Management Issues at Food for the Hungry

Food for the Hungry (FH) is a non-governmental organization that operates in more than twenty countries of the world (Duncan & Barling, 2012). The organization was established in the 1971 by Larry Ward in South California, the United States. The organization’s main projects include providing humanitarian aid for poverty- and hunger-stricken people in various parts of the world. It also provides relief to the victims of natural calamities such as tsunamis, drought as well as human conflicts and HIV.

Our Mission

To cooperate with authorities, families and churches in keep a tight grip on all sorts of human destitution by ensuring that people live in a close connection with the Creator and the universe.

Our Vision

God summoned us and we made a response to Him till global spiritual and physical hunger came to an end.

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Our Core Values

Commitment to Scripture: We believe that the Bible was distinctively inspired by the Holy Spirit; thus, it is the infallible word of God.

Adherence to the Ten Commandments: We stick to the Ten Commandments, which is a non-exhaustive summary of the enduring moral law of God.

Teamwork: We are committed to ensuring collaboration between all players across the relief network, i.e. the board, the human resources and various partners.

Transparency: The organization’s activities are conducted openly to maintain public and stakeholders’ trust.

Accountability: Outcomes are our major focus. We appraise our results in accomplishing specific goals as well as bear responsibility for our actions.

Funding

62 percent of funding for our organization comes from individuals and well-wishers. The United States government contributes 35 percent of the funding, whereas foundations, churches and firms contribute 3 percent. About 84 percent of our funding goes to relief programs throughout the world,5 percent comprise administrative costs and 11 percent goes to fundraising activities.

The Role of an Executive Director

An executive director is charged with the responsibility of making day-to-day operational decisions that do not need involvement of the board of directors (Kerzner, 2013). He/she acts as a link between the board of directors and the rest of the organization. The executive director has a management role of overseeing the heads of department in the organization. The director offers strategic guidance to the heads of each department. As a senior manager in the operational hierarchy, an executive director must manage the organization’s public relations. Apart from leading a spotless life, an executive director is expected to attend or host public relations events, fundraising events, and new program inaugurations. As a director, he/she must spend a considerable part of his/her time working for the public face of the institution. Lastly, an executive director works as a liaison with the organization and all stakeholders, especially donors and funders.

Management Issues

Leadership Styles

As the director of Food for the Hungry Haiti, I would apply the democratic leadership style to achieve consensus through the participation of the parties involved. This is the most effective leadership style to make my team support my ideas, plans, decisions or goals (Certo, 2015). This leadership style would make it easier for me to win over the hearts of key players in the relieve food network such as the leaders, donors, funders, churched as well as the board of directors. This style would help me get fresh ideas from my qualified teammates during times of uncertainty. The overall effect of this approach is that it will enhance cooperation with my colleagues, thus making teamwork possible. Coaching leadership would help me develop the workforce for the future with the aim of keeping them for a longer period of time (Hamel & Prahalad, 2013). My desire is to help the staff develop personal strengths, which will make the workforce more successful. This will help me reduce the cost of hiring experienced workforce as well as increase the productivity of human resources within my organization.

Coercive leadership is necessary especially during emergencies, such as the firm turnaround or a fire outbreak (Bernstein & Rakowitz, 2012). It can also help me control defiant members of staff when other styles prove fruitless. Charismatic leadership, when a leader creates emotional bonds with workmates, creates a sense of belonging to the firm. Employees who have a sense of belonging feel accepted and are motivated to work towards the success of their institution (Brody, 2005). As a charismatic leader, I would be able to attract funders and donors as well as churches. As a result, it will be easier for me to convince the board of directors to approve my projects and strategic plans. It would also help me improve staff efficiency during the times of stress or when staff members suffer from trauma. Pacesetting leadership would help other workers realize that I am a part of the team since I will be leading from the front. This would improve their confidence and efficiency as far as service delivery is concerned.

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Organizational Culture

Food for the Hungry is a Christian relief organization, and our organizational culture must be a reflection of our mission, vision and core values. We should all be working towards a hunger and poverty-free world. Teamwork must be our core business value since our organization seeks to work in cooperation with leaders, religious organizations and families to get rid of poverty and hunger. Our ethics must revolve around the Scriptures, especially the Ten Commandments, honesty, transparency and accountability. Since Food for the Hungry is a non-profit organization, I would adopt the hierarchy-oriented organizational culture that focuses on effectiveness, stability and perfection (Belias & Koustelios, 2014). Such a culture would make it easier for all stake-holders, especially workers, to be diligent as far as service delivery is concerned. This type of organizational culture is a reflection of our mission, vision and core values.

Strategic Planning

The primary objective here of strategic planning is to identify strategies that will help Food for the Hungry achieve its mission. As the director, I would apply SWOT analysis to assess the organization’s internal and external environment. SWOT analysis focuses on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing an organization (Wilson & Gilligan, 2012). The organizational strengths include efficient and cooperative workforce, transparency as far as resource utilization is concerned, strong Christian ethics and excellent service delivery, which made it one of the best charitable organizations in the world. The weaknesses are mainly finances because our ability to reach more poor and hungry people has been limited by our financial ability. The frequency of such calamities as civil unrest, droughts, storms and earthquakes was very high in recent years. Our facilities have been overstretched as a result of this increase. In addition, the number of people infected with HIV/AIDS continues to grow each year. Therefore, there is a need to increase the amount of funding and donations to meet the increased demand for our services.

The main opportunity our organization can capitalize on is soothe desire of many people to give their fortune to charity. It is possible to attract more donors and funders because of our non-discriminative policy. Thus, we provide aid to all people regardless of their race, religion or political affiliation. However, our organization faces the threat of stagnated donations over many years. We fear that if the amount of funding does not increase, we are not likely to expand our service provision as per our expectations.

My first strategic goal for the period from 2016 to 2018 is to increase donor funding from the United States government, churches, individuals and corporations. The major method of achieving this goal will be identifying and reaching out to well-wishers and large corporations. Petitioning the United States government to support our activities will also increase the organization’s funding. The outcome will be more funds for our organization, enabling us to reach out to a larger number of people living in misery in many parts of the world.

The second strategic goal will be increasing the number of beneficiaries of our program as well as including education in our services. An increase in the organization’s funding will make it possible to reach out to more suffering people. The strategy will be to identify other countries whose population is affected by natural calamities. We will then identify local leaders and build a stronger partnership to curb political hostility on the ground. Improving the volunteer management system will help us reduce the amount of money spent on paying hired labour. This money will be used to provide more basic needs such as food and water to the affected people. The outcome will be an increased number of beneficiaries of our program as well as a reduction in poverty levels and hunger incidents in the world. The two-year strategic plan shows our commitment to expanding our services beyond the current 26 countries. My hope as a director of this charitable organization is that with the expansion of our service delivery, it will be possible to alleviate poverty and improve the well-being of humankind.

Action Plan Implementation

Keeping a to-do list is my primary step towards action plan implementation as the director of this relief agency (Galbraith, 2011). I will update it on a daily basis and also set up a reminder system that will help me implement mini-action plans on the list. Besides, it will enable me to avoid procrastination in the process of implementing an action plan by starting immediately (Brody, 2005). I will give the first priority to difficult tasks and then deal with easier ones. The difficult task is to ensure donors increase our funding, which will pave the way to an easier task of expanding our service delivery to more countries. Rewards are important as far as action plan implementation in any given organization is concerned. I will give employees rewards for completed tasks as well as give myself a treat for a completed task. I will promote the atmosphere of positivity within the organization to ensure commitment to the implementation of the action plan. Associating myself with positive people will help me avoid embarrassment when problems arise since they will encourage me. I will also build a contingency plan to achieve an objective even if one action does not succeed. Continuous review of action plan implementation will help me consider an alternative way of achieving an objective should the preferred way fail (Wates , 2014).

Problem-Solving

The usual first step in problem-solving is identification of issues by being clear about what the problem is (Chambolle & Pock, 2011). After identifying a problem, it is important to listen to the interests of all parties concerned. Needs are the wants that should be satisfied by a solution generated during the problem-solving process. The solution must, therefore, satisfy interests of all the parties involved. After this consideration I will evaluate possible solutions to the problem at hand. After brainstorming, I will select an appropriate solution, implement it and check repercussions of the selected solution to the parties concerned and the whole organization.

Time Management

Time management is an important factor as far as productivity of an organization and its workforce is concerned. I would prefer to address the tasks in advance by preparing my work for the following day the night before to allow my subconscious act on my plans and goals while I am asleep (Covey, 2014). When subconscious works on issues while one is asleep, he/she wakes up in the morning with ideas and insights that are useful to the work of the day. It will also try to sleep soundly without worrying about the work experience for the next day. Scheduling my time will be very important as it will reduce stress and release energy required for my work. I would encourage every employee to apply this time management tip to improve their efficiency. The main advantage of this particular tip is that it improves a person’s power by increasing self-esteem. Starting a day early is a time management tip that would benefit our firm a great deal. This will make the workforce better organized in their areas of work since they will have more time to sit, think and plan their activities for a day. By starting early, one solves the problem of procrastination, hence gets more work done and wastes less time. Lastly, I would apply organizational skills to ensure proper time management by using a filling system. Having a master list and keeping all my files in a single place would save time spent on locating misplaced items.

Staff Training and Development

Staff training and development will determine sustainability and success of our organization in terms of service delivery (Cummings & Worley, 2014). The first step is to identify training needs in my organization. Identification can be made through internal audit, which can point out areas where training is needed. A skills inventory would be an important source of information on the kind of skills possessed by employees in our organization. Therefore, it will make it easier for the organization to determine the skills required for the development of the firm in the future (Brody, 2005). I would then carefully select staff, andtrained employees with the passion for charity work will be given the top priority. It will save money spent on training since it can be expensive to train employees, and afterwards they might leave the organization for other organizations with higher salaries. The formulated training goals must be in line with our mission and vision to help the employees change from the roles they are playing today to the ones the institution wants them to play in the future. On-the-job training method can work best for my organization to help them not lose time while undertaking their training (Brody, 2005). The trainers in this kind of employee training must be supervisors. Lastly, I would initiate an evaluation process by comparing the skills the employees have gained with those needed for the goals of the training program.

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Public Relations

I would develop a very strong positive relationship between the people we interact with as an organization. These people include donors and individual funders, local leaders, families, and denominations. This relationship will increase the possibility of more funding as well as facilitate identification of volunteers and strengthen cooperation for joint community projects (Smith & Woodworth, 2012). Proactive marketing of the organization’s services will help improve positive perception by the general public both in the United States and the Republic of Haiti. As a result, our organization will gain more acceptance by many families as well as attract more customers.

Conclusion

As the director of the Food for the Hungry NGO in the Republic of Haiti, I would apply the democratic leadership style to help me win the hearts of all stake holders. Charismatic leadership would also yield the same results while coercive leadership would fit defiant employees. I would ensure that the organizational culture is in line with the organizational vision, mission and core values. I would apply SWOT analysis as the strategic planning tool that would help me identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing our organization. In terms of action plan implementation, keeping a to-do list is my primary step towards action plan implementation as the director of this relief agency. Avoiding procrastination would also help me ensure that the action plan is successfully implemented. I would improve the organization’s public image to win the hearts of more funders and donors as well as individual contributors.