[Continued, for full article, visit the website]Last week, Nonprofit Quarterly‘s Anne Eigeman told a cautionary tale of stakeholder backlash (first reported by Wally Harbert in Third Sector). In “The Risk for Nonprofits in Excluding Stakeholders in Key Decision-Making,” she highlights the story of a hospice agency in the UK that decided to close its residential facility for the elderly in favor of home-based services, only to be told by the residents and their families that they didn’t want to move. The uproar resulted in both the chief executive and chairperson resigning.
Despite tales like this one – and extensive literature on the value of engaging stakeholders when deciding strategy, policy and practice – it appears that nonprofits and foundations still have a long way to go. In her report for Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO), “Do Nothing About Me Without Me,” J. Courtney Bourns observes:
“The lack of genuine stakeholder engagement by grantmakers leads to frayed relationships with grantees and communities. During nonprofit focus groups convened for GEO’s Change Agent Project, participants repeatedly noted that the “power differential” between foundations and grantees leads to counterproductive relationships and sometimes can stand in the way of grantee success.”
http://philamplify.org/2014/08/05/stakeholder-engagement-still-a-philanthropic-learning-curve/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=stakeholder-engagement-still-a-philanthropic-learning-curve
The Risk for Nonprofits in Excluding Stakeholders in Key Decision-Making
Anne Eigeman
[Continued, for full article, visit the website]A current business trend emphasizes the benefits of thinking quickly in times of decision, and in an era when budgets are often shrinking rather than expanding, it is not surprising that there is a strong market for these theories. In a recent post about the UK’s Pilgrims Hospice, the former president of the Association of Directors of Social Services and UK Director of Help the Aged, Wally Harbert, provides some context for the changes over the past fifty years with housing trends for elderly people and the impact that they have had.
As Harbert writes, “Judgments that involve a trade off between the certainty of what now exists and doubts about the validity of what might take its place” are complex both “intellectually and emotionally”—and particularly so for individuals and families dealing with end-of-life issues.
In Harbert’s words, the recent events at Pilgrims Hospice amount to a story that “is simply told.” Essentially, the organization’s former executive director, Steve Auty, “persuaded his trustees that their premises in Canterbury were no longer fit for purpose and should be closed with the savings used to develop more appropriate services, mainly in the homes of patients.” According to Harbert, “public uproar” soon followed and then led to the organization’s board reversing its decision about the facility and Auty and the organization’s board chair both resigning. Evidence of the “uproar” Harbert describes can be found on the Save Pilgrims Hospice Canterbury Facebook page, which as of July 14 had nearly 14,000 “likes,” along with a post explaining that that a final decision from the board was still forthcoming and that, in the meantime, the group was raising funds.
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/policysocial-context/24524-the-risk-for-nonprofits-in-excluding-stakeholders-in-key-decision-making.html
Stephanie Doty
Discouraging NP Dysfunction
August 9, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
