Non-Profits' Impact on US Military Veterans: Service Delivery - Research Paper

Introduction

Service delivery by non-profit organizations in the US has been critical to many sectors, individuals and the general population. For instance, in assisting the military veterans; military veteran has been very critical in enhancing our security, and the veterans have to be considered within our society and also in the health sector as well. Many non-governmental organizations have initiated several programs to address the various issues that military veterans may be experiencing and also in other sectors such as health care. Currently, over 3.6 million war veterans have been benefiting from disability compensation from the US Veterans Affairs Department (VA) (Boris 1999, 3-29). This figure is approximated to be out of approximately 21.4 million US veterans in 2014, regarding NCVAS reports. However, several non-profit organizations and many caring Americans well-wishers have consistently tried to provide some degree of support for military veterans and their families. Nonetheless, it can never be proved that most of them actually receive the much assistance they so much need. On the other hand various American citizens tend to experience various issues like health problems, therefore, making the organizations to initiate several programs to address such issues.

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Some individuals tend to criticize the government due to the with the increasing number of ineffectively managed and small charities claiming to serve veterans and the military. The inefficiencies of the VA and the existence of the various wasteful non-profits make it all that more necessary for donors to select properly when contributing to veterans and military charity. Nonetheless, most of the non-profit organizations such as Disabled American Veterans (DAV) Charitable Service Trust, Homes for Our Troops, Wounded Warriors Family Support, Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Lutherans Foundation and Unite Us among others have initiated a way of fragmenting the delivery of services to our military veterans to be able to address their most pressing need without any conflict of interest. The fragmented nature of service delivery by nonprofit organizations in the United States to people should be controlled because it would improve the sufficiency of the care for most inhabitants of the city and the targeted population.

A Donor’s Guide to Support the Non-profitable Organizational Serving the Needs of Veterans and the Military

Currently, various donors that would wish to make any kind of contribution toward the non-governmental charitable projects which tend to serve military veterans; however, they are typically regulated since there are so many of such organizations, over 40,000 to 400,000 that are committed to serving the military veterans (Feiock & Andrew 2006,759-769). Additionally, the figure of the veteran charities has been continuously increasing at an alarming rate; the number had risen by 41% since 2008, based on the reports by The Urban Institute 'The Nonprofit Times' article.

With several veterans and military organizations competing for charitable donors, the donors must be well informed. This ensures that the donations issued are appropriately managed and utilized as per the stated activity and designed plans in assisting the military veterans. For instance, the Charity Watch has been given the responsibility of regulating and keeping such organizations in check. The charity watch's ratings provide the donors with the information to carefully select financially viable veterans and military charity. Another resource that the donors can find useful is a publication by The Philanthropy Roundtable titled Serving Those Who Served (2013). The stated platforms tend to effectively assist and guide donors to where their donations can have the most significant impact for veterans and military members in need of specific services (Kramer 1994, 33-60).

Nonetheless, donors are obliged to regard some of the outlines in the constitution and the role of the government and also consider the budget of the non-profitable organizations as compared to that of the federal government when deciding on the most appropriate manner to facilitate and support the US military veterans.

How Competition Policy Tried to Deal With Fragmentation of Service Delivery

Generally, much of what can be widely categorized as "competition policy" in service delivery to the military veterans is based on the use of antitrust principles to the behaviour and structure of a specific non-profit organization instead of any statutory enactments in most instances. Firstly, applying standard principles of non-profit organization serving the military veteran and their families, the agencies have committed relatively more resources to address the issues of cartels, unnecessary mergers of the charities and professional retraining in the organizations and managed veteran and military managed care services(Garforth, Angell, Archer, & Green 2003,323). Again, the agencies have been involved in extensive quasi-administrative attempts to facilitate donation strategies and organizations favorable to competition and service delivery efficiency.

Fragmentation at the service delivery level, frustrated competition policy in several manners. For the large proportion of physicians practising in relatively smaller groups or single-speciality practices, adapting to managed the military veteran care's incentives for risk-sharing and tended to be challenging. In some of the clinical and economic decision-making organization such as dealing with capitation, the organizations are subject to issues of over optimism, endowment bias. Fragmentation emerging from health care financing, for instance, facilitated the aspects and served to undermine controlled care's incentives to enable the development of effective delivery organizations. In trying to deal with the fragmentation of the service delivery has currently proven to be challenging due to the growing number of the many charitable organizations that tend to serve the military veterans. Many of the organizations tend to be overlapping on their service provision most of the time, regardless of the fragmentation effort.

The Dimension of Service Delivery Fragmentation

The issue of dimension on fragmentation is mostly regarded as when too many non-profit organizations and many donors working on too many projects to assist the veterans. This has been identified as a problem to the recipients in the long run. The fragmentation of the service delivery is regarded to be amassing the problem in donations, due to complicated and costly management cost on the organizations and donor side due to the unnecessary duplication of donor activities. Even though the political economy of charitable aid within the US tends to describe as to why most donors seem to fragment their service delivery.

Revenue of the Nonprofit Sector

Government incentives and donations majorly generate US non-profit revenue. Government support is comprised of grants to facilitate the services of the most non-profit organization. Private sources include donations from well, other foundations, and as federated granters such as the United Way. Due to the unidentified and many sources of revenue generation, the organizations may end up misaligning the sources and thus compromising the quality of the service provided by the non-profit organization in the US. For instance, in 2007, the foundations received an estimated figure of $32 billion out of $ 1.32 trillion of the US's budget (Gronbjerg 2001, 276).

The percentage of revenue source differs based on the sector and by type of organization. Nonetheless, some of the non-profits organizations are still primarily funded by the private sector, such as donors and other well-wishers (Jaskyte & Kisieliene 2006, 165). Most of the non-profit organizations thus tend to compete for the funding as each one is just concerned with their approach and their line of service delivery within the United States.

Changing Philanthropists and Changing Expectations

The changing nature of philanthropists and constantly altering expectations has further led to the fragmentation of the non-profit organizations within the US borders. A change in which the funders currently perceive on the basis of giving or donations has dramatically changed as well. Most of the donors now consider more about social investment as opposed to just writing of checks (Lipsky & Smith 1989, 625). The drastic shift of perception has greatly altered the flow of money among many of the non-profit organizations, individual expectations of what to require and how the various institution in the non-profit sector tend to relate to each other.

Most individual philanthropist view on donation is changing in manners which impact the nature of giving and the expectations that are tied to it (Verschuere, Brandsen, & Pestoff 2012, 1083). Earning this wealth rather than inheriting it and presenting at a younger age than in previous generations have changed the expectations that individuals have when they give grants or donations. This perception sometimes results in relatively lesser allocation to some of the organization; thus, they may never be in a position to deliver their services as they might have planned earlier.

Regional Fragmentation and Its Effects

Changes in regional fragmentation influence the fragmentation of service delivery and care that individual may gain. Provided that a specific organization tailors service delivery decision closer to the particular preferences and needs of an individual such as a military veteran, the approximated impact of the regional fragmentation on such a person's degree of service delivery and care tends to be compromised and widened(Koschinsky & Swanstrom 2001,111). The geographic variations in service delivery can be decomposed into additively separable individual and place-based components. Many researchers have also suggested that regional fragmentation seem to influence the service delivery by most non-profit organizations within the US other than just the general utilization of such services. Moreover, the fact that the people who tend to benefit in the fragmented areas decrease their utilization of the primary services delivered but maximizing the figure of those who gain from such services because it gives significant use of the specialization of the organization.

Distinguishing Between Specialization and Fragmentation

When the non-profits move to areas with more fragmented patterns of service delivery, their service provision seems to be relatively more expensive to manage, and the service provider to those in need have to be more frequent. One of the measures of the fragmentation is as a result of an increase in the scope of service delivery by a non-profit organization. Therefore, it contributes towards the greater costs and even more complicated coordination within an organization due to the fragmentation of the service delivery hence engaging a wider set of the specialist in the service provision.

Policies Aimed At Improving the Non-Profit Organization Incentives in the US

Most of the anti-fragmentation policies are founded on the belief that in a fragmented service delivery system, the cost of repercussions of more fragmented service provision and care decision tend to be viewed as externalities to other primary services offered by the non-profit organization (LeRoux 2008, 160). It tends that enhancing incentives so that the organizations have to internalize their internal expenses aimed to decrease costly fragmentation and promote the welfare of both the beneficiaries of the programs and to a non-profit organization (Mcloughlin 2011, 240)...