10: Managing Money

Background

Financial management is an important function within all institutions, whether it is an NGO, a business corporation or a government entity. Through its finances, an institution can determine how much it can spend and how much it needs in order to keep the institution running. For NGOs, financial management plays an important role, especially since the majority of the money comes from donations; thus, there is a high accountability and responsibility for organizations on how they spends their money. Furthermore, through effective and efficient financial management, organizations are able to allocate their resources accordingly and to protect themselves from financial risks.

NCRIC has a financial management that is managed by the director of the organization. Furthermore, she is responsible for all the grant writing proposals as well as the monitoring and evaluating where the money is being used. The major contributors of NCRIC’s program are the following entities:

Herb Block Foundation

Vera Institute of Justice

The Jolie-Pitt Foundation

Skadden

Smith Reynolds Foundation

Kind & Spalding

Rescur and Restore

Lathan and Watkinds

Akin Gump, Strauss Hauer & Feld, Llp

McDermott Will & Emery

American College of Trial Lawyers

Manatt

Western Union Foundation

Weil Gotshal

Holland+Knight

Morton K. and Jane Blaustein Foundation

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Analysis

One of the key problems that I already mentioned in the previous chapters of this project is the lack of funding. Due to lack of funding, the director of this organization mentions that the organization is unable to do a rigorous evaluation. Another negative consequence due to lack of funding is the inability to accept children who are accompanied, except when these children were referred from Vera Institute of Justice. As I discussed earlier, this poses a significant challenge in terms of personal values, especially among immigration assistants who are the ones that have to refuse the services to many of the children who calls for assistance. Since NCRIC’s mission statement specifies that its target audience is unaccompanied children, refusing accompanied children should not be a problem. However, as I discussed in chapter two of this project, the organization should begin to evaluate and gradually expand its target audience since it is receiving many phone calls requesting services from accompanied children.

Expanding services is a large step for NCRIC but this is viable when the organization works on its financial management. One of the key steps that NCRIC should do is to evaluate its program to examine where all the money is going and whether there are any processes that are unnecessary or ineffective. If there are no funding to do evaluation, NCRIC, when requesting its grants from donors, should negotiate and educate the donors the need and/or the importance of doing evaluation. Second step that NCRIC should work on is to raise more funding for the organization. The organization should focus on the development side of the organization, such as writing grant proposals that would sponsor the new initiative to expand services to accompanied children, fundraising events, and effective marketing strategies. All these steps as well as the process of gradually accepting accompanied children are achievable because NCRIC has already began its acceptance through the funding of Vera Institute of Justice.

Recommendations

• • NCRIC should evaluate its program to determine the effectivity and the continuity of certain processes/activities of the program.

  • NCRIC should educate and negotiate with existing donors the need and the importance of allocating its resources for evaluation.

  • NCRIC should heavily invest in organizational development, such as grant writing, fundraising, and new market strategies.