GOVERNANCE IN THE CIVIL SECTOR
Although the principles of good management are the same in organizations of different scales and types of activities, the civil sector has specific problems that arise from its history, development, and way of operating.
This resource material covers:
- Typical management problems in the civil sector.
- What management is and definitions of relevant terms.
- Functions of management and their consideration in the respective chapters of the book.
- Changes occurring in the civil sector and their impact on management.
- A list of information necessary for good management and a list of essential literature.
GOVERNING BODIES
Every organization has a governing body whose members bear exceptional legal responsibility for the proper functioning of the organization and for achieving its goals. In this book, the term “governing board” refers to the governing body, which is often referred to in practice as trustees, management council, board, board of trustees, board of directors, board of managers, and others. The name is not of essential importance.
This resource material covers:
- Reasons for the existence of a governing board.
- Responsibilities of board members and other governing bodies and where to learn more about them.
- Specialists and their duties.
- The role of subcommittees.
- Some ideas on how to get the best out of the governing board.
MANAGEMENT OF LEGAL LIABILITIES
Members of the governing body (referred to as the governing board in this book) assume responsibility for ensuring that the organization complies with all relevant legal norms, even in cases where it is represented by a single individual. Managers, employees, and volunteers must be aware of legal norms to ensure that they and those they manage or supervise comply with them.
This resource material covers:
- Legal responsibilities of the governing board and where to find more information about them.
- Ways to limit the risk of personal legal liability for members of the governing board.
- The organization’s statute.
- What a non-profit organization means and the duties of its leaders/members of the governing board.
THE GOOD MANAGER
Effective management in the civil sector requires a combination of common sense, intuition, confidence, alignment with the organization’s moral norms and values, and good managerial work in all areas of operation. Some people appear to excel in all of this, while others need to acquire skills and intuition.
This includes an understanding of:
- Managerial concepts such as authority, powers, and leadership.
- Management styles and their impact on others and the organization.
- Knowledge, skills, and qualities that contribute to good management.
- The manager as part of the management team.
- Bringing out the best in management.
- Differences between informal and formal organizations and how this affects the management team.
- Specific challenges in managing non-hierarchical or collective organizations.
HOW TO IMPROVE NPO MANAGEMENT
Good management is not magic. It is based not on complex theories but on:
- Common sense
- Empathy towards people and their needs
- Willingness to listen, learn, and change
- A clear understanding of the organization’s goals, its history, and its current situation
- The desire, time, and ability to analyze problems
- The desire, time, and ability to plan
- The willingness and time to share ideas and information
But sometimes, things don’t go well. Members of the governing board or managers may find themselves incapable of managing properly, or problems may turn out to be more serious than their abilities.
This Resource Material covers:
- What management consultants can and cannot do and what training and management consultations are expected to achieve.
- How to find instructors and management consultants.
- How self-help consultations can help if managers refuse to acknowledge or overcome a specific situation.
TEAMWORK MANAGEMENT AND ENGAGEMENT
Effective teamwork is particularly important for extracting the best from the potential qualities and abilities of each individual in the organization and for fostering a spirit of collaboration.
This resource material includes:
- A list of questions and answers aimed at identifying some of the obstacles to teamwork.
- Explanation of the differences between informing people about decisions, consulting them, and directly engaging them.
- A decision-making and handling difficult issues action framework.
- Description of the advantages and disadvantages of voting and consensus, and the circumstances in which they are or are not suitable.
MEETING MANAGEMENT
In many organizations, there’s at least one point on which everyone agrees: meetings are terrible. They are a waste of time, achieve nothing, start late and run too long, don’t reach decisions, or make decisions that get canceled at the next meeting. The list of complaints is endless and remarkably consistent.
Meetings don’t have to be terrible! They can be useful, informative, thought-provoking, and even exciting. But good meetings don’t happen by magic; they need to be carefully planned and managed.
This Resource Material looks at:
- Types of meetings
- Meeting cycles
- Agendas and planning
- Chairing and participation
- Recording and using minutes.
RECRUITMENT AND STAFF SELECTION MANAGEMENT
If employees and volunteers are hired for positions with an incomplete job description (so they don’t know what is expected of them) or for roles where expectations and standards are unclear (i.e., they don’t know what quality is expected from their work), they are predetermined to fail. They become a battleground where board members, managers, or other employees clash over their different interpretations of what the organization represents, what needs to be done, and the required work standards.
If employees are hired hastily without the necessary attention, these are the seeds of future performance problems (Resource Material 10).
This Resource Material looks at:
- Hiring and staff selection
- Creating an employment contract
- Recruiting and allocating volunteers
- Guidelines for onboarding
MANAGING PEOPLE AND THEIR WORK
Effective management of paid staff or volunteers is a combination of common sense, intuition, trust, and good management practices in all areas of work. It seems that some people simply have it, while others need to acquire skills and intuition.
This Resource Material looks at:
- What human resource management and their work entail.
- Responsibilities for managing people.
- Employee motivation.
- Supervision and evaluation of paid staff and volunteers.
- Sample competencies for the executive personnel committee.
MANAGEMENT OF TRAINING AND EDUCATION
Work-related learning can be defined as the systematic instruction or practice of helping individuals learn how to do their job and how to do it well. Good training makes people more confident and more competent. Poor training or education, with unrealistic goals, can leave people confused or without hope of resolving issues.
This Resource Material looks at:
- The types and purposes of training and education opportunities;
- how to develop a training policy;
- training needs analysis;
- where to find information on trainings;
- how to develop in-house training and education opportunities;
- training to achieve qualifications.
MANAGING DIFFERENCES AND CONFLICTS
In effective organizations or teams there is a shared sense of unity, of commitment to common goals and ideals. There is also a shared sense of diversity. Differences are welcomed, people are given the opportunity to express and discuss their different perspectives and adopt an approach that values everyone’s contributions and beliefs.
This Resource Material looks at:
- questions to ask when (or preferably before) conflict arises;
- different approaches to conflict resolution;
- guidelines for dealing with conflict.
STRESS MANAGEMENT
Stress management has a lot to do with time management. Not only does poor management of one inevitably lead to poor management of the other, but the same excuses are used to avoid dealing with both. Stress management also has much to do with conflict resolution, as stress and conflict go hand in hand. Indeed, mismanagement of anything certainly leads to stress, and stress leads to mismanagement.
This Resource Material looks at:
- the causes and consequences of stress;
- how stress affects individuals and groups;
- how to recognise the warning signs of stress and overwork in one or all employees;
- what those responsible for management can do to reduce stress in a team or organisation.
PLANNING PROCESS MANAGEMENT
While planning is one of the keys to success in most activities, people find all kinds of reasons not to do it.Where there is a reluctance to plan even from day to day or month to month, it is impossible to think sensibly about development or long-term strategic planning.This inability to think ahead can put the organisation at a serious disadvantage because donors require evidence that organisations are capable of delivering agreed services or organising activities over a period of three years or more.
This Resource Material looks at:
- definitions of types of planning and commonly used planning terms;
- model development and planning;
- sample terms of reference for a development executive;
- guidelines for developing a development plan, strategic plan or business plan;
- project planning and management.
RISK MANAGEMENT
Risk assessment and risk management are not highly specialised disciplines requiring a high level of technical skills. As with most aspects of good governance, they are rooted in the everyday exercise of common sense. They are closely linked to planning and change management.
This Resource Material looks at:
- legal requirements related to risk management;
- types of risk in the governance of civil society organisations;
- steps in the risk management process;
- risk management strategies.
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
The spiral of action outlines the process of change planning.
A structured approach to assessing and managing risk can help an organization anticipate what can go wrong and limit the likelihood of unexpected changes. This resource offers some useful guidance on implementing a planned change process and dealing effectively with changes that cannot be predicted.
This Resource Material looks at:
- creating the conditions for change;
- dealing with the unexpected;
- anticipating change;
- managing difficult situations.
MANAGEMENT OF PERFORMANCE INDICATORS
Performance indicators (PIs), inputs and outputs, outcomes and quality control form part of the organisation’s monitoring and evaluation procedures. PIs set the standards against which the organisation’s performance and achievements will be judged by the organisation itself and, in some cases, by a donor or service user. The most important indicators are called key performance indicators (KPIs).
This Resource Material looks at:
- performance process jargon;
- types of indicators;
- the implications of introducing performance indicators.
MONITORING AND EVALUATION MANAGEMENT
Monitoring and evaluation cannot be effective if the organization does not know how to make decisions, does not have clear objectives, does not know how to plan wisely, and does not know how it will evaluate its performance.
This Resource Material looks at:
- why monitoring and evaluation are done and how they can be influenced by vested interests;
- what monitoring is and its relationship to objectives and performance indicators;
- how to carry out monitoring;
- how to provide the information in an accessible form;
- what evaluation is and how it should be carried out.
MANAGEMENT OF CONTRACTS AND SERVICE AGREEMENTS
One major change in the civil sector in recent years has been the professionalisation of the work of organisations, hence the need to develop a contractual culture, which has a significant impact on the civil sector as a whole.
This Resource Material looks at:
- the differences between donations, agreements and service contracts;
- the reasons for the shift from donations to service agreements and contracts;
- possible funding and legal implications;
- possible implications for services;
- the role of the board or other governing body;
- what a contract or service agreement typically involves.
PARTNERSHIP MANAGEMENT
CSOs are now increasingly resorting to different partnerships and collaborations, each with its own objectives, priorities, policies and monitoring. These new relationships offer many opportunities, but also require careful management.
This Resource Material looks at:
- working in formal and informal networks;
- compatibility and the value of partnership;
- legal details when partners or related organisations;
- strategic management and decision-making in partnerships;
- resource management needed for successful collaboration.
POLICY AND PRACTICE MANAGEMENT
A policy defines what an organisation does and how it does it. Clear, workable policies are key to creating a stable organization that functions well.
This Resource Material looks at:
- reasons for having clear policies;
- a list of typical policy areas for small civic organizations, with sources of additional information on specific issues;
- basic guidelines for ensuring policies and procedures are in place when needed.
TIME MANAGEMENT
Good governance means not only being clear about what needs to be done, but also ensuring that the organisation as a whole and individual employees can do it. This requires careful management of one of the most precious and most neglected resources – time.
This Resource Material looks at:
- аttitudes to time management;
- steps in time management;
- the importance of the work environment;
- setting priorities and planning;
- valuing the time of others;
- delegation.
FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT
Money management can be broadly divided into two overlapping categories: financial responsibility and financial accountability.
This Resource Material looks at:
- what “responsibility” and “accountability” mean for CSOs;
- accounting;
- electronic reporting;
- responsibilities of the accountant and/or CFO;
- how to understand accounts and financial reports;
- when an audit should be done.
INFORMATION MANAGEMENT AND ADMINISTRATION
Poor information and administrative systems and procedures are a common cause of organisational and individual inefficiency. Digitisation was supposed to make all this easier, but most organisations and people are suffering more than ever from information overload, lack of time to process and assimilate information, and an inability to keep track of where everything should be and where it actually is.
This Resource Material looks at:
- tips for managing mail, email and other communications;
- a basic approach to information systems;
- ideas for organizing files and dealing with archives;
- a cursory look at electronic information systems.
