Greenwood Case Study

What are the current challenges facing United Way? What are key issues in the general and nonprofit charitable giving industry environments that affect United Way’s operations?

United Way is faced with many challenges that are affecting its operations and strategic efforts. The current challenges facing United Way are the ability to raise money to pay for general operational cost, to recruit and maintain fundraisers, and the large amount of donation that celebrities and public figures make that discourages other donors that cannot match or afford to give the same amount to charity. Another challenge United Way is currently facing is that people who donated wanted to know where their donations and percentages were going to and what their money is being used for. They were also concerned about how their privacy is going to be protected. This presented a challenge for United Way because there was not a single charity that money goes to but multiple charities unlike others supporting disaster relief efforts that focused their attentions on one disaster, for example, 9/11 or Katrina. The key issues in the general and non-profit charitable giving industry environments that affect United Way’s operations are that trends have taken place where donations have declined over the years and need increased. Charities have fallen by 11 percent and represent the worst declined in 20 years.

What unique responsibilities does United Way have to its stakeholders, and how successful has the organization been with its overall strategy? Is United Way’s mission still viable?

In addition to social responsibility, United Way has unique responsibilities to its stakeholders characterized by being continually perceived as legitimate and always acting in an appropriate and desirable manner within a set of socially constructed norms, values, beliefs, and definitions in order to receive donations. United Way’s responsibility is to maintain trust with its stakeholders. Strategic management concepts include multiple stakeholders in decision making. Stake holders are individuals or groups that have stake in the success of the organization (Dess G,2019). These have to be taken into account in the strategic management process. United Way has been successful in initiating an improvement in its strategy by establishing new membership standards to improve the level of accountability and transparency in its operations. The strategy of United Way changed from strictly a fund raiser objective to a new mission that focuses on long term needs of communities. The strategic management approach was directed toward overall organizational goals and objectives (Dess G, 2019). United Way has been successful in operating local single focused agencies that had missions to support social causes. Donors were increasingly supportive of these specific causes and were highly attracted to these organizations. United Way strategies were successful because of record reaching donations reported. According to McCambridge, United Way mission is not viable. It is questionable if United Way can move quickly with the proposed strategy by its CEO. A very significant proportion of the network is still behind United Ways declared strategy (McCambridge R, 2008).  United Ways might be overestimating its influence and needs to reassess its strengths. United Way has always been a big influencer in the community supporting social programs. Its mission is not so viable anymore because United Way is further eroding its positional power through declarations of new directions that yet have to be solidified within the organization (McCambridge R, 2008).