Question

A role is a set of social expectations. After reading about the different responsibilities of a nonprofit manager, consider what might happen if a manager mixes roles and finds herself or himself torn in several directions by conflicting expectations? For your initial post, write a short story that describes a realistic example of a role conflict that a nonprofit manager might encounter. Comment on two of your peers’ posts, offering a solution to the conflict, and comment on others' solutions, alternative ways to deal with the situation. Make sure you are specific about what actions need to be taken and how those actions would solve the problem.

Answer 1

A non-profit manager handles a more complex role than a normal manager. Hence it is required that the non-profit manager has role clarity and identifies the management expectations from his role quite clearly. I had a friend who had left a lucrative marketing job in a well-established company to take up a non-profit manager job in a not-for-profit social organization. It was his job to raise funds and manage the raised funds to facilitate the various social causes supported by the company. He was doing quite well for the initial 6 months. But then the marketing manager inside him started taking control of his role as the non-profit manager. He started looking at every fund objective from a profit perspective. This affected various decisions of the organization and led the company to miss on various opportunities. The profit objective working in his hindsight was messing with his decisions and eventually he got projected as a real bad non-profit manager. He was asked by the company to take a break from his role for 2 weeks and come with a clean slate mind and clearer objectives. The non-profit manager needs to learn the art of focusing on the cause of the business and to forget the normal for profit objectives. This will facilitate a non-profit manager to excel in his role.