Agency Analysis

Agency Analysis Report: Foodbank Northern Territory Analysis

Student Name: MOHD Salman Wahid

Student Number: s277875

Subject Code: HCS350

Lecturer’s Name: Miranda Booth

Institutional Affiliation: Charles Darwin University

Table of Contents Page No.

1. Executive Summary 3

2. Introduction 3

3. History of Foodbank NT 3

4. Mission and Vision of Foodbank NT 4

5. Organization Type 5

6. Organizational Culture 5

7. Organizational Structure 5

8. Beneficiaries and or Clients of Foodbank NT 6

9. Main Services 7

9.1. Food for life 7

9.2. School breakfast 7

9.3. Warehouse management 8

10. Service Delivery Model 8

11. Relation between Organizational Culture, Structure and Service Delivery Model. 8

12. Foodbank NT Fits Into Community Development 9

13. Conclusion 9

14. References 10

Foodbank Northern Territory Analysis

1. Executive Summary

As a part of the Bachelor of Humanitarian and Community course, this analysis report is about the agency known as Foodbank Northern Territory (NT). The report is prepared and written by a learner who has finished an industrial attachment at the organization. Basically, the purpose of this analysis report or paper is to examine Foodbank NT as well as describe its history, vision and mission. Moreover, the analysis report will delve into the agency’s organizational culture, structure and service delivery model. The paper will, in addition, discuss the Foodbank Northern Territory’s beneficiaries and customers as well as the agency’s main services.

2. Introduction

Foodbank Northern Territory is a not-for-profit organization based in Australia. Specifically, a great number of individuals and stakeholders are involved in the efforts to accomplish the objectives and the success of the agency as well. Foodbank NT has three distinct programs. They include: Food for life, school break program, and warehouse shopping. The main purpose of Foodbank NT is to distribute surplus food with an aim of feeding people who need food. The organization is well structured and has a great culture that defines its operations. It is imperative to recognize that the agency plays a pivotal role between foods-providing and community support agencies thus saving not only resources but also time as it appeals for healthy food. Furthermore, it is important to note that the entire Foodbank fraternity and its programs endeavor to satisfy its beneficiaries as well as meet the needs of the company’s clients.

3. History of Foodbank NT

The idea of a food bank was introduced in 1967 by John Van Hengel in Phoenix, Arizona in the United States (Foodbank Northern Territory, 2018). Hengel was motivated by the plight of the poor people he had witnessed in Phoenix where he worked at St. Vincent de Paul. Before he started the agency, Hengel used to collect donations from people to help the poor. Also, he used to collect food from various supermarkets in the area. In effect, this motivated him to start the first food bank. Initially, he relied on the assistance of St. Mary’s Basilica to get food donations from grocery stores which had to throw away nearly expired food or food that damaged the packaging. At first, Hengel collected food for the dining room only and planned to find an office which he would use a central location from where diverse organizations and individuals would drop their food donations. In the Phoenix locality, there were approximately 35 agencies that were served by about 250,000 pounds of food collected by Hengel and fellow volunteers.

Within a few years, Foodbank grew rapidly in the United States and spread to the neighboring Canada. According to the Foodbank Northern Territory (2018), Foodbank NT was started in Australia in 1992. By 2000, Foodbank had more than 2000 outlets which offered help to more than 90,000 projects. In 2007, the global Foodbank networking was established. In 2010, Foodbank Northern Territory was founded. Although Foodbank NT was associated with Foodbank Australia, the agency operated independently.

Today, Foodbank NT is a Christian-based charity and hunger relief entity. Established by Baptist Care NT, the main goal of Foodbank NT is to supply food to the underprivileged people in the Northern Territory (Foodbank Northern Territory, 2018). The agency has a wide range of programs and collaborates with other non-profit organizations and welfare groups. Essentially, these organizations and groups provide not only food to Foodbank NT but also financial support to run the agency. In turn, Foodbank donates food to the targeted populations.

4. Mission and Vision of Foodbank NT

The vision of Foodbank NT is to ensure a hunger-free Australia. Also, the agency’s vision entails ensuring that the Northern Territory is free of hunger. To accomplish its mission and vision, Foodbank NT works together with sectors that deal with foodstuff and grocery in order to get nutritive and wholesale meal to the deserving people. According to Foodbank Northern Territory, Foodbank NT’s mission is to facilitate the collection of extra as well as the donated food and groceries from various companies, distributors and retailers and avail them (food and groceries) to the vulnerable communities with the goal of eradicating hunger (2018). Accomplishing this noble mission is done through differing programs like food for life, school-feeding, and food rescue (Winnellie Hydraulics, 2019). Generally, these programs function by cooperating with diverse welfare entities to realize the agency’s main vision of providing food relief services to eradicate food insecurity of the Northern Territory residents.

5. Organization Type

As mentioned earlier, Foodbank NT is a Christian-based organization. Although it was formed by the Baptist Care NT, Foodbank NT is not affiliated to any Christian denomination. As such, it is a non-denominational public institution whose goal is to eliminate hunger in the community. The agency is founded on the ideals of charity and meeting the food desires of the needy by distributing surplus and nutritious food to them. As noted earlier in this report, Foodbank NT collaborates with other organizations, welfare groups, and individuals to achieve its mission, vision, and goals.

6. Organizational Culture

Like any other major organization, Foodbank NT has its own organizational culture. According to Watkins (2013), organizational culture can be defined as a “consistent, observable, patterns of behavior in organizations.” This definition is affirmed by Janicijevic who explains that organizational culture is determined by the entity’s values, norms, expectations, and approaches (2013). This means, Janicijevic (2013) notes, all employees in an organization share similar values, beliefs, expectations, and attitudes. In this regard, all employees at Foodbank NT have the same kind of beliefs, values, norms, assumptions, and attitudes.

Indeed, these form the culture of the agency and are anchored in the organization’s rules and regulations as well as the ethics and values that all people at Foodbank NT ought to adhere to. This means, if an employee at Foodbank NT finds it complicated to perform their role, they must refer to rules, norms, and or beliefs of the company. After all, besides rules and regulations, repeated behavior is the core of culture (Watkins, 2013). As a matter of fact, the organizational culture of Foodbank NT is reflected in the agency’s vision and mission. In this respect, the primary culture in this non-profit organization is to solve hunger problems that face the poor communities inhabiting the Northern Territory (Winnellie Hydraulics, 2019; Foodbank Northern Territory, 2018). It is essential to acknowledge that Foodbank NT’s culture is determined by the organization’s organizational structure.

7. Organizational Structure

Fundamentally, the design of organizational structure is influenced by the organizational culture (Janicijevic, 2013). In other words, organizational structure is determined by an organization’s organizational culture or norms, values, perceptions, and ethics. Organizational structure according to Su, Chen, & Wang, entail roles and or responsibilities that are planned properly function to guide work activities in an organization (2018).

At Foodbank NT, the organization has a flexible organizational structure that entails well-planned duties and responsibilities and operations. Overall, there is a divisional model at the organization which divides the responsibilities while separating employees’ tasks. Specifically, the agency has a chief executive officer (CEO) whose main role is to observe the daily operations of the agency. Next to the CEO is the general operations manager who coordinates Foodbank NT’s activities. Next to the operations manager are the heads of Foodbank NT programs. These are the food for life coordinator, school breakfast program coordinator, warehouse supervisor, warehouse assistant, health and safety officer, and volunteers (Foodbank Northern Territory, 2018).

Essentially, there exists an immense cooperation between each of these individuals that make up the agency’s structure. For instance, the general operations manager together with the program coordinators – food for life coordinator and school breakfast coordinator – reports to the CEO. As Su et al. observe, internal collaboration in the organizational structure of any entity is necessary for organizational success (2018). Overall, departmental heads as well as the top leadership of Foodbank motivates all employees and volunteers to perform their tasks. This is done by allowing them to demonstrate their creativity and innovation and sharing their opinions and observing the agency’s organizational culture.

8. Beneficiaries and or Customers of Foodbank NT

As stated above in mission and vision of Foodbank NT, the agency aims to feed the poor people of the Northern Territory. In this regard, the principal beneficiaries of the organization are people and or communities who get the services or support of various individuals and welfare groups through Foodbank NT. Similarly, these are also the clients or customers of the agency. To be specific, they include the homeless, aged, disabled and poor. Moreover, people under the bridging visa and others who are referred to Foodbank NT by different partners or welfare bodies in the northern region also form the agency’s client base. Other clients of Foodbank NT are welfare agencies such as St. Vincent, the Salvation Army, and Mission Australia among other organizations (Foodbank NT, 2018). Indeed, these agencies and organizations obtain food, at an affordable price, from Foodbank NT and distribute it to their beneficiaries and or clients in the NT region. Also, school pupils who benefit from the Foodbank NT’s school breakfast initiative are also beneficiaries or clients of the agency.

9. Main Services

Foodbank NT has three main programs through which it provides its main services. These are food for life, school breakfast, and warehouse management (Winnellie Hydraulics, 2019). These programs play a vital role in helping the agency to fulfill the food needs and desires of the people and the NT community at large. The programs are described below:

9:1. Food for life

Food for life is a program whose main aim is to provide food relief to the vulnerable population within the Northern Territory. In fact, there are many people in many parts of the NT whose main problem is food insecurity. According to Foodbank NT (2018), Howard Spring, Palmerston, Casuarina, Humpty Doo, Darwin City, and Bachelor are some of the notable locations in the Northern Territory that benefit from Food for life program (Winnellie Hydraulics, 2019). Normally, this program is run by both welfare agencies and religious organizations such as churches. Basically, agencies and churches either operate their own shops in certain points or have mobile stores or buses operating in areas without shops. According to Foodbank NT, this program feeds about 50 people every week (2018).

Food for life program is a part of community development and aims to enhance social welfare by empowering people and offering support services to the community members. The program targets old people, the neglected people, the disabled and divorcees. To qualify for Foodbank’s food donations which include everyday groceries contained in a fix size Foodbank bag, a beneficiary needs to produce a healthcare card, pension card, a bridging visa, and any other document that proves eligibility.

9:2. School breakfast

The school breakfast program aims to ensure that school children in schools within the remotest parts of the NT get breakfast support. Foodbank NT acknowledges that breakfast is essential in the growth of children and lack of it may affect their health immensely. As such, the school breakfast program provides a unique service to remote schools in the NT locality in order to cater to the definite needs of children who may lack breakfast in their homes due to economic backgrounds (Winnellie Hydraulics, 2019). Besides providing fresh food for schools to make breakfast, and lunch for students, Foodbank NT’s school program also provide schools with food for cooking classes, and personal care items like toothpaste and toothbrushes (Winnellie Hydraulics, 2019).

9:3. Warehouse management

Warehouse management is a program that involves managing the agency’s food stores. In fact, this is the most challenging program as it involves machinery tools such as trolleys and forklifts to store the surplus or donated food. Supervisors at the warehouse work in conjunction with volunteers to ensure health and safety standards of the warehouse are preserved.

10. Service Delivery Model

One of the most popular service delivery models that Foodbank NT use is the community development model. Basically, this is a model that is widespread in the community field. Indeed, it inspires clients and or beneficiaries to get food relief services from Foodbank NT. The other service delivery method is face-to-face. All Foodbank NT’s programs utilize face-to-face service delivery model. Here, beneficiaries and or customers get an opportunity to interact directly with the agency’s employees and volunteers. The most significant advantage of this model is that it culminates in enhanced output (Cason, 2017).

11. Relation between Organizational Culture, Structure and Service Delivery Model.

Accordingly, a close relationship exists between Foodbank NT’s organizational culture, organizational structure and service delivery model. In the agency’s organizational structure, the operation manager should liaise with the program manager as well as other leaders such as the CEO in the event they want to effect a change in their programs or service delivery models. It is imperative to acknowledge that the organization’s culture influences the organizational culture and service delivery models. This means, the organizational culture of Foodbank NT affects how services are delivered to their targeted beneficiaries. The relationship between the three components of Foodbank NT is determined by elements of organizational coordination such as mutual communication, direct supervision, output and process standardization, and knowledge standardization (Janicijevic, 2013).

12. Foodbank NT Fits into Community Development

Foodbank NT focuses on community development in all its efforts to provide social services in the NT. As a matter of fact, most of the beneficiaries of Foodbank NT services are the disadvantaged in the society. Hence, by offering food relief services to such people, the agency aims to develop the community. Moreover, the agency also supports the government in providing emergency relief services whenever there is a disaster in the Northern Territory.

13. Conclusion

Overall, this analysis report discusses Foodbank NT, a non-profit organization that aims to provide food to all hungry people in the Northern Territory. Specifically, the report highlights the history of Foodbank NT, its organizational culture and structure and service delivery method as well as how the three organizational elements relates with each other. Also, the paper describes how, as a social welfare agency, Foodbank NT implements its community development strategies.

References

Cason, J. (2017). Telehealth is Face-to-Face Service Delivery. International Journal of Telerehabilitation, 9(1), 77-78.

Foodbank Northern Territory (2018). Retrieved from

https://www.ntnews.com.au/.../foodbank-nt/.../67a00fe92d18715552479f0965ce157d

Foodbank NT. (2018). About us. Retrieved from

https://www.foodbanknt.org.au/about-us/what-is-foodbank/

Janicijevic, N. (2013). The mutual impact of organizational culture and structure. Ekon An, 58(198), 35-60.

Su, Z., Chen, J., & Wang, D. (2018). Organisational structure and managerial innovation: The mediating effect of cross-functional integration. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 1-13.

Winnellie Hydraulics. (2019). Community Initiative: Foodbank NT. Retrieved from https://winnelliehydraulics.com/community-initiative-foodbank-nt-2/

Watkins, M. (2013). What is organizational culture? And why should we care? Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2013/05/what-is-organizational-culture