Ferland Final Project Reflection

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Southern New Hampshire University *

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445

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Management

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Apr 3, 2024

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1 Final Project: Reflective Essay Kylie Ferland Southern New Hampshire University OL-445-H3935 Professor Sofoklis Hiotellis February 26. 2024

2 Over the years, I have benefited from and been involved in nonprofit organizations. I benefitted from Upward Bound, a nonprofit organization that is part of the Trio Program, which helped me get to college. I was also involved in a nonprofit that was funded through AmeriCorps through the Greensboro Housing Authority (GHA). This allowed me to grow as an educator. These two programs were similar to the school of the Emerald City Community Economic Development Corporation because they both are wanting to help the students who are in low- income families. When I was working for the nonprofit with GHA, I really learned about outreach and how to grow the program. This was something that I thought about when I was working throughout the project. I was able to think about what I knew and what I needed to do to help the organization grow. I am going to have a long career in the nonprofit world because I will be opening a nonprofit tutoring center so understanding how to look at the financial statements, the goals, and the personnel were vital for me in the course. When looking over the financial statements and creating the one- and five-year budgets, I learned about looking to the future and making educated guesses to predict what an organization would need for their budget. I know this is an important aspect of a nonprofit organization. This allowed me to practice various accounting principals that were taught in past classes. In the future, when running my own nonprofit, I will be sure to have a financial manager who is skilled in all things financial as that will most likely not always be my strongest skill. I have learned more, but there is always room to grow and learn. Somethings that I might do differently include preparing different budgets that have different rates of growth, looking at programming more conservatively, and looking at different programs and outreach strategies. These are things that I hope to implement in my own nonprofit.

3 Outreach is one of my favorite portions of this project. This is something that I have been good at and learned through various programs I have been involved with. When looking at various outreach strategies, you have to be detailed oriented to get the results that you are looking for. It will allow you to build the strategy and become more successful. One of my outreach strategies was a corporate sponsorship and this is something that I really thought about because you want to make sure that the corporate sponsor is benefiting from the partnership as well. When I work with my nonprofit, I will be looking at getting as much information on the target audience as I can so that I know how to best engage with them. Something that I will be doing differently in the future would be to look at the costs of any outreach versus the benefits that we receive from them. This could cause a program to be successful or fail. When looking at the governance structure of ECCED, I learned a lot about how different organizations can be laid out. I learned how important the structures of an organization are to the success of the organization. For this project, I focused on the Board of Directors and their involvement in the organization. One thing that I learned was that when board members concentrate on the areas that they are the most passionate about will help the organization grow. Organizations are able to use many different structures, however, I would look at the organization in the past and evaluate what each board member brings to the table. This will allow me to structure the organization in a way that benefits the organization. I will also be researching the various management structures that there are and pick the one that best fits the organization. When looking at the decisions that management has made, there was a lot of information to take in. I saw how easily management decisions can get into situations that can be detrimental to an organization. There were personnel issues that developed over time. While it may have allowed the organization to function for the time being, it put the organization at risk. Through

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4 this, I was able to look at the situations objectively and make decisions that were best for the organization as I was not the one directly involved with the creation of the situations. However, if I were, I would need to take a step back and get advice from others that are not directly involved with the situation. Decisions that are made for the best of the organization are the ones that need to be made, not decisions that are made for the best of the individual. New programming is vital to the growth of an organization. Yet, it was a challenging process to go through. Some things that should be considered that I unfortunately did not, are things like staffing, acquiring funding, determining the target audience, and implementation of the programming. Looking toward the future, I would more likely break down the total cost of the program and implement it into steps. This will allow the program to succeed and it also ensures that there is proper staffing for the program. Leading a nonprofit as the Executive Director was an amazing experience. It helped me to better understand my strengths and weaknesses. Being able to be flexible within this course with the choices of how to improve the organization helped me to try new things and learn about areas I was still hesitant on. Looking at how to create and implement a program was helpful to be because I want to be able to grow my nonprofit from a tutoring center to a safe place for all students. I was also able to build the skills that I have as a manager utilizing real-life scenarios that are not always encountered in my current situation. Leading a nonprofit organization was a great exercise to gauge where I am at and what I should look at for the future to continue to grow.

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Ferland Final Project Reflection

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