Six Sigma for Non-Profit Organizations

Abstract

Although non-profit organizations, such as healthcare, education, recreation, welfare, religious and culture agencies rarely think of themselves as business, they share a lot of traits with for-profit businesses. They must attract customers, must generate and manage income, manage staff, buildings, machinery, and provide services that the customer desires.

There has been recognition in the world for the need for quality management practices in non-profit organizations. The United States, United Kingdom, Europe, Austria, the Netherlands, Asia and Eastern Europe all have quality awards for non-profit agencies. The guidelines for the Baldrige National Award in the United States are very similar to the quality awards for non-profits throughout the world.

Six Sigma tools were chosen for use with Midwestern Church (not real name) in preference to ISO9001 and the Baldrige criteria. The desire was to start with a small project in which there was a good chance for success in hopes that future projects would be attempted. ISO9001 and the Baldrige criteria were too large of a scope for an organization without an initial quality management system.

A team of support staff at Midwestern Church chose inter-staff communications as their improvement project. When the communication process was mapped, it was found that e-mail was the main method of communication and business was rarely discussed at staff meetings, rather Bible study occurred.

Three improvements were suggested:

 Time deadlines were added in the subject lines of e-mails of the team members  MicroSoft Outlook training to optimize the e-mail system was offered to all staff members  Staff meetings were structured to discuss business

The first two improvements were partially implemented and slight improvements in communications were made among the team members as a result. Because there was little support from upper management (clergy), there was limited success in the first two improvements and the third was never implemented.

Despite this it is believed that the project was successful. Some staff members who were not part of the first training have requested and received Outlook training. Two focus group using techniques similar to those used in this project are being formed to obtain attendee (customer) input concerning worship services that are losing attendance.