Essay Sample on USCF: Navigating the Decline in Volunteers & Engagement

Introduction

During the past years of working as a nonprofit organization, the United States Charity Foundation (USCF) has experienced successful navigation through periods of extreme workload. However, there is a noted decline in volunteers, and the ones remaining in the organization do not feel useful and productive. Clearly, the problem ranges from the lack of engagement and commitment, which have a possibility to translate into the valuable results. To help reap back the benefits that are associated with participation, committed leadership, and workforce is necessary for the organization. United States Charity Foundation understands that the higher an intern's engagement, the more likely they are in going the extra mile in commitment and motivated to deliver excellent work performance. The key ingredient to improving the performance is to make changes on the type of leadership style that will help appreciate the interns through motivation while at the same time fully engage them in the duties of this organization.

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Commitment requires a time investment as well as emotional and mental energy. United States Charity Foundation, therefore, has resorted to change the style of leadership to the democratic approach, which is described by the philosophy of "I Share" (Antonakis 2017). Additionally, the leaders will adopt a participative leadership style which involves all members of the team of interns in identifying essential goals developing strategies for each of the defined goals (Antonakis 2017). The remaining interns in the organization will work with their leaders as facilitators and not just as individuals who issue orders without follow up. The organization, therefore, intends to bring back the other interns the organization through the participative leadership style helps in giving room for the interns to demonstrate their creativity and give room for talent improvement. According to Nawaz and Khan (2016), the theory of transformational leadership is the best t be used to encourage the interns from coming back to work. This is facilitated by the theory of motivation that helps in pushing the volunteers to achieve their vision. The company, therefore, resorts to changing its ways of leadership to a participate, free and transformative style to encourage engagement at the same time manage stronger and more successful teams.

Leadership is a process that involves influence, the formation of common goals and also occurs in groups (Northouse, 2018). The organization also refocuses on the introduction of the path-goal theory of leadership with concentrates on motivating employees to help them accomplish the designed goals. Path-goal theory is intended to be tied on job satisfaction. The focus of United States Charity Foundation thus changes from focusing on the outcome but rather the path that is used to reach the goal. Volunteers and interns in the organizations will now get full support and helped to find and remove the obstacles on the paths towards achieving them. The leadership in the organization has a task then to understand the course of the barriers, what it takes to remove them to support and improve employee motivation. Through the motivation of volunteers and interns, the company will be more likely to achieve the aspect of job satisfaction, which includes, relationship, flexibility, and the feeling of achievement. The primary motivation will be giving positive feedback from the leaders. Positive feedback is a great motivator that leans on the transformative style of leadership. The company misses its employees who had left and appreciate their input in the last meeting. The organization also depends on the expertise and specialization of every volunteer and intern in helping to reach the goals.

The NPO has its mandate defined as learning and developing opportunities for its workers. This organization has a goal of maintaining a competitive advantage at the same time, improving the prospects of growth. The leadership achieves the purpose of talent development through helping the workers to align their professional goals with both the long and short term plans. The best way that the company intends to develop opportunities through learning is by improving communication within the organization (Kuppuswamy 2017). Every intern will be involved in the decision-making process to bring a sense of ownership of the activity processes in the organization. The organization will find its chance through participation also through giving positive feedback to the workers. Clear communication additionally helps a team of interns to get to know what direction they need to head. The previous work environment failed to provide a clear definition of the intended steps, thus causing some of the employees to opt out of their contracts. The leaders are through a participative style will help the interns and volunteers to accomplish their set goals by aligning them to the visions and missions of the organization. Motivating workers help achieve higher levels of employee engagement, thus reaching high input levels.

As a nonprofit organization, the leaders have to operate in definitions of equity rather than as the owner of the business (Nesbit, Rimes, Christensen & Brudney, 2016). The social value cannot be solely calculated using financial benefit but also in kind. This, therefore, means that the company understands that the type of motivation of its interns and paid employees should be different. The organization thus refines its goals to one that helps people to stand on their own, benefiting from the organization through learning and experiences. To make sure the purposes of assisting interns and volunteers to acquire knowledge in their field, the organization has the mandate to create a supportive work team of these employees and support through plans and policy-making through their leaders. A nonprofit leader is only considered successful if they interact, communicate, and advocate the organization mission equally to each person in the organization. The organization, therefore, has opted to take some steps that help manage the changes happening in the organization to avoid more interns being unsatisfied. The first step taken is a cultural change. The NPO has changed the culture of the organization through changing leaders and leadership styles. The organization decides to change on culture to improve the efficiency of the interns at the same time. Thus a promise of equity and dedication to providing the experience of learning one of the changes that the organization intends to make to retain and bring back interns.

Additionally, the company hopes to improve motivation through celebrating big and small milestones of the interns (Kuppuswamy 2017). Inters and volunteers always engage in work that is demanding yet unpaid. Therefore, acknowledging achievement weekly, monthly, and quarterly goals helps to encourage them to work more. When one fails to meet a mini-milestone, then the leaders and managers take it as their task to assess what would be blocking the performance of the team. From there, the team that involves both leaders and volunteers determine the methods to overcome the obstacles and meet their end goals. This organization will reconsider all the efforts that had been placed on work by the interns and volunteers. This culture of appreciation is natured through good leader-subject relationship.

Conclusion

In sum, the organization has been critical to finding out the exact reasons why there is a lack of motivation for interns in United States Charity Foundation. Thus the NPO, therefore, has decided to change the type of leadership that is practiced in the organization. The democratic and participative kind of leadership will help in improving engagement and cooperation leaders with subordinates. This organization also has the intention to adopt transformational leadership so that there is a culture adopted of people working as a team rather than a leader- subject method. The potential benefits of the organization changing its direction and culture are to improve workers' satisfaction at the workplace. To compel the interns to return to work, the organization thus promises to define its communication clearly so that the employees feel motivated in participating in achieving the goals. To validate the importance of the NPO to volunteers, this organization promises internship development through encouragement and talent and specialization. Once the interns and volunteers meet some initials goals, they now realize the clear connection between effort and results with motivating them to continue at a higher level. With the described promises of change, United States Charity Foundation will positively navigate through the challenging environment through equity and volunteer strength for future success.

References

Antonakis, J., & Day, D. V. (Eds.). (2017). The nature of leadership. Sage publications.

Kuppuswamy, N., Saminathan, V., Udhayakumar, M., Vigneash, L., & Gopalakrishnan, P. (2017). The Role of Motivation on Employee Performance in an Organization. International Journal of Scientific Research in Computer Science, Engineering and Information Technology, 2(3), 396-402.

Nawaz, Z. A. K. D. A., & Khan_, Ph.D., I. (2016). Leadership theories and styles: A literature review. Leadership, 16, 1-7.

Nesbit, R., Rimes, H., Christensen, R. K., & Brudney, J. L. (2016). Inadvertent volunteer managers: Exploring perceptions of volunteer managers' and volunteers' roles in the public workplace. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 36(2), 164-187.

Northouse, P. G., (2018). Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.