Town of Water town, Massachusetts

Introduction

The nonprofit, governmental, and voluntary sector is important to our society. The labels used to distinguish these organizations from private-sector corporations reveal their merits: nonprofit, accenting altruism and disregard of self-interest; charitable, referring to reliance on donations and generosity; and voluntary, indicating the significance of volunteers as a primary resource.

Their importance is more than ethereal. They are powerful generators of social value for certain, but they also create economic value. They extend the capacity of government and the private sector to be more effective. They are significant employers. They intercede when the private and public sectors fail. And yet, like all organizations, on-profits shape and are shaped by the environment. In this research also our main research will be analyzing financial performance of the town of Water town, Massachusetts which is also a nonprofit organization.

The Compromised Nonprofit

It is not surprising that nonprofit staff capacity, program quality, and operations are severely affected by the recalcitrant funding environment. The most vital resource that a nonprofit has is its people. When the organization lacks financial support, it cannot pay prevailing, living wages nor provide any guarantee of employment. Limited compensation and reduced job security breed low morale and high staff turnover, which limit organizational capacity. Time spent with clients is reduced to comply with available resources. In the human services, where the linchpin of service provision is consistency, clients may relapse because they are getting less care than workers know they need. Programs suffer as the inclination of staff to serve more and reach wider is squelched because staff is overextended (Abramson, 107).

Ironically, demand for nonprofit services and programs is most urgent during economic down cycles. More clients need human service organizations to help them find work, to put food on the table, and to continue to clothe and house their families. Unfortunately, these calls for help and assistance come when there are fewer and fewer funds supporting non-profits, particularly in the human service field. The physical plant—offices of non-profits—are less than adequate: There are few meeting spaces, and staff sit atop each other, sharing out-of-date and donated equipment and hoping on hope that their Internet connection is working. Inadequate financial support erodes nonprofit organizational capacity and, over time, their viability (Anthony, 67).

Nonprofit organizations and their leaders are not unaware nor idle in the face of this challenge. The unsupportive funding environment and threat that it poses to organizational survival is fertile ground for innovation and revolutionary change. Recognizing the importance of financial management to nonprofit existence, revenue diversification has evolved into a nonprofit strategy , and non-profits now expect that program staff will consider the management of resources as among their responsibilities . These are strategies that are strikingly similar to those used in the private sector (Dropkin, 135). However, unlike the private-sector organizations, human service non-profits are not retrenching during economic downturns and instead are seeking new and diverse funding sources and improving their marketing approaches, consistent with their social missions (Dropkin, 89).

There is also evidence to suggest ...