Felice Davidson Perlmutter

Commercial Venturing and the Transformation of America's Voluntary Social Welfare Agencies

This article examines venturing, or the commercial sale of services and products, as a strategy employed by voluntary social agencies to bolster their faltering budgets. It reports the findings of a descriptive study of a population of 101 such agencies in greater Philadelphia. The authors suggest that the increase in commercial ventures by nonprofits is to some extent a by-product of the expansion of government contracting in the social welfare field. They conclude that even when successful, commercial ventures pose significant risks to nonprofit agencies.

Leadership in Hard Times: Are Nonprofits Well-Served?

Resource shortages have stimulated a change in focus among leaders of social service agencies, moving them away from a mission and toward a professional orientation more concerned with self-preservation. This is manifested both in a greater concern about resource mobilization than mission and professional issues and in an inward orientation among administrators rather than an orientation to the environment. This represents a dramatic change since the 1970s, when organizational theory first came to recognize the environment us an important factor in organizational behavior, and when successful organizational strategy was understood to require moving beyond organizational boundaries. This article reports on a national survey of executive directors and board presidents of family service agencies in major cities. It shows substantial consensus between these two groups that resource issues are more important than mission and professional issues, and that solving resource problems involves strategies that emphasize organizational autonomy.

Consultation and education in rural community mental health centers

This paper reports on the status of consultation and education in the rural community mental health center: First, it describes the rural programs on several organizational dimensions as compared to nonrural programs. Second, it identifies several distinctive characteristics of rural programs. Third, it presents a case illustration of a successful consultation-education service. Finally, it discusses strategies for strengthening consultation and education in the rural setting. The paper is based on the findings of a study of prevention programs in community mental healt, centers in Region III (Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia, and West Virginia).

The Professionalization of Volunteer Administration

This paper assumes that the arguments for volunteerism2 have been cogently made elsewhere (Braithwaite, 1938; Ellis and Noyes, 1978; Naylor, 1973) and that the special contribution that volunteers can make to the social services is understood. It further assumes not only that the debates concerning volunteerism in the 1980’s (e.g., the position of the National Organization for Women which does not accept the role of the volunteer as appropriate for the modern woman) are being addressed elsewhere (Haeuser and Schwartz, 1980), but that data concerning the relationship between social workers and volunteers are also available (Holme and Maizels, 1978).

Conflict in consultation-education

The controversial and conflict-ridden component in community mental health centers can he frequently located in the consultation-education service. Since the social worker trained as a community organizer is a key professional in this arena, it is important that the nature of the relationship and the nature of the conflict be examined. The dual objectives of the program, treatment versus prevention, require a differential use of professionals. This paper will attempt to discuss these elements in order to clarify the appropriate utilization of the community organization method in community mental health centers.

Family Service Executives in a Hostile Environment

Dramatic changes in human services funding in the 1980s prompted a redefinition of leadership in family service agencies. In this study of family service executives, attention is focused on changes in the roles executives play within their agencies, the skills they need, and the problems they face in the current environment. Their involvement in advocacy activity is discussed. The authors conclude that the future viability of the voluntary social service sector is tied to the type of leadership provided by agency executives.

Prevention and treatment: A strategy for survival

Prevention activity has continuously remained a problem of vital concern to all professionals in the Community Mental Health Center field. It is the thesis of this paper that prevention activity will no longer be a problem since it will be altogether eliminated in the present NIMH design; and, furthermore, that if prevention is indeed a valid activity in community mental health, alternate strategies must be sought. The discussion cites previous studies as well as current NIMH priorities to support the argument that prevention activity must be organizationally separated from service delivery. A strategy of “structural segmentation” is offered to include the use of voluntary auspices to protect the program objective of primary prevention.

Managerial tensions: Personal insecurity vs. professional responsibility.

Abstract Protecting and nuturing the managerial supervisor is the topic addressed in this paper. The human service system is undergoing dramatic change, as agencies are downsizing, merging, and outsourcing. In this context, employment-at-will, whistle-blowers, and trade unionism for professionals have emerged as issues. Managerial supervisors face serious dilemmas in these situations including the need to provide more support for workers who face increased job demands and job insecurity. Supervisors are also contending with new roles and demands that may conflict with their concept of professional behavior. The paper concludes with suggestions for how organizations can support supervisory managers and staff in this challenging time.

Primary prevention in community mental health centers: a survey of current activity.

About half of the current activity in consultation and education services of community mental health centers can be classified as primary prevention. Using a framework that distinguishes between institutionallevel interventions (caretaker training and program consultation) and individuallevel interventions (dealing with developmental or situational crises) data are presented from 43 community mental health centers on (a) specific target populations that are tapped by primaryprevention activities and (b) content of the activities. Illustrative activities are described and explanations of current trends are posited. Current programming trends in primary prevention reflect the “state of the art” today and the findings in this paper have implications for the future promotion of primary prevention activity.

A Theoretical Model of Social Agency Development

It is postulated that a social welfare agency passes through three stages of development from self-interest to professionalism and then to societal interests