Loretto of Central New York is a not-for profit organization specializing in the care of the frail elderly. The following report is a comparative analysis of the operations of senior health care organizations in the Northeast United States as requested by Kathy Ruscitto, Senior Vice President of Policy and Development at Loretto. A consulting team of public administration students at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs undertook this project under the auspices of the Public Organizations and Management Course. Loretto is developing an organization wide endowment campaign that requires the participation of both the fundraising and operational units. Our consulting team in conjunction with Kathy Ruscitto developed an initiative to benchmark competing organizations with a focus on their internal communications and fundraising capabilities.
Our consulting team created a comprehensive questionnaire that examined fundraising strategies, organizational structure and hierarchy, and internal operations before contacting six competing agencies. This survey is comprised specifically of 18 questions that provide insight into the systems used by those organizations to share information interdepartmentally and with potential donors. It also addresses the issue of funds within these organizations in terms of sources, types of funding, usage of funds, and types of contributors. The questionnaire also addresses the issue of the methods and activities these organizations have of attracting contributors and informing them of donor opportunities. To facilitate the gathering of data, the consulting team implemented a three-step method to procure an assessment of the situation including survey design, data collection and analysis.
Our final analysis provided in depth examination of organizational dynamics including motivation and diversity, power and conflict, structure and design, technology, culture, and environment. We found that among the benchmarked organizations and Loretto, there is a disinclination among donors to contribute to causes benefiting the elderly. This ambivalence about making contributions to the aged is attributed to the lack of information about the need for research and support for that demographic. To combat this trend, our research supports the conclusion that there is a need to create a structural link between the Loretto Foundation and the operational units. This should be implemented at the lowest level possible and be based upon equal interaction between these two entities and the subgroups they represent in order to best achieve the shared goals of the larger Loretto organization. The need to establish greater communications between the Loretto Foundation and the many operational units is a primary goal of this report. In addition, exploration of the possibility of a restructuring so that the Vice President of the Loretto Foundation has ad hoc responsibility over some of the operational staff. This can take the form of an actual physical presence in the same building to increase the flow of communications.
