Ensuring Accountability and Sustainability in Non-Profit Organizations Through Organizational Communication

Proceedings of The 3rd World Conference on Media and Communication

Year: 2023

DOI:

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Ensuring Accountability and Sustainability in Non-Profit Organizations Through Organizational Communication

Prof.Lida Holtzhausen

ABSTRACT: 

Nonprofit organizations in South Africa face a range of challenges, some of which are critical at times. These organizations have a responsibility to be accountable, sustainable, transparent in their goals and funding activities, whilst improving quality of life. They play a pivotal role in raising awareness of issues, getting them noted by government and at times the international arena to secure upliftment, protection, empowerment, mutual responsibility, and good governance. The harsh reality in South Africa is that these organizations can no longer rely on the developing nation status which has assisted in securing support from international partners. They need to address the challenges they face in terms of communication and beyond the communication border to transform their communities. This raises the question: how can NPOs reposition themselves through their organizational communications and public relations, to ensure accountability and sustainability given the evolving global challenges these organizations face? The research approach is qualitative in nature, drawing on communication literature as applied in both the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors as well as semi-structured interviews with 30 non-profit organizations spread across various sectors of the South African society. The chosen non-profit organizations range from large non-profit organizations with communication departments responsible for the communication function of the organizations to small non-profit organizations who do not have any communication infrastructure to support their communication. The sampling methods is random sampling and various non-profits organizations were requested to take part in this exploratory study.

keywords: communication, management, non-profit organizations, public relations, South Africa