Concepts in Non Profit Organizations

After many years of management in the profit sector of business I set my sights on the not for profit arena. With all the determination, commitment and leadership that I thought I had acquired throughout the years I ventured forth with high levels of confidence that ended abruptly when I began this course. I was thrown off track and almost derailed by the possibility that managing a not for profit organization could be any different than managing a multimillion dollar retail establishment. As the reading and assignments continued I faltered and fell into a state of doubt regarding my ability to master the management of such a complex entity with aspects that were so foreign to the thought process that had been instilled into soul of my being. What if you couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks? How many of those old tricks would have to alter and change in order to be successful in my vision and future venture? It was all very overwhelming and extremely unsettling. It was about the halfway point of the semester that I began to grasp the whole idea that the concepts of business whether profit or not for profit have many similar foundations in their principles but that a not for profit required the knowledge to address the unique aspects of its overall purpose. I then realized that by taking bits and pieces of my past managerial experiences and applying them together with the new knowledge I was absorbing about the distinctive differences that make a not for profit an exclusive entity in the business world, I would be embarking into a blissful blend that would lead me to the design and creation of the organization that I had envisioned for so long. As my journey begins I would like to share with you some of the characteristics that I have found to be similar in the domains of profit and not for profit organizations and some of the differences that are a requisite to the not for profit sector of business. Drawing from my past managerial practices in the for

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