Lucy Brainard September 29, 2017

ENGW3315 Unit 1 Final Draft

Filling in the Gap Responsibly: Non-Profit Organizations

The field of International Affairs is incredibly broad, primarily comprised of people who

wish to help those less fortunate than themselves. Specifically, the International Affairs

Department at Northeastern identifies the purpose of the program as [bringing] faculty and

students together in courses and research projects that fundamentally strive to create a better

worldone that is freer, more peaceful, more humane, more just, and more inclusive

(International Affairs Program - Northeastern University, n.d.). Nearly everyone across the world

is involved in International Affairs, given the current state of globalization. The internet and

news can reach some of the furthest corners of the globe, incorporating even the smallest voices

into the worlds conversations. However, the main participants in International Affairs tend to be

those most engaged in global matters, often heads of state, entire states themselves, leaders in all

industries from business to engineering to medicine, and anyone following current global events.

Those within the field mainly enter professions in the public sector or within the non-profit and

non-governmental organization fields, depending on which sector they believe will have the

most impact on the world. For the purpose of this essay, I will focus on non-profit organizations,

the sector within which I have had the most experience. The field of International Affairs and

non-profit organizations bring together people from a wide variety of backgrounds to work on

the worlds daunting social, economic, and political issues, using their personal experiences and

learned knowledge to create a better world for all.

Non-profits usually are created to tackle issues not currently being addressed by the

government or other public entities. Many employees in the non-profit sector are passionate
about helping people, often working for fund-strapped organizations that cannot afford to pay

employees high salaries in return for rewarding work. Most of the funding for non-profits comes

from grants given through the government or private foundations, and a small percentage of

funds are from individual donors. Additionally, non-profit organizations with a more sustainable

model have some sort of earned revenue source, using this money to reinvest in the organization

and supplement the budget. Employees at non-profit organizations often work very hard and

cross-functionally to complete the work demanded by the organization, as they are usually

under-staffed and under-funded. With that being said, non-profit employees believe strongly in

the work their organization is doing, despite subpar working benefits and schedules. However,

the field isnt immune to some important sector-wide discussions.

There is an interesting debate surrounding the power of public organizations versus non-

profit or non-governmental private sector organizations in solving the worlds problems. The

public-sector approach requires an extended period of time to conduct research and then

convince politicians that this cause is important enough to create and pass a bill addressing it.

This results in a top-down method, making those most removed from the situation the ones to

try and solve it. Oftentimes these analyses miss key characteristics of the problem because those

trying to solve the problem are not living through the issue daily; they are outsiders coming in to

fix a problem. In addition, public sector responses tend to be slow, not flexible, and constrained

by the government budget or agenda.

On the contrary, non-profit or non-governmental, private-sector organizations tend to

have more flexibility with their time and resources to solve a problem. They can afford to take

more time to understand the problem and often bring on local people who have dealt with the

issue to give specific insight and drive the solution: a bottom-up approach. However, there are
important positives and negatives to weigh on each side of the debate, so there is no correct

answer. Most important issues end up being addressed by both public- and private-sector

initiatives; more research and analysis would help determine which method is more successful

on an individual basis.

Further on this point, as the living wage in the US especially gets more and more out of

reach for average Americans, there is a concern that non-profits are forced to hire less diverse

applicants. Non-profit employees are often paid less than they would be if they were doing the

same job in a private or public sector job, a concession that fewer Americans are able to accept

today. In turn, more outsiders are being employed in the field, as they are the ones able to accept

lower pay while still maintaining their lifestyle. It isnt to say that outsiders dont care as much

about the problem at hand, but they lack a full understanding of the problem as they havent

experienced it themselves and sometimes come from different circumstances than those affected.

Employees all from a similar and more privileged background can cause a non-profit

organization to have too narrow of a perspective of an issue.

Many of the points previously discussed in this paper are addressed in detail in the article

Social Value and Organizational Performance in Non-Profit Social Organizations: Social

Entrepreneurship, Leadership, and Socioeconomic Context Effects, found in the Elsevier

Journal of Business Research. The authors, J. Augusto Felicio, Helena Martins Goncalves, and

Vit or da Conceicao Goncalves, analyze the roles of social entrepreneurship and

transformational leadership in explaining the social value and the organizational performance of

non-profit social organizations (Felic io, Goncalves, & Goncalves, 2013) all within favorable or

unfavorable socioeconomic contexts. The article is structured as a scientific report on the

assumed positive relationship between social entrepreneurship, social value, transformational

introduction, followed by overviews of the literature used in the study, of the research model and

hypotheses, of the measures and data collection, of the analysis and results, a discussion section,

and finally the conclusion. Within the measures and data collection section as well as the

analysis and results section, the authors insert various tables and graphs to illustrate their

findings. These images help the reader to digest the information put forth in each of the sections,

using visuals to provide more detail around the data points.

Having each of the sections clearly defined helps the reader to mentally separate each

sections findings from the others and gives context for the paragraphs the reader is about to

encounter. The article clearly identifies six different hypotheses surrounding the relationships

between social entrepreneurship, social value, transformational leadership, organizational

performance, and non-profit organizations within the research model and hypotheses section,

using language that is common in the non-profit field but that outsiders may need to have defined

to fully grasp the concepts discussed in the report. It is interesting that the report studied these

hypotheses using quantitative data from seven-point-scales, turning qualitative data from

outreach and discussions with those in the field into numerical values. For readers, both within

the field and outside of it, the methods of finding the quantitative data could be difficult to

understand without reading more from the in-text sources.

The article reinforced many of the points made during the first part of this essay, namely

the broad nature of non-profit organizations, the importance of social change in their missions,

and the lack of funding for these organizations, in addition to various other points. The article

cited these issues as being typical in the non-profit field and issues that have yet to be fully

addressed, similar to how these problems were categorized at the beginning of this piece.
 Most importantly, the report fortified the premise that those working within a non-profit

organization whose mission they strongly support tend to achieve the highest social value,

innovation, and organizational performance within their work. This conclusion is the reason

people work in International Affairs and specifically in the non-profit sector, even if the

employee has a lower wage and a more stressful career. The satisfaction of doing a rewarding

job, helping those less fortunate than oneself, and having a positive influence on the world makes

people happy and more productive. Non-profit organizations tend to care about their employees

to the best of their ability and employees care about the work being done within the organization;

the two parties have values that are consistent with each other. While this conclusion is in terms

of the non-profit sector, it can be applied to those outside of the field, to those in the public

sector or the larger International Affairs world.

The more technologically advanced the world gets, the more connected its people

become, bringing together those from a variety of backgrounds to communicate about todays

global issues. A woman across the world can see online or on the news the devastation multiple

earthquakes in Mexico have caused and feel empathy for those affected, bringing her to donate

money or send supplies to the victims. As the globe becomes more interconnected, more people

involve themselves in International Affairs, and more non-profit organizations are created to

address gaps in the work done by the government or public-sector entities. Although the

problems affecting populations everywhere seem to be increasing, it only seems this way

because of the relative ease with which we as people hear about these issues. The field of

International Affairs exists to try to solve these problems, creating a more just, safe, prosperous,

and equal world for all, with the help of everyone from all industries and walks of life.
 Works Cited

Felicio, J., Goncalves, H. M., & Goncalves, V. D. (2013, March 26). Social Value and

Organizational Performance in Non-Profit Social Organizations: Social Entrepreneurship,

Leadership, and Socioeconomic Context Effects. Retrieved September 19, 2017, from

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296313000647

International Affairs Program - Northeastern University. (n.d.). Retrieved September 19,

2017, from https://www.northeastern.edu/cssh/internationalaffairs/