Potential Sustainability of Educating the Future

Discuss about the Episodic Volunteering and Retention.

Community engagement is the process of working collaboratively with the community groups for addressing their issues and developing their well-being (Douglas 2017). The organization chosen for this study is Educating the Future, which is a highly recognized non-profit organizational in Australian. The organization is focused on overall community development through educating and developing the students and youths. The study will discuss the potential for sustainability from financial, environmental and from the volunteer perspective. The study will analyze the needs of Volunteers and discus the difference between the treatments of volunteers versus paid employees. Apart from that, the study will also discuss the point of differentiation of the organization within the community and analyse some positive and negative sustainable issues. Furthermore, the study will assess the stakeholders concerns of the organization.

Table 1: Potential Sustainability of Educating the Future

(Source: Educating the Future 2017)

Volunteers are the backbone for the success of “Educating the Future “. Volunteers have inner willingness to support for the youth development and life empowerment of the people. Therefore, they can provide best services to the community people. On the other hand, the volunteers of Educating the Future often take the responsibility of policy making. The organization need not to pay regular salary to the volunteers, which can actually save overall organizational cost of the organization (Barnes and Schmitz 2016). Volunteers are themselves highly passionate about bringing their community and expertise towards serving the community. Volunteers actually foster efficiency of educational programs of the organization offered to the community people (Hume and Hume 2016). Volunteers also help the organization is raising fund for supporting the educational programs of the organization.

There are great differences between the treatment of volunteers and the paid employees of ‘Educating the Future’. According to Hume and Hume (2015), volunteers are not paid for their work for serving the community. On the other hand, Hyde et al. (2016) opined that paid employees are paid for the work for serving the community. Volunteers are not bound by any working rules for serving the community, whereas the paid employees are bound by the organizational rules and regulations towards serving the community. Volunteers are not pressurized to do any particular work towards serving the community. Moreover, the volunteers are only energized to do their work from their inner motivation. On the other hand, paid employees are sometimes pressurized to some particular work for serving the community (Rathi, Given and Forcier 2016). Moreover, volunteers enjoy flexible working schedule for developing the community, whereas, paid employees may not enjoy flexible working schedule as they are bound by some organizational rules and regulations.

Needs for Volunteers

Table 2: Point differentiation of ‘Educating the Future’ within Community

(Source: Rowe et al. 2014)

According to Barrick et al. (2015), ‘Educating the Future’ is sustainable enough from its financial aspect, as it gets adequate donations from several government agencies and corporate bodies. Furthermore, the organization also gets huge support from Unicef in getting adequate learning materials for educating the youths. Furthermore, Hume and Hume (2015) pointed out that ‘Educating the Future’ is also socially sustainable through developing and educating the youth across the global countries. The organization is also concerned about rural development through establishing Pre-school Construction. However, Rowe et al. (2014) opined that ‘Educating the Future’ is only dependent on Alola Foundation for organizing logistics and transportation to Timorese students. Therefore, the organization should source logistic and supply chain network. Apart from that, the organization is also limited to its environmental concerns towards protecting the environment.

As per the theory of third section, non-for-profit sectors are more concerned about public interest rather than the profit of the business. Public attention is the lifeblood of such non-for-profit organizations. It needs to make numbers of concerned stakeholders for getting success and making own identification within community. Likewise, ‘Educating the Future’ is highly concerned about developing the community through educating the youths. They are not concerned about their own profit, rather, they just collect donation for provide innovative and quality education to the students for overall community development. As per the Triple Bottom Line of sustainability theory, ‘Educating the Future’ is economically sustainable enough through getting huge donations from government agencies and corporate bodies. Furthermore, the organization is sustainable from its social aspect through developing and educating the youths. However, the organization is limited to economical sustainability, as it does not have any direct initiatives to protect the environment.

Table 3: Stakeholders Concerns in ‘Educating the Future’

(Source: Beer et al. 2017)

Conclusion

While concluding the study, it can be said that ‘Educating the Future’ is sustainable enough from its financial and volunteer aspects. The organization gets adequate financial supports and donations from large government agencies and corporate agency. Volunteers are high passionate and willing to serve the community even without getting any pay for their effort. Therefore, the organization gets genuine support from the volunteers for support educational development of the community. The highly qualified and trained teachers and life empowering lessons for the organization have made it different in the community. Moreover, the organization is highly concerned about the needs of its stakeholders towards overall development of the community.

Reference List

Barnes, M. and Schmitz, P., 2016. Community engagement matters (now more than ever). Stanford Social Innovation Review, 14(2), pp.32-9.

Barrick, M.R., Thurgood, G.R., Smith, T.A. and Courtright, S.H., 2015. Collective organizational engagement: Linking motivational antecedents, strategic implementation, and firm performance. Academy of Management Journal, 58(1), pp.111-135.

Beer, H.A., Beer, H.A., Micheli, P. and Micheli, P., 2017. How performance measurement influences stakeholders in not-for-profit organizations. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 37(9), pp.1164-1184.

Douglas, W., 2017. Looking Outward: Archival Research as Community Engagement. Community Literacy Journal, 11(2), pp.30-42.

Educating The Future. 2017. Educating The Future. [online] Available at: https://www.educatingthefuture.org/ [Accessed 23 Oct. 2017].

Hume, C. and Hume, M., 2015. The critical role of internal marketing in knowledge management in not-for-profit organizations. Journal of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing, 27(1), pp.23-47

Hume, C. and Hume, M., 2016. What about us? Exploring small to medium Australian not for-profit firms and knowledge management. Journal of Knowledge Management, 20(1), pp.104-124.

Hyde, M.K., Dunn, J., Bax, C. and Chambers, S.K., 2016. Episodic volunteering and retention: an integrated theoretical approach. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 45(1), pp.45-63.

Rathi, D., Given, L.M. and Forcier, E., 2016. Knowledge needs in the non-profit sector: an evidence-based model of organizational practices. Journal of Knowledge Management, 20(1), pp.23-48.

Rowe, A.L., Nowak, M., Quaddus, M. and Naude, M., 2014. Stakeholder engagement and sustainable corporate community investment. Business Strategy and the Environment, 23(7), pp.461-474.