When Missions, Markets, and Politics Collide: Values and Strategy in the Nonprofit Human Services

Abstract

This article explores the meaning of nonprofit strategy in the human services through an examination of the challenges facing nonprofit organizations working in the field of welfare-to-work transitions. After considering how the growing competition from large business firms in this field poses a major challenge to nonprofit organizations, the article suggests that many nonprofits are not well equipped to engage in a narrow efficiency competition with large corporations. Instead, nonprofit human service organizations need to develop a strategy that emphasizes the unique value-driven dimension of their programs. Welfare reform legislation can serve as an opening for both faith-based and secular nonprofits to differentiate themselves and to develop a distinctive position within the government-contracting market. From this analysis, the article draws some broader conclusions about the future of strategy in the nonprofit human services in an increasingly competitive environment.Over the past decade, a growing number of books have been written with the goal of helping nonprofit practitioners to manage their organizations more efficiently (). Many of these titles attempt to bring business concepts, such as reengineering, quality management, and benchmarking, to bear on the nonprofit sector. A common theme that emerges from these texts is that the absence of a traditional bottom line-far from freeing nonprofits to pursue their missions-means that these organizations must develop a special kind of operational discipline. More or less explicitly, these books suggest that a lag between sectors can be closed with a direct transfer of managerial technology.In the midst of this outpouring of advice and encouragement, there is reason to suspect that nonprofit organizations might not be well served by a push for increasingly greater operational efficiency. Although increasing efficiency may be one component of nonprofit success, we believe that it is unlikely to be a formula for sustained success. The most critical work for nonprofits is to

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