MBAX 6850 Week 9 Nonprofit Case for Support Example

A Case for Support for Lakeshore Literacy Alliance: One Learner's Goal, the Need Behind It, Why This Organization and What a Gift Makes Possible

Student Name

Walden University

MBAX 6850: Introduction to the Nonprofit Sector

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

A Case for Support for Lakeshore Literacy Alliance: One Learner's Goal, the Need Behind It, Why This Organization and What a Gift Makes Possible

One Learner's Goal

When Denise came to Lakeshore two years ago, she had one goal: to read the instructions on her granddaughter's asthma medicine without asking a neighbor. She had worked for twenty years as a hotel housekeeper and hidden her reading difficulty from almost everyone. Matched with a volunteer tutor, a retired pharmacist named Gary, she met him every Tuesday evening at the library branch near her apartment. Eight months later she read the label aloud to her granddaughter's doctor. This year she set a new goal: to pass the written test for a supervisor's position.

Denise is a composite learner, drawn from several learners' experiences and used with their written consent under Lakeshore's story policy, which requires that no learner be identified without permission.

The Need

In the three counties Lakeshore serves, a substantial share of adults read below the level needed to handle everyday documents such as medication labels, job applications and school notices from their children's teachers. National surveys of adult skills, such as those conducted by the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, have found that millions of American adults score at the lowest levels of literacy; a real version of this case would cite the most recent county-level estimates drawn from that program. Behind each figure is an adult like Denise, managing a job and family while hiding a skill gap that limits both. Low literacy is associated with poorer health management, lower earnings and less ability to support children's schooling, which makes it a problem that reaches well beyond the individual.

Why Lakeshore

Many organizations serve adults with low literacy. Lakeshore's approach is distinctive in two ways. First, tutoring is built around each learner's own goals rather than a fixed curriculum, so learners like Denise stay because the work matters to them. Second, the tutoring is delivered by about 400 trained volunteers, which keeps the cost low. Including training, supervision and materials, Lakeshore spends roughly $650 a year for each tutoring learner, far less than the cost of a classroom course of similar duration. Last year, about half of learners who completed 40 hours of tutoring gained at least one reading level, and about a third of all learners reached a goal they had set.

What Tutoring Looks Like

A tutoring pair meets for about two hours each week, usually at a public library branch, a church hall or one of Lakeshore's two offices. The first sessions are spent on an assessment and a conversation about what the learner wants to be able to do. From there, the tutor builds lessons around real materials: the learner's own mail, a workplace safety manual, a child's homework or the driver's license handbook. Coordinators check in with each pair monthly, help when a learner seems stuck and arrange a new match if the pairing is not working. Learners can stay as long as they are making progress toward a goal; many stay a year or more and set new goals along the way. Tutors, for their part, describe the work as among the most meaningful they have done, and about a fifth of current tutors have served for more than five years.

What a Gift Makes Possible

Lakeshore's largest funder, a state contract, pays for English classes and standardized testing, but it does not pay for the volunteer program that makes one-to-one tutoring possible. That program depends on individual gifts. A gift of $150 trains one new volunteer tutor. A gift of $650 supports one learner for a full year of tutoring. A gift of $5,000 funds a volunteer coordinator's work with fifty tutor and learner pairs for three months. Gifts of any size are unrestricted, which means Lakeshore can direct them where the need is greatest, such as the waiting list of 140 adults hoping for a tutor.

Why Now

Lakeshore's waiting list is the longest it has been in five years, because demand has grown while the number of volunteer tutors has not yet recovered from the pandemic. Every adult on that list has a goal, like Denise, and is waiting for someone to help reach it. Sargeant and Shang (2017) note that donors respond to a clear statement of what their gift will accomplish and why it matters now; this case is written to give them both.

How Lakeshore Uses and Reports Gifts

Lakeshore is a 501(c)(3) public charity, bound like every nonprofit to keep any surplus inside the organization (Hansmann, 1980). Its audited financial statements and its annual Form 990 are available on request, and donors receive a mid-year update showing what their gifts funded. Bekkers and Wiepking (2011) found that donors' trust in how a charity uses its money is one of the main mechanisms behind giving, which is why the case ends with how gifts are reported.

References

Bekkers, R., & Wiepking, P. (2011). A literature review of empirical studies of philanthropy: Eight mechanisms that drive charitable giving. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 40(5), 924-973. https://doi.org/10.1177/0899764010380927

Hansmann, H. B. (1980). The role of nonprofit enterprise. Yale Law Journal, 89(5), 835-901. https://doi.org/10.2307/796089

Sargeant, A., & Shang, J. (2017). Fundraising principles and practice (2nd ed.). Wiley.