Course 405: Financial Planning for Nonprofit Organizations

Lesson 2 through Lesson 7

Organizational Assessment Assignment

Introduction

One of the best ways to learn about budgeting, cash flow and strategic thinking challenges in reality is to ask people involved in an organization what issues they have faced and how they successfully or unsuccessfully handled them. This assignment will help you do that.

This is the entire assignment. It has five parts, with different parts being due throughout the course. During Week 8, you will compile the entire assignment and turn it in.

This is a summary of what is due during the various weeks:

Part 1: / Select an organization / Due Week 2. Send me confirmation of your organization.
Part 2: / Learn about the organization / Due Week 3. Send me a 2 to 3 page Description of the Organization. This will be the first part of your final comprehensive report.
Part 3: / Conduct the Interviews / Schedule of interviews Due Week 4: Schedule these interviews, but do not conduct them until after you after Week 3, as that lecture is critical for your understanding.
Part 4: / Complete Assignment / Due Week 7. Your entire assignment is due week 7, including the information you send in in week 3, with any suggested edits and/or additions.

1.Select an organization

Success or failure in this assignment hinges upon good organization selection. To be most successful, select an organization:

You know something about.

Where you have a high degree of trust with leaders in the organization.

You MAY NOT select your own organization, that is, an organization in which you are an employee or Board member. The purpose of this assignment is to give you a perspective outside of the organization with which you are involved with. You MAY select an organization of which you are a member, such as a cultural or educational organization, a place of worship, etc. If you have any questions, ask.

2.Learn about the organization

You may learn about the organization through any means available: Guidestar, literature, websites, etc. Write a two to three page description of the organization, including:

Their name and location.

How long they have been in existence.

Their mission.

A description of their programs.

How large they are [Their total expenses last year; their total number of employees].

A general description of their financial condition over the past several years.

3.Conduct Interviews

This is the heart of the assignment. I would like you to conduct interviews with at least three of these individuals in the organization:

The Executive Director

The Chief Financial Officer

The Director of Development

The Program Director

A Board Officer, preferably the President of the Board of Trustees

A key to obtaining interviews, and to successful interviewing, is in how you approach interviewees when asking for this opportunity. It is best to give them information up front so that they can assess the time commitment and the scope of your questions.

First you need to ask permission from the organization’s Executive Director to use that organization for your study. When asking you might say:

I am taking a nonprofit financial management class through CityVisionCollege. One of my assignments is to interview at least three key persons within an organization, with each interview taking around half an hour. Possible interviewees include: Yourself, the Director of Development, the Director of Programming, the Chief Financial Officer, and a Board officer.

I am interested in [name of organization] because [I am a donor; I admire what you do; etc.]. I would consider it an honor to study your organization.

If you have any questions about this assignment, you may contact my instructor, Barbara Clemenson, on her phone, 216.731.2306, or by e-mail, .

Thank you.

You might then ask him/her for the names of the people you should interview, based on the assignment, as well as permission to contact them for interviews.

The next thing is to put people at ease when you ask for the actual interview. One way to do that is to give them a heads-up on what you are going to ask and how long the interview will take. You might say:

I am taking a nonprofit financial management class through CityVisionCollege. One of my assignments is to interview at least three key persons within an organization. Your Executive Director has given me permission to study your organization.

I wonder if I might schedule an interview with you? This should only take about a half hour. I will be asking five questions.

Thank you.

If they are hesitant to give their permission, you might ask if they would like to see the questions ahead of time so that they may organize their answers. If so, simply fax them the questions [not the prompts]. I have put those at the end of this assignment on a separate page for your easy use.

When you interview, I would like you to ask each individual the following questions:

What has been your organization’s greatest success these past few years?

Why do you think this was successful? How are you/did you plan to build on that success?

What has been the greatest organizational challenge you have faced these past several years?

Tell me about it. How did you approach that challenge? What was the outcome? What would you have done differently, knowing what you do now?

What has been the greatest financial challenge you have faced these past several years?

Tell me about it. How did you approach that challenge? What was the outcome? What would you have done differently, knowing what you do now?

Please describe your organization’s budgeting process.

Who is involved? What is the schedule like for the process? How do you actually plan for the coming year? What kind of assessment do you do concerning the previous year’s performance to budget?

Looking into the future, what do you see as your organization’s greatest opportunities?

Describe them to me. Why are these opportunities for your organization? How do you plan to address them? What do you see as challenges in meeting those opportunities?

Ask the bold questions and then shut up and listen. The biggest mistake that interviewers make is talking too much. The purpose of these interviews are for you to listen and learn from the people you are interviewing – not for you to talk. I have provided the underlying questions only in case you need to use prompts to gain complete information.

Take notes during your interviews. It is best to write up those notes, then, as soon after the interview as possible. Then also add a section to your notes on your impressions and thoughts while they are also fresh in your mind. This will greatly help you as you prepare your written and presentation assignments.

4.Prepare a brief written report.

Your paper should include:

An overview of the organization

A summary financial analysis of the organization

Findings from the interviews

You may organize this any way you decide is best:

By person

By question

By general topic

By what you found was most interesting or intriguing

What you see as the strengths and weaknesses of the organization

Your recommendations

The report should be around 8-10 pages long. It is be due in Week 7.

To:

From:

Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed. These are the questions I would like to cover when we meet:

What has been your organization’s greatest success these past few years?

What has been the greatest organizational challenge you have faced these past several years?

What has been the greatest financial challenge you have faced these past several years?

Please describe your organization’s budgeting process.

Looking into the future, what do you see as your organization’s greatest opportunities?