Case Study Discussion: Youth Organization

Theme: national youth organization
After examining the case study discuss the following questions: 1
. Understanding of the composition of your board and on the history and the culture of your organization, how would you  lay the foundations for significant changes that you believe need to be undertaken?
2. How would you commence and proceed. Provide the reasons for which you could make these changes.

CASE STUDY: National Youth Organization

You are the president of a large youth organization of services, with 100 chapters located in communities across the country. Your board of directors of 51 people, 30 are representatives of the largest local chapters, elected to their chapters of the annual meetings. Another 15 are heads of businesses and 6 are ex-officio members identified in the charter. The ex-officio members include the two U.S. senators from the state or the organization has been incorporated, the governors of the first three states or the chapters have been established, and the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. The ex-officio members rarely attend the meetings of the Council and the business leaders do erratically, so that the chapter representatives are generally about 90 per cent of those who were present.

Your organization offers a wide range of programs for youth, including leadership training, recreational programs for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, drug and alcohol education programs, teenage pregnancy prevention programs, counselling and support for children of military families, and a conservation program which engages young people in outdoor activities in the maintenance of parks and trails. Programs are very decentralized and local chapters decide which provide in their communities. Most are managed by volunteers. The major chapters have paid an executive director, but some smaller have only a person part-time or not at all.

Fund-raising is also highly decentralized. Local chapters raise money for their programs and their pay "dues" to support the national office. The main activities of the national office are a public communication/education initiative, development of training programs for local volunteers, and the production of program materials that most of the chapters use but often adapt to their own purposes.

You have been in your position just six months. You have studied your financial situation of the organization and have read reports of evaluation of its programs undertaken by consultants. You are convinced that it is involved in too many different activities and that some of its programs are not acceptable to achieve the results. You believe that they need to focus on two or three areas of program, which makes these excellent, and abandon the other competing organizations who have strengthen the programs. In addition, you're convinced that the programs must be defined by the national office and that the guidelines should be given to the local chapters on how to manage and measure the results.

You are also concerned by the fact that a number of local chapters are running on a tightrope financial with little supervision, leading to uneven quality in the programs and even the possibility of financial mismanagement which would embarrass the whole of the organization. You think that the most appropriate approach would be to increase the chapter contributions, to consolidate the chapters, re-allocate funds with grants from the national to the chapters the poorest, and implement financial controls.

Understanding of the composition of your board and on the history and the culture of your organization, how would you do it to lay the foundations for significant changes that you believe need to be undertaken? Or is it that you start and what would you do then? Why?