THE MISSION-BASED MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS IN ALBANIA

July edition THE MISSION-BASED MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN NON- PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS IN ALBANIA Drita Kruja 0 1 0 Lecturer, University of Shkodra Luigj Gurakuqi, Faculty of Economy , Shkoder , Albania 1 Alkida Hasaj, PhD Candidate Lecturer, University of Shkodra Luigj Gurakuqi, Faculty of Economy , Shkoder , Albania The non-profit sector is very important for the whole scheme of a country life. Dozens of nonprofit organizations actually operate in Albania. During the last 20 years there has been a significant increase in the number of non-profit organizations, because of the rapid changes in the environmental conditions. Regardless the increase in the number of these organizations, the economic challenges in the last decade had a huge influence in their ability to survive. For this reason the non-profit sector states the financial capacity as its greatest challenge. This new economy would give rise to a decline in the survival of many non-profit organizations, especially those that relied solely on government and other support. The purpose of this research is to examine whether or not the mission-based management practices suggested by Brinckerhoff had any relationship to revenues in non-profit organizations. Researchers such as Brinckerhoff postulated that non-profits must incorporate for-profit business practices into their organizational strategies (like strong marketing focus, etc) in order to adapt to the financial changes taking place in the non - profit sector. The data to conduct this study were collected from some non-profit organization in Albania using a questionnaire which they filled in by themselves. The survey questions focused - Introduction: The non-profit sector is very important for the whole scheme of a country life. Dozens of non-profit organizations actually operate in Albania. During the last 20 years there has been a significant increase in the number of non-profit organizations, because of the rapid changes in environmental conditions. Regardless the increase in the number of these organizations, the economic challenges in the last decade had a huge influence in their ability to survive. For this reason the non-profit sector states the financial capacity as its greatest challenge. Such a factor affects also nonprofit organizations in Albania. As it was suggested by Jones (2003), "the non-profit sector needs to focus on high performance and organizational excellence through capacity building if it is to survive in this new economy". Regardless of country of origin, the non-profit sector placed its organizational focus on programs rather than on performance. The nature of funding in the nonprofit sector is short-term rather than long-term and because of this it is difficult for organizations to support both infrastructure and long-term organizational capacity. A fundamental component of nonprofit programs is the need to generate the income to develop, sustain, or expand either new or successful programs, which has become all the more challenging due to the current economic reality. (Hall et al. 2005). But the question is how to manage organizations in this sector. Brinckerhoff (2009) stated that in order to achieve financial success it was necessary for non-profit organizations to engage in what he referred to as mission-based management practices. Brinckerhoff suggested 31 that there were ten mission based management practices that could be used to incorporate forprofit management practices into a non-profit culture. It was proposed that these practices would lead to an organizational focus that was balanced between performance and programs. He postulated that non-profits must incorporate for-profit business practices into their organizational strategies (like strong marketing focus, etc) in order to adapt to the financial changes taking place in the non-profit sector. The purpose of this research is to examine whether or not the mission-based management practices suggested by Brinckerhoff had any relationship to revenue in non-profit organizations in Albania. Brinckerhoff conclusions on mission-based management practices are not supported by formal research, rather, he has used his extensive experience and interaction with the non-profit sector over the past two decades to develop his theory on mission-based management practices. Although there was a reasonable amount of research in this area, there appears to be a gap in the literature because while most researchers have identified that non-profit organizations need to embrace for-profit business practices only Brinckerhoff suggested a methodology for how the non-profit might transit from program-centered strategy to a performance centered strategy (Brinckerhoff, 2000). Based on this theory it was created a survey to collect data and to help examine whether or not there was a relationship between the ten mission-based management practices and revenue in non-profit organizations in Albania. The survey questions focused specifically on each of the ten mission-based management practices especially marketing, which required participants to indicate whether or not any of the mission-based management practices were used. 1. Nonprofit Organization And Definitions Given the intention to examine the application of mission-based management practices to the nonprofit organization, it is important to begin by defining what we mean by this term. The nonprofit organizations can be defined as: one that exists to provide for the general welfare of society, through the marshalling of appropriate resource and/ or the provision of physical goods and service. Such organizations do not exist to provide for personal profit or gain and do not, as a result, distribute profits or surpluses to shareholders or members. They may, however, employ staff and engage in revenue-generating activities designed to assist them in fulfilling their mission (Sergante, 2009). The nonprofit sector is undergoing a period of radical change. At global level there has been an explosion in the number of nonprofit organizations over the past 30 years, almost certainly in response to rapidly changing environmental, social, and economic conditions. These conditions have recently included the impact of climate change, increasing national debt, the emergency of new diseases, the breakdown of some traditional political structures, and an ongoing succession of armed conflicts. Aside from this growth there are a number of other factors that influence negatively this trend. The non-profit sector acknowledges difficulties in funding but there is no evidence that the sector has taken any significant step towards implementing change to overcome this difficulty. Any funding that is made available by government and other sources to nonprofit organizations is required to be directed solely to programs and projects as opposed to organizational capacity. This led to a dichotomous situation for the non-profit sector because even if a non-profit (...truncated)