Nonprofits Strive to Improve Operations, Hiring Practices

Czipo’s organization provides a host of services to charities in New Jersey. She said many nonprofits face issues relating to their operations, and her organization began working with the Nonprofit Congress — a national effort launched in 2006 — to address those problems. In a nutshell, she said, nonprofits want to work more closely with the public and show greater results for their efforts.

Czipo said the three key issues facing nonprofits are increasing their effectiveness through accountability and leadership, attracting public awareness and support for the nonprofit community, and increasing advocacy and grassroots community efforts.

“This speaks to the need on the broad scale to change the framework that nonprofits are operating in,” she said. To find ways to work more effectively, she said, nonprofits are holding town hall meetings to get a sense of the issues faced by their communities.

Czipo said nonprofits also are examining their own leadership in terms of succession planning. “Leadership transition has been getting a lot of attention with the aging of the baby boomers in management roles,” she said.

Staff recruitment and retention can be problematic, Czipo said, due to the tendency for job benefits in the nonprofit sector to be less attractive than at their for-profit counterparts. Organizations are growing more careful in the vetting, particularly in social services, when potential hires and volunteers approach them for work, Czipo said. “The need to screen is more pronounced than ever,” given the litigiousness nature of the country, she said.

To help nonprofits better screen their volunteers, the National Council of Nonprofit Associations in Washington, D.C., partnered with MyBackgroundCheck.com to establish the Volunteer Tracking System, which allows nonprofits to quickly evaluate volunteers. NCNA cites a report from the National Center for Victims of Crime, stating that 27 percent of volunteer organizations surveyed conducted no background checks, citing cost as the top reason for the lapse.

The volunteer tracking system includes a list of potential volunteers with criminal records or adverse behavior reported by other organizations, which helps nonprofits to quickly winnow out possible risks. Sherrie Hinton, manager of finance and administration at NCNA, said there is a growing need among nonprofits to conduct such checks on volunteers and job candidates, especially for organizations that work with children.

“General references are only very basic,” Hinton said. A reference may confirm that a person worked or volunteered for a certain position, but may offer few details. “In some sectors, people want more information.”

Nonprofits need to screen carefully and manage their operations closely, Czipo said, as nonprofits are being held more accountable for their personnel and the work they do, making it important to keep their operations transparent and ethical.

The additional scrutiny, Czipo said, can create headaches for a nonprofit that must suddenly train its personnel how to meet new rules. “Accountability is fine, as long as it is reasonable,” she said.

E-mail to jpruth@njbiz.com