The growing importance of human resource management in the NGO, volunteer and not-for-profit sectors

Predictors of mental health in aid workers: meaning, resilience, and psychological flexibility as personal resources for increased well-being and reduced distress

Aid workers operate in stressful environments and tend to experience high psychological distress, yet not enough is known about their well-being and how to improve their mental health. This research project surveyed 243 aid workers in 77 countries undertaking humanitarian and development work who reported lower well-being and higher psychological distress than the general population. Well-being and distress emerged as two related but distinct mental health outcomes, encouraging further research on well-being in the sector. Better mental health outcomes were predicted by the presence of meaning, psychological flexibility, and resilience. Presence of meaning was the strongest predictor, whereas resilience was the weakest. Meaning was a stronger predictor of good mental health among national workers, whereas psychological flexibility was a stronger predictor among female, older, and international workers. These results can support evidence-based approaches to staff care and mental health interventions for aid workers, expanding the current focus on resilience to include meaning and psychological flexibility.

Financial challenges experienced by South African non-profit organisations regarding CSR implementation

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to understand the financial challenges experienced by non-profit organisations (NPOs) when implementing corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in South Africa. These challenges have a negative impact on NPOs because they impede the successful implementation of CSR projects.

Design/methodology/approach

A qualitative research method and a purposive sampling strategy were used in this study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 employees from three NPOs in South Africa from the education, enterprise development and health and social development sectors. Content analysis was used to examine the data.

Findings

The findings revealed that NPOs in South Africa experience serious financial resource challenges, notably, overreliance on donor funding; difficulty in obtaining donor funding; limited donor funding available; intense competition from other non NPOs to secure donor funding; donors unwilling to fund operational costs and prescribing exactly how funds should be used; and donors signing non-binding contracts on the provision of funding.

Research limitations/implications

The sample size of the study was small, namely, three NPOs from Gauteng Province (Johannesburg) in South Africa. Therefore, this study covered only one geographic area of South Africa and the findings cannot be generalised across other provinces of the country.

Practical implications

The results of this study could have implications for donors and NPO employees involved in CSR activities in South Africa.

Originality/value

This study bridges a gap in literature by revealing the key financial challenges experienced by South African NPOs in implementing CSR initiatives and the impact of those challenges on their CSR efforts.

Managing Cross-Border Conflicts Through Volunteer Commitment: A Comparative Study Between Religious and Non-profit Organizations in the San Diego-Tijuana Area

San Diego and Tijuana configure two big cities that have faced each other across the international boundary between United States and Mexico for over 180 years. Within this context, the relationship emerging at the border can be characterized under different categories of individual, social, economic, and political situations connecting each side. Additionally, in recent years, the literature on cross-border conflicts has extensively focused on volunteers as informal agents helping children and other groups of population, but relatively little research has addressed the practical and managerial work and implications of the volunteers themselves. As actors of cross-border communities, volunteers play a relevant role in effective short-term migrants' settlement, but it is also observed that the profile of volunteers in religious organizations differs from those belonging to non-profit institutions. Grounded on the theories of Planned Behavior and Reasoned Action suggesting that intentions to cooperate with non-government institutions are influenced directly by attitudinal values and indirectly by their beliefs related to social conflicts, this paper analyzes the nature of volunteer commitment in religious and non-profit organizations (NPOs) providing information about managerial practices for newly arrived migrants. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the relevance of volunteer commitment as an instrument for managing cross-border conflicts in the particular context of San Diego and Tijuana Area. Based on research using interview data collected from beneficiaries by volunteers, institutional representatives, and documentary references, this manuscript highlights a psychological and individual-centric perspective of volunteer commitment, but it also explores a collective communicative action expanding the range of relevant voices in decisions about volunteering. Moreover, this study provides new insights into how organizational and relational elements impact sustainable volunteer management and points out the role played by attitudes toward non-government institutions such as religious and NPOs demonstrating the relevance of volunteer commitment, transforming part of the positive attitude toward social problems into a significant intention to cooperation. Understanding the importance of the organization's images in order to attract volunteers, these results show that commitment may become a key determinant of the volunteers' identity linked to strategies devoted to organizational activities.