National Family Legal Foundation: To Be or not to Be - Case Study Example

RUNNING HEAD: THE NATIONAL FAMILY LEGAL FOUNDATION: TO BE OR NOT TO BE The National Family Legal Foundation: To Be Or Not To Be [Course Code] [Instructor] [Date] Abstract Early in 1995, a succesful real estate developer in Arizona by the name of Charles Dunlap was invited to join a local nonprofit organization known as the National Family Legal Foundation. This organization, which began as a small group of concerned citizens in the 1950s, had dedicated itself to fighting the spread, creation, and distribution of pornographic materials. Specifically, the National Family Legal Foundation fought against the purveyors of child pornography. Although Dunlap held most of the qualities needed by the NFLF, he was less than enthusiastic about the organization and about the offer to join. Dunlap believed the organization to be lacking in influence, monies, and motivation: all key aspects to saving a previously prosperous and well-organized organization. Upon accepting the offer under the condition that he would remain on the Board of Directors for a one-year period, Dunlap realized just how disorganized and ineffective the National Family Legal Foundation had become. Dunlap came to realize that he must make a decision: to either allow the National Family Legal Foundation to cease functions and dissipate, or to come up with a plan to save the foundation. This paper will analyze the possible strategic plan needed to save the foundation; and will attempt to measure the potential success of the plan developed. The National Family Legal Foundation: To Be Or Not To Be Background Information The National Family Legal Foundation (NFLF) began as a small group known as the Citizens for Decent Literature (CDL). Charles Keating, a young and assertive lawyer in Cincinnati, started the group as a means to urge prosecutors to begin filing suits against those people who made a living through the publication and distribution of pornographic and other pbscene materials--specifically, the purveyors of child pornography (Buntin, 1999). The Citizens for Decent Literature began in 1957; however, by 1967 the group had already grown into a national organization with more than 300 national chapters. During the 1970s, Keating’s empire grew to include a real-estate development organization--the American Continental Corporation--in Phoenix, Arizona and later Lincoln Savings and Loans in Irvine, California; according to Buntin (1999) the Citizens for Decent Literature, renamed the Citizens for Decency through Law (CDL) continued to grow alongside the rest of Keating’s empire. This growth is attributed to the thousands of dollars donated annually by Keating and by several of Keating’s business associates to the CDL: “...it was commonly known that people who wanted to do business with Keating would be well-advised to support [the] CDL” (p. 2). Close connections with the Reagan Administration’s Justice Department during the 1980s helped further the CDLs mission. By the mid-1980s, the Citizens for Decency through Law had become, essentially, a national law firm. This law firm specialized in the anti-pornography movement; the CDLs staff members, comprised of four full-time lawyers and a large support staff, traveled across the nation to help communities and local attornies begin charging and prosecuting sexually-oriented businesses such as strip clubs, pornographers, adult book stores, and other related businesses. Shortly after Alan Sears joined the Citizens for Decency through Law, things began to change drastically. The first of these changes occurred in 1989 when federal prosecutors raised charges against Keating for racketeering. The charges were based on claims that thousands of depositors had been defrauded. Keating was found guilty in 1990 of more than 40 charges of fraud. Keating’s impending imprisonment and the collapse of his business empire sent the CDL into a downward spiral. Alan Sears noted the CDLs falling credibility in relation to Keating’s legal problems: “It’s pretty hard to raise money for a nonprofit [organization] when it’s national news that the founder is going to prison [for fraud]” (cited in Buntin, 1999, p. 4). Sears took over as the executive director of the Citizens for Decency through Law in an effort to preserve the once prominent organization; to more effectively recognize the founding goals of the CDL, Sears renamed the Citizens for Decency through Law the Children’s Legal Foundation. This new name brought forward the specific goal of the organization to help stop the spread and profiting off child pornography and to stop the exploitation of children by these businesses. Unfortunately, efforts to save the Children’s Legal Foundation failed. Funding was no longer available to cover lawyers fees, advertising, marketing, or carry out the organization’s goals. Other members of the staff were leaving; eventually, Sears left the Children’s Legal Foundation. Around this time, Jay Snyder and James Dobson grew concerned over the uncertain future of the Children’s Legal Foundation (Buntin, 1999). In an effort to re-establish the organization and recruit Sears to once again serve on the organization’s board of directors, they began to raise the necessary funds. The newly organized foundation was renamed the National Family Legal Foundation (NFLF), headed once again by Alan Sears as the executive Director. While the National Family Legal Foundation attempted to run and organize itself based on the past principles of Charles Keating and the Ctizens for Decency through Law, funding was still scarce and NFLF found that they could not give the same attention to the drawn out, complex cases that the CDL had often handled and specialized in. To exacerbate the situation, the National Family Legal Foundation was incredibly understaffed and increasingly underfinanced. An economic recession in the early 1990s hit some of the NFLFs largest investors hard, leaving pockets empty and charity at a minimum. Although barely able to pull through several subsequent crises, the National Family Legal Foundation has maintained the minimal amount of funds needed to support a small organization. However, growing interest has continually caused the NFLF to grow larger than the organization’s funds permits. National Family Legal Foundation’s Mission The National Family Legal Foundation’s mission and organizational goals are clear: to help stop the spread, distribution, and profiting of child pornography and the exploitation of children in sexually oriented businesses. This mission is an almost exact adaptation of the original mission set up by the Citizens for Decent Literature as established by Charles Keating nearly four decades prior. To accomplish these goals, the NFLF lawyers travel across the United States to help prosecutors build cases, file charges, and prosecute purveyors of pornography and other obscene materials. Significance of Strategic Planning for the NFLF Despite the many hardships and its perceived failure, the National Family Legal Foundation has gained the recognition from citizens and lawyers across the United States. For such a small, understaffed, and underfinanced organization to gain national recognition is astounding and implies the level of importance that citizens of the United States places on the work carried out by the organization. Implementing a strategic plan to save the organization and bring it forward out of an uncertain future can create one of two results: either the organization will be saved and continue to work as its founder, Charles Keating, had envisioned--or the organization may fail, leaving behind only the memories of incompetant leadership and poor management. Either outcome will have significant impact on the future of the National Family Legal Foundation and other similar organizations that may come into existence in the future. Correctly implementing a feasible strategic plan to save the NFLF will allow the National Family Legal Foundation to continue its work and carry out its mission; additionally, the recognition gained for the organization will reflect highly on the efforts and abilities of Charles Dunlap. However, poorly implementing a strategic plan, or implementing a bad plan, will reflect poorly on Dunlap and cost him his credibility as well as cost the organization its future. The decision to implement a strategic plan is wrought with both ethical and financial dillemas that the National Family Legal Foundation and its newest member, Dunlap, will need the help of consultants and experts on organizational planning. Additionally, they must engage critical thinking to develop the best plan, effective training and communications to implement and communicate the plan to staff members, and an effective process to measure the quality of the plan and its measured output. Defining a Strategic Plan for the NFLF The first step in defining an appropriate plan of action to save the National Family Legal Foundation is to clearly define the mission and goals of the organization (Bryson, 2004) and the goals to be achieved by the plan itself. In the case of the NFLF, the organizational missions and goals have already been defined and set: to stop the spread of child pornography within the United States through legal means (Buntin, 1999). Logically, the purpose and mission of developing a strategic plan is to help guide the National Family Legal Foundation to supplemental goals, such as setting up appropriate and effective financing, advertising and marketing, and damage control, so the NFLF can strive to meet its organizational goals. Bryson (2004) asserts that defining supplementary goals is vital prior to attempting to implement any new plan or strategy. In accordance with this advice, Dunlap must define the organization’s needs and outline plans to ensure that these needs are met. Some of the more obvious needs include sound financial backing, damage control from past organizational mistakes, and reorganization of the National Family Legal Foundation’s leaders. With such a long and established history of financial backing from real estate developers and other citizens of Arizona, finding potential investors and donators to the organization’s cause should be easy. According to the latest United States Census information, nearly 27% of Arizona’s 7 million residents are children under the age of 18 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2007). With such a large group of parents, communicating the need for laws against the spread of child pornography and child exploitation might prove to be relatively easy. Societal changes since the 1980s have led citizens of the United States into an age where protecting the nation’s children is more important than ever before (Davidson et al, 2002). Just as important is the amount of information available to help parents protect their children from those people who would exploit them. The advent of the Internet during the mid-1990s has helped to spread information needed by parents; but sadly, the vast information hub has also been used to immensely increase the spread of child pornography and has allowed purveyors of such materials a new, global outlet, capable of reaching thousands of potential customers and harming more children than ever before. Continuing with Bryson’s (2004) strategic plan development guidelines, Dunlap must communicate the needs of a strategic plan to the rest of the board of directors at the National Family Legal Foundation and its supporting staff. In doing so, Dunlap will be inviting the employees and managers of the NFLF to be part of the process that might save the organization. Taking such a step and including his staff will benefit Dunlap, his ability to correctly develop and implement a plan of action, and more effectively communicate the plan through training to other colleagues. Once his plan has been implemented, Dunlap will need to develop an effective way of measuring the plans success. Burrill and Ledolter (1999) recommend implementing a method of Total Quality Management to ensure the success of Dunlap’s plan. Total Quality Management (TQM) was defined in 1990 by semiconductor manufacturing technology (SEMATECH). The definition has since been adapted and taught to employees and of other organizations across the United States: Total Quality Management is a [holistic] business management methodology that aligns the activities of all employees in an organization with the common focus of customer satisfaction [to be achieved] through continuous improvement in the quality of all activities [processes], goods and services (cited in Burrill and Ledolter, 1999, p.35). Essentially, to ensure the future success of the National Family Legal Foundation, Dunlap must not only decide how to acquire the necessary funding and marketing for the organization; but he must also find a method to measure whether the organization is meeting its goals while maintaining a high level of satisfaction from its clients. The Role of SWOT Analysis While working to implement a new strategic plan, SWOT analysis is one of the most important steps to remember. SWOT analysis allows an organization to identify its strengths and weaknesses while searching for any opportunities or threats that may be looming. According to Griffin (2003) SWOT analysis works by allowing an organization to accomplish its goals and mission by exploiting the company’s strengths, capitalizing on foreseen opportunities, and simultaneously neutralizing any foreseen threats and alleviating or avoiding its weaknesses. By correctly identifying the National Family Legal Foundation’s weaknesses, Dunlap and other staff members at the NFLF may be able to define potential threats to the organization before the threats make themselves clear. For example, the leadership of its founder, Charles Keating, and his subsequent imprisonment can be considered a threat to potential investors who want to be sure that the organization’s new leaders will not succumb to the same business practices and fraudulent behaviors. Other possible threats include a growing liberal population; this liberal population asserts that to stop the spread of Internet pornography is to infringe on an individual’s right to freedom of speech (Freeman, 2000). To avoid this potential threat, Dunlap and his colleagues will need to devise a way to ensure that no one’s constitutional rights are being violated; or detail how allowing them to continue infringes on the constitutional rights of others. Implementing NFLF’s Strategic Plan To correctly implement the strategic plan developed by Charles Dunlap and his colleagues and employees at the National Family Legal Foundation, training and effective communications are imperitive. This may mean spending additional funds to hire a Human Resources Director to place in charge of training and auditing of training materials. To begin, the new plan, the redefined organizational mission, and the SWOT analysis must be shared with all current employees. All new training materials developed by the new Human Resources Director must be shared in addition to this. This communication and the sharing of these materials will help to ensure that new employees will be trained to effectively carry out this plan. Measuring the plan’s successful implementation can be done through the use of surveys, customer and client feedback, and employee and management evaluations (Burrill and Ledolter, 1999). Initially, surveys relating to the current attitudes regarding the NFLF will be needed to see how the public and potential investors view the organization. Negative responses will help to identify further threats and weaknesses present within the National Family Legal Foundation, while positive responses will help define additional strengths and opportunities. Employee and management responses to ethical and training surveys will help determine how well the plan is being implemented and how many of Dunlap’s colleagues fully understand the plan they developed and how to carry the plan forward (Trevino and Nelson, 2004). Conclusion In the mid-to-late 1990s, the National Family Legal Foundation (NFLF) faced crisis after crisis, each of their own epic proportion capable of almost single-handedly bringing the work of the nonprofit to a halt. (Buntin, 1998). In order to determine whether the organization could be pieced back together, this author proposes the top-down theory of strategic planning. (Center for Strategic Planning, 2001). While the top-down theory may be somewhat elementary for more established organizations, this theory would ask the remaining stakeholders to come together for the purpose of determining whether a unified vision and mission, complete with activities and goals, could be reached. More specifically, NFLF no longer had the employee base to engage in some of the other strategic planning models in any kind of meaningful way. This group of key individuals would determine whether NFLF could and should survive. The NFLF had gotten away from its original mission, somewhat, in the leaders that followed Charles Keating, NFLF’s founder. By the late 1990s, the organization was operating with just one staff member and a fledging board of directors. Two of the organization’s leaders approached Charles Dunlap, whom they believed possessed the traits necessary to salvage the floundering organization. This was the environment into which Dunlap walked. There was no question that the original mission of NFLF was something that would, and did, garner tremendous support. However, by the time Snyder and Huber approached Charles Dunlap, NFLF had long since gotten further away from Keating’s original vision. In addition to securing Dunlap under, what appeared to be false pretense, the organization had become tied up in the individual who led the organization. This was incredibly risky for the flailing organization on two levels: 1) it called into question the morality of the agency’s leaders in an age when America was calling for increased transparency from the third sector; and 2) it placed the lifeblood of NFLF in one individual. Should that individual leave the organization, as did happen, or become unable to fulfill their duties, as also happened, NFLF would be forced to shut down. Burns proposes four necessary steps, which can be easily integrated with the top-down theory: 1) Make the strategic planning process inclusive by including all of the key stakeholders. Encourage their participation and feedback in order to make it possible for them to take ownership of the plan itself. 2) Make sure the plan is realistic, flexible, and complete. Write into the strategic plan, not only where the organization wants to go but how to get there. Include specific tasks to be completed and who will be responsible for them. 3) Make a commitment to evaluate the progress of the strategic plan. Decide what information is to be gained by the evaluation process, decide who will be responsible for it, agree on the methods to be used, and draft a schedule for the evaluation plan. 4) Make sure that the boards of directors (or leaders) of the organization support the strategic plan in its entirety. Burns asserts that if these steps are followed, the organization will reap the greatest rewards from the strategic planning process. NFLF leaders needed to come to an agreement on their contemporary vision and mission, if one could be reached. If not, the leaders could consider closing the organization once and for all. If leaders make it past the vision and mission phase, they can then engage in designing the programs and services to be offered, incorporate a SWOT analysis, define strategic issues, a plan of action, and how to implement that plan. References Bryson, J.M. (2004) Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations: A Guide to Strengthening and Sustaining Organizational Achievement. (Third Edition). John Wiley and Sons, Inc. San Francisco, CA Buntin, J. (1998). Should it survive: Charles Dunlap and the National Family Legal Foundation. Boston, MA: JFK School of Government. Case Reference: 1491.0. Burns, M. (n.d.). Off the shelf: How to ensure that your strategic plan becomes a valued tool. Retrieved September 12, 2007 from http://www.brodyweiser.com/pdf/offtheshelfnewdraft.pdf Burrill, C.W. and Ledolter, J. (1999) Achieving Quality Through Continual Improvement. Wiley, New York, NY. Center for Strategic Planning. (2001). Outcome-based Strategic Planning Approach for Schools. 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