Jean Roberts

A nonprofit organisation offers or provides a range of programs, services, publications, activities, events, initiatives or benefits to one or more targeted audiences.

The Board, together with the CEO, negotiates contractual and funding agreements containing particular and specific terms and conditions to be complied with and outcomes to be achieved. The Board is accountable to the membership base to adopt the ‘best possible practices’ of governance, management and operation in order to ensure and provide the ‘best possible experience’ for service-users.

There are 3 major stages in service delivery:

• needs assessment or research,
• service design – to ensure that the service design is based on the research stage, and
• service delivery – to ensure that the services delivered are consistent with the service design.

There are 3 basic components in Continuous Quality Improvement for the Service-provider:

1. to increase ‘our’ knowledge and understanding of service-user expectations and requirements
2. to improve the design, so that the mix of features afforded by ‘our’ programs and services more closely match service-user expectations and requirements, and
3.  to improve ‘our’ ability to provide programs and services which consistently conform more closely to the design.

 The 3 steps for the Board, together with senior management, are:

 Step 1  – Quality Framework:   introduction of quality systems and procedures for research, design and conformance in service provision (ie the service model)

 Step 2  – Quality Assurance:   systems and procedures to ensure that quality systems and procedures are followed without exception:  an inherent component in Step 2 is staff training and development to ensure confidence and competence in the quality systems and procedures of Step 1, and

 Step 3  – Continuous Quality Improvement:   regular evaluation and review of Step 1 and Step 2 to ensure improvement in Steps 1 and 2.

 Service-provider’s Staff

 Each person employed by the Service-provider in direct-service provision is responsible for the quality of their own work – and for continuous improvement in the quality of their work.  Therefore each person needs to know:

1. the needs, aspirations and interests of individual service-users
2.  the standard of quality in service planning and delivery necessary to achieve agreed and measurable service-user outcomes and benefits
3.  how to consistently plan and deliver services to the desired and consistent level of quality
4.  how to measure the quality of their own performance, and
5.  how to ensure evidence of necessary or desired improvements in both the quality of their performance and the quality of service planning and delivery.

Contact me to discuss delivering effective and efficient service delivery within your organisation.