. Retrieved 26 March 2017, from http://www.socialvelocity.net/2015/03/how-to-build-a-stellar-nonprofit-staff/

Friesenhahn, E. (2016). Nonprofits in America: new research data on employment, wages, and establishments : Monthly Labor Review: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bls.gov. Retrieved 26 March 2017, from https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2016/article/nonprofits-in-america.htm

Nonprofit, H. R. (2015). 2015 Nonprofit Employment Practices Survey Results. Washington, DC: Nonprofit HR LLC. www. nonprofithr. com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/2015-Nonprofit-Employment-Practices-Survey-Results-1. pdf.

Poister, T. H., Hall, J. L., & Aristigueta, M. P. (2015). Managing and measuring performance in public and nonprofit organizations: An integrated approach.

Tschirhart, M., & Bielefeld, W. (2012). Managing nonprofit organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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