American arts service organisations: Conduits for millions in funding

Although national arts service organisations in the United States existed prior to the establishment of the National Endowment for the Arts in 1965, the real growth and development of the arts service field owes a large debt to the emergence of government as an official supporter of the cultural industry. As the number of arts organisations multiplied at a frightening pace throughout the mid 'sixties and early 'seventies, the need for concrete data and for new insights into funding and audience development techniques grew quickly. As the need for arts funding increased, private foundations felt a growing strain on their resources. Many larger foundations discovered that in order to make a significant impact with a far-reaching programme in a key area of concern, involving scores of grantees, the logistics could be staggering. An answer to this problem lay in the use of conduits, as potential grant recipients that could best serve the programme's needs. In turning to national arts service organisations to help them administer some of their key programmes foundations found more than willing partners. The following paper surveys some of the interesting, cost-effective and productive programmes that have linked foundations and arts service organisations to meet the needs of the arts industry.     

New approaches to funding not‐for‐profit organisations

This paper seeks to record and to explain the enormous growth in interest over the last few years in the provision of loans and other investment to not‐for‐profit organisations. It argues that this funding development fills a gap in the market. It describes the following new approaches: social investment, the provision of ‘patient capital’, and an ‘investment’ or ‘venture philanthropy’ approach to grant making. The factors driving the growth in use of these approaches are examined and their relevance to fundraising charities considered. Finally, the paper discusses how key stakeholders including the government and charitable trusts are adapting to this new environment. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications     

Employer organisations transformed

Employer organisations and the literature examining them have transformed since their inception in the 19th century. We systematically review this literature and the evolving role of employer organisations by focusing on the most cited publications of this body of academic work. This article provides a synopsis of our current understanding of employer organisations, identifies gaps in our knowledge, and develops the following argument. Employer organisations adapted to changing socio‐economic contexts by evolving within and across three roles—as industrial relations actor, political actor, and service provider. Historically, employer organisations were predominantly understood as an industrial relations actor with collective bargaining as their defining activity. However, employer organisations also influenced the political process through lobbying and participating in corporatist arrangements, although more recently their provision of member services has grown in scope and importance.     

Knowledge sharing in diverse organisations

It has been argued that both strengths and weaknesses of diversity in organisations stem from the different demographic, national, linguistic, social and cultural backgrounds of their members. However, few attempts have been made to link different types of diversity to knowledge sharing despite the fact that organisations which can make full use of their collective knowledge and expertise could be expected to be more efficient, effective and creative. Therefore, a survey was directed towards 16 diverse academic departments in three large universities in Denmark, and 489 academics took part. As predicted, results showed that diversity related to internationalisation (cultural and linguistic) had more positive associations with knowledge sharing than inherent demographic diversity (age and gender), which generally had negative or no relationships with knowledge sharing. The implications of these findings for the management of knowledge in intensive diverse organisations are discussed in detail.     

Attracting members to avocational nonprofit organisations

For avocational nonprofit organisations, ‘marketing’ means attracting and retaining members. Avocational organisations experiencing membership difficulties may offer a variety of explanations, the most frequent one being a purported shrinkage of leisure time for the average American. The 68 largest avocational nonprofit organisations in the USA were studied in an attempt to identify common factors associated with membership success, and to confirm or disprove commonly offered explanations for membership distress. Very few general attributes could be found; in most cases, an organisation's success or distress seem to stem from factors that are specific to that organisation. Copyright © 1999 Henry Stewart Publications     

浅谈在基层医院实行电子档案管理

随着信息技术的不断发展,计算机网络的应用已经渗透到各行各业,不断地改变着人们的工作模式,大大提高了工作效率的同时,也为工作提供了不少便利。目前,计算机信息系统和网络已经覆盖绝大多数医疗行业的临床一线和行政后勤工作,这就促使以往以纸质形式存在的文件和资料转为电子化,而且伴随科技的不断进步和医院业务的不断发展,这类电子化的文件将日益增多。这使档案工作者将面对更多的机读形式以磁盘、光盘等为载体的档案,像这类电子档案的生成和利用方式与传统纸质载体档案有着很大的区别。文章结合当下电子档案管理的现状,浅谈在基层医院实行电子档案管理。     

挡不住的企业风险筹资

当前企业普遍面临资金短缺问题,负债筹资已成为多数企业一个非常重要的融资渠道,也是企业普遍采用的一种方式.有负债就会有筹资风险,因此,因负债而引起的风险也是每个企业都不能回避的现实问题.     

Strategies for competitive advantage in nonprofit organisations

In the commercial sector, a range of strategies has been proposed for competitive advantage. Many of these strategies are inappropriate for nonprofit organisations. (The terms ‘nonprofit’, ‘not-for-profit’ and ‘charity’ are used interchangeably in this paper.) This paper proposes four generic strategies for competitive advantage in nonprofit organisations: externally driven, niche, differentiation and awareness. The niche strategy has two sub-strategies: the issue or emotional niche and the geographical niche. Differentiation has three sub-strategies; differentiation by audience, differentiation by product and differentiation by belief. These four strategies are not mutually exclusive and many nonprofit organisations move from one strategy to another. A development model for these transitions is proposed.     

Five direct marketing strategies for nonprofit organisations

This paper outlines five direct marketing strategies which nonprofit organisations are following; Donation-led, Intimacy, Audience-led, Product-led and Multi-product. The purpose in identifying these strategies is to show that nonprofit organisations have a greater range of strategic choices than is often assumed. The second part of the paper looks at the building blocks for a successful direct marketing strategy and shows how they differ between the five strategies. Direct marketing is used as a generic term throughout this paper. Relationship marketing is used to indicate relationship building, as opposed to simply communicating directly.     

Hierarchies in organisations and labour market competition

This paper studies the endogenous determination of hierarchies in firms. Firms can design a hierarchy with a continuum of ranks, one for each ability level. Nevertheless, in the market equilibrium, they choose to have only a finite number of ranks, so that in each rank there are workers of different abilities, who produce different output, and receive the same wage. It is also shown that an increase in the extent of labour market competition reduces the number of ranks in the hierarchy.     

Naivety and relationship marketing in nonprofit organisations

The widespread adoption of the language and concepts of marketing as a series of exchanges with customers continues to present problems to nonprofit organisations. Measured against marketing orthodoxy their approach to marketing might appear naive, but it is often effective. This paper discusses five differences between ‘orthodox’ and ‘naive’ marketing (nature of the exchange, focus of the encounter, attitude to technology, attitude to product and plans for the customer) to explore the nature of naive marketing. The role and importance of product or service in nonprofits is emphasised as a crucial difference. Finally, the emerging discipline of relationship marketing is argued to be a framework which vindicates many of the positions of naive marketers and to offer a valuable source of theory for nonprofit marketing.     

Direct marketing managers in UK charitable organisations

Although the charity sector is one of the United Kingdom's biggest users of direct marketing, little is known about the characteristics of the people who manage direct marketing within charities. This paper presents the results of a survey of 115 direct marketing managers in the UK's largest fundraising charitable organisations; focusing on their experience, motivation, training and educational backgrounds. The degrees to which respondents' employing organisations placed a high value on the marketing function and the extents to which various categories of direct marketing manager possessed wide-ranging general managerial competencies were also examined. There was little evidence of the ‘hybridisation’ of direct marketing specialists. Rather, individuals exhibiting hybrid manager attributes were sometimes put in charge of direct marketing.     

The strategic role of knowledge management in nonprofit organisations

• Australian nonprofit organisations (NFPs) operate in an increasingly competitive marketplace for funding staff and volunteers and donations. In this context, many NFPs are being driven to adopt more commercial practices in order to improve their strategic performance, particularly competitive positioning for donor appeal, staff retention and service strategy and delivery. Knowledge management (KM) is one commercial practice being explored and implemented by the NFP sector to support strategic performance and operations. Although the concept of knowledge management is basically understood, the implications and strategies to pursue this practice in a NFP context are under explored. This paper presents a KM implementation planning framework for discussion and further research in the NFP sector. Specifically, this paper proposes that NFP's unique missions, many and varied organisational structures and operational maturity requires a customised approach to knowledge management. Implications for competitive strategy and performance are discussed.

© 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The coordination roles of relief organisations in humanitarian logistics

The number of organisations involved in relief work in general and humanitarian logistics specifically is large and increasing, creating new complexity. In this paper we analyse different types of coordination and roles in two case studies of the humanitarian cluster system based on its initial development and the Kenyan Post-election crisis. The different and unclear roles of the organisations create significant problems before and after cluster activation and deactivation. Individual organisations take on many roles in the cluster system and beyond it in terms of coordination. The clarity of the roles affects the need for and ease of coordination. We suggest a simple basic categorisation of roles as a starting point for developing this concept in the field of humanitarian logistics and connect this to coordination.     

Adapting to survive: The case of Danish employers' organisations

Scholars often characterise Danish employers' organisations (EOs) as relatively stable, with a continuing role in the coordination of industrial relations and corporatist policymaking. This article shows that, beneath surface stability, Danish EOs have significantly adapted structurally and functionally to survive environmental pressures. However, rather than converging onto a liberal market trajectory, we find that Danish EOs have layered new functions onto traditional collective functions. We also find significant variations in functional adaptation depending on the employer constituencies' exposure to international competition and position in value chains. We argue that these adaptations imply that the provision of collective goods, especially in collective bargaining, is no longer sufficient for the survival of EOs.