Annotated Bibliography for Final Project . Improving the Accountability and Responsibility of Professionals and Volunteers of Non-Profit Organizations’ Staff

This is related to proposal for final project
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY: Each student will be required to submit a research report on a human resource issue confronting an organization and how the organization dealt with it. Each student will be required to provide an assessment of how the organization, the governmental entity, or the government dealt with the issue. This assignment will allow you to perform background research on the final report by compiling citations with brief descriptions of the citation.

Course: PA522 Human Resources Management Assignment:

Topic: Improving the Accountability and Responsibility of Professionals and Volunteers of Non-Profit Organizations’ Staff Project Summary:
Many charity organizations fail each year often before achieving their desired goals because of poor mismanagement. The very nature of failing non-profits stems from their management. Each non-profit organization must have a board of directors to steer the organization to achieve its strategic goals. They can hire and fire staff among other responsibilities. The intention of having board of directors is to check the powers of the chief executive to ensure accountability and commitment to the objectives of the organization. However, in some cases, the chicf executives install puppet board of directors or collude with the board members for mutual malicious gains. In such cases, the initial chccks and balances intended to ensure accountable leadership of the organization is lost and many non-profits arc unable to run sustainably.
Healing Arts Initiative (HAI) was a non-profit founded in 1969 aiming to remove barriers to arts and culture and inspire healing growth and learning through engagement. In 2011, it hired Kim Williams as a payroll clcrk who went on to embezzle funds from the organization for nearly 5 years. The schcme went undctcctcd and even measures to establish why the organization had a bad financial footing were unsuccessful. In 2015, a new chicf executive, Alexander Dyer, was hired and uncovered Kim William’s scheme. She was however fired with a new CFO who she had hired to streamline operations and uncover the money trails of the organization. Dyer claims that her firing was retaliatory from the board of directors when she went after Williams to investigate the embezzlement of funds. She was attacked with drain clcaner which disfigured her face and the organization filed for bankruptcy when she sued the board of directors for overseeing the embezzlement of funds. The timing of Dyers firing and lack of cooperation by the board of directors’ point to potential collusion with Kim Williams in embezzling nearly $750,000 in the four years leading to the filing of bankruptcy.
It is clcar from the case that basic concepts of responsibility and accountability by either the volunteer or professional leadership were not exercised. The issues boil down to the laxity of proper oversight by the top management to ensure accountability of non-profit organization staff. The organization failed becausc of the following human resource issues:
Failure to have chccks and balances for leaders in sensitive dockets i.e finance in nonprofit organizations - if only the disbursement of funds above a certain threshold was subjected to multiple approval stages, it would have been harder for Williams to embezzle funds and or go undctcctcd for long.
Critical roles in the organization must be done by professionals who arc bound by performance contracts - The CEO before Dyer could have uncovered the scheme but seemingly, she was an accomplicc to the crimes. Performance contracts ensure that all professionals must measure up to their expectations. The incumbent executive must have been held accountable to explain the downward spiral of the organization before it was too late.
I am interested in exploring how non-profits can be organized in a manner that is in the non-profit’s best interest. The human factor is usually the main stumbling block becausc of the laxity and shallow oversight by authorities.
The methodology I will employ is to investigate the culture, human resource policies and