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Analysis of a Non-Profit Organization – Families First

Name

Institution

Mission statement of “Family First Foundation”.

The mission statement of the organization states that “Family First promotes the secure and nurturing parent-child relationships that are the foundation of every child’s wellbeing and future success”.

The function of Family First Foundation is to ensure that each and every child is very secure, resilient confident, able to grab opportunities and succeed in life. Each and every child loved, supported, and guided by knowledgeable, strong, and collaborative schools, caregivers, and communities (Saracho & Spodek, 2003).

The mission statement came up due to the changing of the society and family structures. Mothers were moving to different workforce in unprecedented numbers, some were divorcing, and the rates of marriages were climbing very high. Therefore, the formally known family was no longer a norm. Concurrently, changes in the job market led to an increased demand for college degree as a requirement for gainful employment. Many parents also needed to work and take classes at the same time. Therefore, with all these new obstacles, parents dearly needed help.

In Wheelock College, Boston, and the Boston Children’s Museum established family first parenting program with the objective of assisting parents to guide and navigate children in many ways so as to reduce the challenges that are encountered while raising children. Some of the strategies that were in facilitating the program was provision of researched based parenting education services. Family First in-house expertise are invariably translating the latest findings on parenting into new and updated curricula. Consequently, Family First is outstandingly positioned to handle all the emerging issues that involves parenting challenges such as media and community violence, rising materialism, bullying, and new technology.

Family First mainly focuses on helping parents in need- especially those who lack access to adequate resources for parenting. Besides, the organization leads the field locally in new modes of parenting to its traditional workforce, such as parenting leadership training. While things change, some of the things remain constant. The basis of family is relationship and healthy development. Therefore, the organization’s workforce keeps on centering on guiding parents to promote good relationships with their children and promoting the cohesion in their Families.

The importance of major fundraising principles, and their effects to Family First Foundation.

Fundraising is one of the crucial parts in an organization that strengthens communities and NGOs. Financial assistance is needed by this organization in order for them to conduct their desired and planned activities. Therefore, acquiring of resources is a need and honorable task. Fundraisers are always acknowledged and praised for their significant support. This is a task that all should contribute, and for which every single person is responsible (Strike, 2012).

People give to people to help people .

People around you are the most important since they help in solving different problems that happen to arise at any particular time. This principle is mostly quoted and it is emphasized by its minute words composed to make the phrase, that is, “people give”, “people give to people”, and “people give to people to help people.” In Family First Foundation, people treat each other like a family, and they believe that if they help one person, that person will one time help the other person. Most of the people who support the organization through financial or any other support, are people who don’t have biological relationship with beneficiaries of the organization. Besides, those people who get support from the organization, don’t intentionally come for help, but circumstances force them to do so. Therefore, once they get that help, they get know the importance of helping others hence help others through these people who help other people.

People give relative to their means

Nowadays there are different classes of people which is based according to their incomes. There are high class income earners, middle class income earners, and low class income earners. Family First Foundation recognizes these classes and tries to source some relative amount of contributions from these groups to make sure that their efforts are recognized, and the contributors to feel appreciated. Therefore, this principle, categorizes the contributions which evidently helps the foundation to make quite a good progress.

Those closest must set the pace

This principle tries to point how important and valuable should the foundation’s participants believe in their projects. In Family First Foundation, this principle is widely applied and important since the officials and main donors try to set a good example. For the contributors to give a lot of support, the internal participants and the closest supporters are required to contribute more as pace setters. This principle has enable the Family First Foundation to gain more contribution through heavy contribution per head.

Successful fundraising

This principle emphasizes on timeliness and choices of people, prospectus, amount, project, time, and the way of asking for the fundraise. Family First Foundation has a panel that schedules for fundraising programs, people to contribute for the fundraise, and the channels of asking and receiving the contributions. The organization believes order and respect pulls closer the interest of the supporters. Most people would like to associate, help, and support a small organized team that to let their support end up in a fiasco because of disorganized team.

The 80/20 Rule is becoming the 90/10 Rule

This principle tries to elaborate how Pareto’s 80/20 rule is shifting to 90/10 rule where 90 percent of the amount raised is contributed by 10 percent of top contributors, unlike often when 80 percent or more of the funds were contributed by not more than 20 percent of the contributors. In Family First Foundation, this is evidently seen when top officials from the company write checks and pledges that have huge amount of money just for the organization support. Although many people support the foundation though financial support, their aggregate amount sum up to not more than 10 percent of the total contribution. This has acted as a motivation tool in sourcing large amounts of money from officials who have the capability of raising money without depletion in their daily budget.

Assessment tool and justified reasons.

SWOT analysis measures the strength, weaknesses, opportunity, and threat of the foundation. It guides the organization to identify its strengths and weaknesses, as well as broader opportunities and threats. Developing a wider awareness of the situation helps with both strategic planning and decision-making. The reason why SWOT analysis can be helpful to Family First Foundation is that, it explores the possibilities of new efforts or solutions to problems associated to fundraising approaches; it helps in making decisions about the best path for a chosen initiative. Identifying opportunities for success in context of threats to success can clarify choices and direction; it also helps in determining where change is possible. For instance, when the organization runs out of choice of sourcing financial support, an inventory of the strengths and weakness can show priorities as well as possibilities.

The tool also helps the foundation in adjusting and refining plans in the mid-course. A new opportunity might open wider avenues, while a new threat could a path that once existed. It offers a simple way of communicating about initiative or program and an excellent way to organize information gathered by the organization from surveys or studies.

Some of the strengths identified by Family First Foundation is that they have the best of support from government officials who recognize their efforts in building the nation and improving economy in an indirect manner. However, the organization has some weaknesses such as dishonest officials who operate the organization with self-interest. Gifts and donations are not strictly kept in records due to less accountability parties who get away with them. This calls for additional management efforts which are relatively costly.

Opportunities exist differently for Family First Foundation. Everyday people contribute their support in different they could. With the new technology, money can be transferred for one country to another without no physical movement. Supporters worldwide, who get to know the foundation’s effort, give their contribution with an interest of seeing the organization prosper with its good work. However, there are other emerging threats from upcoming foundations that come in with an aim of making profits. These organizations tarnish the good image that non-profit organizations have upheld for long. People are beginning to shy away their support due to misuse of donated funds and corruption. Therefore, posing a lot of threats in organization’s activities (Famiy First Foundation, 2015).

Key funding priorities and the past or current fundraising efforts of Family First Foundation

Each and every community put in their efforts to make sure all the projects and activities not only succeed, but also help their children and families to have a good future for their kids too. When a community experience a higher a number of successful marriages, they tend to get motivated and interact with one another due to instilled moral and behavior in the community. Consequently, this motivates a well-wisher to give his or her support in a different way that can uplift the efforts of the foundation. (Sonfield & Lussier, 2004)

The success of children in a community is a happiness to every member of the community. Good health translates to good education, and good education translates to higher intellectual productivity. Donors and fundraisers always get encouraged seeing children performing well in school. Therefore, any input that they project always measure the performance that the management of each given school gives. As a result, fund rolling will always depend on how the already given funds are being managed.

Youths are the major roots in a community that always determine the production of fruits in that specific community. Good investment in youths means higher returns in future for the community. Therefore, healthy and good mentoring provides a milestone for every single youth to get prepared for their future career. Once the youth achieves their dreams in future, they are the ones who will give funds to the foundation to ensure that the ‘good’ it did to them, is also done to others.

Organization’s capacity to address the need and the potential benefits and pitfalls of receiving or not receiving support.

The organization always depend on funds in their activities and projects. Without funds and community support, the foundation will be handicapped due to overwhelming activities that need to be projected in order to get situations in control. One of the supports that the foundation dearly depend on is the financial support. Each and every personnel working in the organization will need to get a pay at the end of the day. Besides, all the support that are taken to unfortunate families come from financial support.

Secondly, emotional and spiritual support is another key aspect that is integrated into the principles of fundraising. As mere as it might seem, emotional support always means a lot to gloomy hearts. Failure to get funds from donors is a stressful and demoralizing thing, but support is always important in ensuring that no one gives up in the organization and that the activities go on as normally. When children perform better in schools, parents are always happy and this promotes family togetherness which is one of the missions that the foundation aims at.

However, as much as the donors and the well-wishers try to give their eminent support, there are small leakages of funds that always let the contributed fund to slip away from the hands of the management. People with self-interest greediness tend to take money for their own use. This has always been the major problem that many NGO companies face up to date (Moen & Sweet, 2004)

References

Famiy First Foundation. (2015, 8 24). family first america. Retrieved from http://familyfirstamerica.org: http://familyfirstamerica.org

Moen, P., & Sweet, S. (2004). From “work–family” to “flexible careers.”. Community, Work & Family, 7(2), 209-226.

Saracho, O. N., & Spodek, B. (2003). A play foundation for family literacy. International Journal of Educational Research., 29(1), 41-50.

Sonfield, M. C., & Lussier, R. N. (2004). First-, Second-, and Third-Generation Family Firms: A Comparison. Family Business Review, 17(3), 189-202.

Strike, V. M. (2012). Advising the Family Firm: Reviewing the Past to Build the Future. Family Business Review, 25(2), 156-177.

Weber, T., McKeever, J. E., & McDaniel, S. H. (2004). A beginnerʼs guide to the problem-oriented first family interview. Family process, 24(3), Volume: 24, Issue: 3, Pages: 357-64.