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Organizational Behavior

Richardson Adult
Literacy Center
Written Report

Emma Seward, Jamie Deleon, Ken Brigger, Ryan Kim


11-17-2014

Table of Contents
History.2
Accountant...5
Executiver Director.7
Marketing....9
Grant Writing.....11
Recommendations.....16

History
Richardson Adult Literacy Center (RALC) had its beginning in 1990 with concerned citizens
in the area taking it upon themselves to empower adults in the community by teaching them how
to read. The majority of these adults are coming from an English as a Second Language
background so the program and text had been built from the ground-up with the intent to assist
these individuals. In its infancy, the program was capable of assisting adults on an individual
case basis, but as the need for their program was wider than originally anticipated, the RALC
was grown into a classroom arrangement to serve a larger client base. Today, the RALC serves
600 adults per semester
The current Executive Director of the RALC, Katie Patterson was a figure in the
Richardson Community for many years in working with local non-profits, Parent-Teacher
Associations at both the local and the council levels and as a board member for the RALC.
Having worked with the RALC from the bottom-up, she understands the full impact that the
organization can provide and is taking the new position to lead.
Structure:
The Richardson Adult Literacy Center as a non-profit has to balance a minimal staff while not
overburdening any one employee with the tasks required to maintain operation. Katie Patterson
as Executive Director manages operations and communicates with her team to help drive the
mission of the RALC as well as promoting events within classes to share additional opportunities
for their students to further their education.
Angela Gentz is the English as Second Language program coordinator; her duties include
training tutors, student assessment and pairing those students with the appropriate tutor and
following up on the students performance in the class to measure their progress in the program.

A Functional Structure is used to provide a chain of command in hopes to not burden any one
position.

Manager/Contacting Donors

Accounting/Tuition

Grant Writing

One full time - Katie Patterson, Executive Director

One part time - Accountant

Office volunteers - rotating staff

Volunteer teachers - 45 total


o

35 active teachers

10 stand-by substitute teachers

Mission:

The Richardson Adult Literacy Center (RALC) is an accredited Pro Literacy America affiliate,
non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization. This grants the RALC a tax-exempt status exclusive to
education, religious, and scientific among other organizations within the classification. They
train volunteer tutors, assess adult students literacy level and place students into classroom
instruction. English as a second language (ESL) instruction is provided to adults in our
community via classroom and one-to-one instruction. The Center also refers students and
potential volunteers to other programs and services that may better assist them. Because of the
two semesters that the RALC uses for instruction in the year, they also guide would-be volunteers
who might not be able to make the time commitment to other volunteer opportunities such as the
NTFB.

RALC was founded in 1990 through a collaboration between several community organizations.
Community members saw that the Richardson demographics were changing and that there were
gaps within adult ESL services. The organization is coming up on 25 years of success due in part
to its dedicated volunteers and loyal community support.

Individual Analysis: Fundraising


The Richardson Adult Literacy Center is a non- profit organization that is dependent on donor
contributions (including individual and corporate gifts), program fees, annual fundraising events, and
grants. Because of the non-profit element concerning the RALC, this makes the financial accounting of
the organization distinctive compared to others. In order for the RALC to function and operate, this
organization relies heavily on the assistance of external contributors, grants, and sponsors. The RALC
utilizes these external contributors and sponsors to help support their annual fundraisers. Over time, this
has generated an obligation-based sense of normative commitment with employees working within the
RALC as well as its external contributors.
The RALC has established good relations with external contributors and sponsors, which has
enabled the organization to progress positively towards set goals and objectives. This spring, the RALC
will host its annual Murder Mystery fundraiser, which is an entertaining who done it, collaborative
performance that includes prominent community leaders and professional actors interacting with the
attending audience. The fundraiser is supported by the City of Richardson as an event sponsor and by the
Methodist Richardson Medical Center, Frost Bank, and DFW Technology as signature sponsors. These
sponsors provide monetary services of goodwill to support and promote the event for members of the
RALC. By promoting the event, the charitable efforts of both the RALC and its sponsors are recognized.
Also, the RALC gains more awareness throughout the local community, which attracts more promising
volunteers and contributors for the future.

The existing staff and volunteers gain a normative organizational commitment by working and
assisting in fundraisers for the RALC. By providing their services to attending families and members and
seeing the successful outcomes, the existing staff and volunteers feel better about their efforts and the
organization as a whole. The sponsors and outside contributors also have a normative commitment to the
RALC. These sponsors and outside contributors value their conscientious efforts and contributions
because they perceive them as the right and moral thing to do by supporting the RALC cause.
Another existing component that is vital to the RALCs continued success is grant funding.
Because of the difficulties encountered with the grant writer, Katie Patterson, executive director of the
RALC, now takes a more active role in the grant writing process. Katie discussed with the team how grant
writing and funding through the grant application process is key for the RALC to continue operating.
Through out our discussion, it was evident that receiving a grant provided a great deal of job satisfaction
for Katie and internal staff members at the RALC. Although she explained how writing these grants and
the waiting process could be tedious and challenging at times, she gained satisfaction within the work
itself. According to job expectancy theory, this was accomplished by finding variety through different
grant opportunities and identity through the classification of grant expectations and outcomes. Katie
exhibited meaningfulness of work because she felt that her work was aiding the organization in a
significant and positive way. Katie has a clear perception for the responsibility of the outcomes of gaining
grant acceptance by acknowledging that her efforts are instrumental in the grant writing process. Katie
also exhibited knowledge of her results based on the feedback. Katie could then directly analyze what
improvements were needed in order to successfully apply for the next grant application.
Grant approvals and fundraising greatly support the financial accounting platform and well being
of the RALC. The dynamic of these financial aspects involving the organization have an affect on
organizational commitment and job satisfaction whether it is directly or indirectly.

Individual Analysis: Executive Director


The Richardson Adult Literacy Center (RALC) is dependent on the central position of
Executive Director. In the position, the individual is responsible to the Board of directors in
demonstrating all strategic and operational responsibility for the RALC's staff, programs,
expansion, and execution of the organizations mission. Being a non-profit, the RALC requires
outside contribution for funding the programs that provide ESL education to adults that live and
work in the Richardson area.
Recommending timelines and resources is integral to the position of executive director.
The fundraising of the RALC is aided by annual fundraiser events such as the interactive Murder
Mystery event in the Spring and the RALC Stay at Home Tea fundraising event during National
Literacy Month (September), and their biggest fundraising event, Buns and Roses. Of the events
during the year, the Buns and Roses event is the largest continuous contributor to the
organization. These events are a large presence in the strategy that has to be developed and
maintained by the executive coordinator in achieving the organizations objective.
Promoting events to the outside is part of growing the organization, but by inviting the student
body to engage in the events as well allows for an exciting opportunity for students to utilize the
literacy learned from the class into real world scenarios. Having the opportunity to walk with
Katey Patterson during an evening of classes, her use of the inspirational appeal tactic appeared
to be quite strong. Drawing on both the instructors and the students family values, she was
appealing to their ideals of promoting a family movie night out to see a small film titled Go
College. The film was a project to address the reality that the students children would soon be
preparing for college and connected events that the parents would need to address. The movie
was being hosted on a class night and and Katey knew what the class meant to the parents, but
expressed the benefit in the long run of missing a class in order to support the students and

instructor needs of expressing the parental literacy as a means of incorporating them into
activities where the new literacy level could be applied.
Mrs. Pattersons close interaction with the classes not only increases the affective nature of the
students/clientele, but also with the staff as well. Her effective guidance shows a positive
presence to instructors in the organization that shows there is an inherent infrastructure and
design. With effective use of power and influence, there can be a moderate improvement in both
job performance and organizational commitment. While the corollary is moderate, focusing time
and energy on using a position of power and influence effectively is too valuable for any
organization to ignore. The compliance that comes from an effective use of power can
citizenship behavior and can decrease counterproductive behavior.
The use of personal forms of power (expert and referent) are correlated with a moderately
positive effect on organizational commitment. While not much is known about the impact of
power and influence on continuance commitment and normative commitment, the use of these
personal forms of power is associated with increased affective commitment. Costs associated
with leaving a non-profit that could be brought by the executive coordinator are the nontransferable investments such as retirement. Common nontransferable investments aside from
retirement are the personal investments such as time and interpersonal relationships that arent
easily measured monetarily. While the continuance commitment of a volunteer worker with the
RALC is predicted to be low, a staff is maintained through Katies presence and the nurturing of
personal relationships within the organization.
Individual Analysis: Marketing
Non-profit organizations have to develop a picture to potential donors and supporters in
order to effectively market itself. Doing this entails presenting themselves in the most attractive

light possible to their target market. This is best accomplished through effective branding in
pursuit to display a consistent message to any organizations potential market.
Before the RALC is able to reach out to donors, it is always best to identify facets of your own
culture. Once the RALC had a direction on how they wanted to present themselves, it was
decided to develop observable artifacts that reflect their espoused values and basic underlying
assumptions. Being almost 25 years old, the RALC has an established cultural identity. There is
not an exclusively communal culture of the RALC as instructors teaching at different levels
through different methods are expressing more of a network culture type. All the instructors and
office team involved in the RALC are joined to accomplish a common goal, but every employee
can express that in a different way.
From this, in order to reach potential donors, it is always ideal to identify donors using
emotional intelligence to deduce values of potential donors. The RALCs espoused value of
meeting the need in the Richardson community with regards to ESL literacy education employs
the cultural value of collectivism. The citizens of Richardson want to maintain a tight social
framework so the subsequent generations will benefit from the abilities and opportunities gained
through reading
Goal setting theory can be applied to marketing an organization to the community at large to
achieve the RALCs goals. This is the primary driver in the persistence and intensity of effort.
With regular deadlines built into semesters and quarterly reports that need to be sent to the board
of directors, it is necessary to have specific and difficult goals to motivate a team towards the
objective. Setting the bar high results in higher levels of performance as opposed to taking a
more relaxed approach.

Individual Analysis: Grand Writing


All the Richardson Adult Learning Center needs to enrich the lives is a registration fee of
$25 a student. It doesnt take a lot of math to realize that even as a nonprofit it takes more than
the students registration fee to keep the operation that the Richardson Adult Learning Center has
running. One of the primary sources of income for the Richardson Adult Learning Center is
government grants. The Richardson Adult Learning Center uses a volunteer to be their grant
expert; this individual is in charge of searching for grants the Richardson Adult Learning Center
is eligible for, and writing the grant proposals. This job is tedious and time consuming, as well as
requiring a fair amount of skill and know how, and therefore it is easy for details to fall through
the cracks. These non-profits, such as, the Richardson Adult Learning Center use volunteers,
what happens when these volunteers job performance declines? How does the Richardson Adult
Learning Center attempt to hold these volunteers accountable as employees when they arent
employees at all?
The Richardson Adult Learning Centers main grant volunteer has been performing subpar, when this happens it becomes the job of the Executive Director Katie Patterson, also a
volunteer, to pick up the slack and supplement her work with the cracks and holes the in
Richardson Adult Learning Centers grant applications. Volunteers usually have a high affective
commitment. They are working there because they want to be, and it is the volunteers own
personal choice. This leads to an often high performance level, the volunteers are happy to be
there and enjoy their time helping the organization. This type of dynamic is something
companies strive to achieve as affective commitment the strongest form of commitment an
individual can have, and also the type of commitment companies strive to implement into their
employees. The higher the commitment and the higher the enjoyment an employee receives from

their job the higher their job performance tends to be, as well as their loyalty to their company.
As we observed the Richardson Adult Literacy Center it was clear that the volunteers definitely
had affective commitment.
The grant writers for the Richardson Adult Literacy Center was suffering from a
decrease in job performance and a decrease in affective commitment. Katie mentioned how she
had talked to the grant writer before about her decreased job performance. Katies lack of
legitimate power would make the confrontation less successful. Since Katie works for a
nonprofit organization, even though Katie holds a high ranking position within the Richardson
Adult Literacy Center and oversees a majority of the volunteers, she does not have the power
needed to obtain legitimate power. This is because Katies position is lacking the ability to
decrease and increase salary, decrease or increase an employees vacation days, and being able to
reprimand employees who are performing unsatisfactory. Because the employees are volunteers,
Katie has no control over any of these things. Katie does, however, have an impressive and
extensive resume in the business world, and because of this, in lieu of legitimate power, Katie
commands expert power stemming from her knowledge and skill set. Her background includes
directing communications for Texas Schools Project and the UT Dallas Education Research
Center, lastly she spent 20 years in various high ranking positions of the national franchise
Cookies by design.1
There are aspects of a nonprofit organization that cause the organizational structure to
veer from that of for-profit organizations, since the employees are volunteers. Switching this
element has such a major impact on the organization because the employees/volunteers
contribute a good portion of the organizational behavior as such the high frequency of affective

commitment for the organization and the power structure and the lack of legitimate power
amongst high ranking employees.
1

About Us - RALC - Richardson Adult Literacy Center. (n.d.). Retrieved November 17, 2014, from

http://www.ralc.org/about.html
Individual Analysis: (Human Resources Department)
The human resources department of the Richardson Adult Literacy Center consists of many
functions that affect the overall performance of the organization. Angela, the coordinator of the HR
department is obligated to make sure that there are volunteer instructors, and other required volunteers on
board at all times. Angela has multiple tasks consisting of recruiting volunteers, educating these
volunteers, scheduling the volunteers, and troubleshooting problems that occur sporadically. Though, in
order to confirm that the volunteers are competent enough to fulfill the job requirements, Angela has to go
through a process of training potential employees.
The training process for future instructors includes two options. Option one provides the
opportunity to start and finish training in one day. Typically the training session lasts for four hours and is
held on a Saturday in the months of January and August. Option two is a self paced training process
consisting of reading fifty pages out of the tutor manual, taking two free one hour online courses, viewing
the online curriculum presentations, and participating in a wrap-up session with a tutor trainer.
Other types of volunteers within the organization is comprised of office, fundraising, and special
events which all require minimal training. The office generally requires a minimum of two volunteers
throughout each semester. For fundraising and special events, numbers of volunteers vary for each
separate event. The turnover rate is not high for these three categories because the office requires a small
amount of volunteers, while fundraising and special events occur every once in a while.
The RALC has a high turnover rate for their volunteer instructors. The system they use is very
unstable at times due to the low continuance commitment from the instructors not being paid and slim

chance of promotion. Instructors have other aspects of their personal lives to worry about, such as their
job, family, bills etc. Since they do not receive income for volunteering, it puts the organization at the
bottom of the priorities list. Even if they have high affective commitment from being inspired in the
organizations mission statement and with what they do at the RALC as an instructor. So the instructors
come and go quite often, and it becomes extremely difficult to have a consistent set of employees over an
extended period of time. This issue arises quite frequently and could eventually be a large factor that
contributes to the regression of the organization.
Sometimes volunteers explain ahead of time that they will not be able to volunteer throughout the
entire semester, but others will randomly walk out and leave without saying a word. For the organization
to overcome the issue of employee turnover rate, they have a set of volunteers on standby. These set of
volunteers have been educated before hand by Angela so they can immediately get to work instead of
having to go through the entire training process before they begin instructing. Though another
replacement instructor is on standby, students end up dropping out due to the difference of style from the
new instructor.
Another issue comes into play when the number of students that registered becomes larger. The
organization has a hard enough time keeping up with the volunteers at their current amount of students, so
if the number of registrants increase substantially, it would be extremely difficult to keep up with the
growth. Basically could be represented as, keeping up with demand.
The volunteers have high affective commitment since they enjoy the mission statement behind
what the organization stands for. Though the low amount of continuance commitment outweighs the high
level of affective commitment for the employees. Also, the volunteers feel they are making an impact and
in return helps motivate them towards attending the volunteer sessions. Unfortunately, the financial aspect
overrules the other factors, and causes the turnover rate to remain persistent. If the turnover rate continues
to remain at the same level, the ability to expand the organization as a whole would be difficult even with
the system of having volunteer instructors on standby.

Recommendations:
The three recommendations team tan would make to the Richardson Adult Literacy Center,
which will now be referred to as the RALC, are to increase their social media presents, to extend
the RALCs volunteer outreach, and lastly to implement new ways to motivate the English as a
second language instructors.
The RALC has been a member of Facebook since 2010, however since then the page has
only accumulated 243 likes, and their daily traffic is decent but worth improving with 5 recent
visits. As far as the frequency of use of the page it is evident by the number pictures posted that
the RALC has not only been active, but active on Facebook. Other than their official website this
is currently all the social media the RALC has. Subpar social media is worse than no social
media at all as a gives you an inside look into the organizations cultural values and the
organizations attitude about itself. Another benefit of social media also allows for a free
marketing opportunity, which as a nonprofit organization, the RALC has a small to zero
marketing budget. We recommend that several improvements be made to the Facebook page as
well as entertaining and researcher the possibility of extending their social media to include other
outlets.
Improving the RALCs facebook page to make it a much more accurate reflection of the
RALCs cultural values and community activity. An informative and accurate facebook page
will not only provide an accurate information to its visitors, but this change will also show a
much higher level of professionalism and reliability, not that the RALC is lacking in any of these
two things, to be accredited to the RALC. A much more accurate facebook page will also cause
for a much more personal connection between the viewers and the organization. Establishing this
connection will increase the donor contributions as well as volunteers, people are much more

likely to donate something, whether it be time or capital if they feel a connection with the
organization or the cause the organization supports. The RALC needs to utilize the events
section of facebook by creating a specific event for any events that the RALC is hosting or
featured in, posting a digital picture of the event on a flyer via their facebook page should also be
done, depending of course on the exclusivity of the event. This way when a donor, volunteer,
prospective volunteer, or student comes across their facebook page they can easily search and
see which events are occurring, and how the RALC is conducting fundraisers, holding
information sessions, or even when their semester is beginning or ending. Another big thing was
that on their website there was no link to their facebook, which is an easy and quick fix, this
addition will easily increase the viewing traffic of the page. Lastly creating more social media
accounts such as with Twitter or Instagram should be looked at and evaluated; however, a slow
and precise transition is much more important than the quick implementation and drastic
expansion of their social media presence.
The second recommendation out team would make to the RALC would be to extend their
volunteer outreach. An increase in volunteers as well as financial contributions would be a huge
stress reliever for Katy Patterson, RALCs Executive Director, and the other higher up among
the organization. This relief of stress should trickle down among the other employees as a
stressed boss can often be the stressor of a lower ranking volunteer. Katy also mentioned how
she would love to increase the attendance and capacity of the RALC from its current 600
students, with this goal in motion the RALC manpower and financial contributions without a
doubt need to be increased along with the work overload stressor among the RALCs volunteers
if manpower quotas cannot be met.

Increasing their volunteer outreach by having the current volunteers establish relationships
with other niche book clubs in the Richardson area, the organizations current fundraisers are
orientated to niche genres of books, romance novels and murder mysteries. Once a month at the
selected book clubs, assuming they meet monthly, the RALC would be promoted and discussed
in an attempt to sway people to donate their time or money to the RLCA, This increases the
knowledge and exposure of the RALC, therefore actively attempting to increase the amount of
volunteers and the time the RALC has access to. This act of removing a stressor will allow the
volunteers to relax and reduce their stress levels.
Having volunteers instead of paid employees changes the dynamic of the organization.
Volunteers need to be given a reason, other than continuance commitment, since a financial gain
is off the table. In order to maintain the high job satisfaction of the current volunteers and
decrease turn-over we as a team recommend implementing several new ways to motivate the
instructors. This would come in the form of incentive programs, advertising what volunteering
with the RALC could do for you as well as providing an award system based on peer
evaluations.
The advertising the benefits of volunteering for the RALC should vary among the target
audience. For example when our team went and observed the classrooms there were two
demographics that were the majority the retired and younger professionals. For the retired
demographic, volunteering gives you as a something to do on a slow day, as well as metal and
social stimulation. When focusing in on the younger professionals, volunteering gives your
resume a boost and displays, hones, and creates skills that otherwise may be lacking that could
benefit and help you in the professional setting. Both of these examples could cause volunteers to
have continuance commitment for the organization, with the retired demographic it could be a

necessity for health maintenance, both physical and mental. The young professionals could see
the experience and expertise they receive from their volunteering work is a requirement to have a
job or just the upper hand in the job search. The presence of continuance commitment will
decrease the turnover rate of instructors and raise the number of volunteers wanting to work for
the RALC.
The last incentive program that needs to be implemented is the awards based on peer
evaluations. Not only will the award system encourage outstanding job performance creating a
moderately competitive environment; however, they should be careful and keep the environment
friendly and supporting for an exceedingly competitive environment would be a stressor for
many of the volunteers, it would also give the instructors and other volunteers feedback, based
off the evaluation and what they are specifically awarded for the volunteers can easily gage how
they should adjust or change their teach style. The awards would not have to be an added
financial burden on the organization either. The RALC could ask for contributions, like gift
cards, from local businesses. This way they are supporting the community and giving back.
The three recommendations team tan would make to the RALC are the improvement and
expansion of social media, increase volunteer outreach, and lastly the implementation of
volunteer incentive programs. The improvement and expansion of the RALCs social media
would be free publicity, further developing the brand and image they are trying to create and
maintain, and lastly it would stream line communication for its donors, volunteers, and students.
Increasing volunteer outreach by exposing the RALC more would increase donations and
volunteers which in turn would lessening the stressors of not having enough volunteers or
financial capital. Implementing an incentive program both from advertising what volunteering at
the RALC can do for you and for awards based off peer evaluations would allow for constructive

feedback to the instructors about their job performance and what they can improve on, as well as
increasing the overall organizational commitment the volunteers have for the RALC.

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