EFFECTS OF BOARD COMPETENCIES ON PROJECT SUSTAINABILITY WITHIN CHARITABLE ORGANIZATIONS IN KENYA

Abstract

One of the greatest challenges facing boards of charitable organizations regarding their projects is their sustainability. Given that charitable organizations are special in the manner in which they are run and the intentions for which their projects are aimed to achieve, it is imperative that the projects that they run are well executed to ensure sustainability. This research paper studied the effect of board competencies in charitable organizations on project sustainability. In particular, this research sought to determine the effect that, entrepreneurial, managerial, resource mobilization, and networking board competencies of charitable organizations, have on project sustainability. The research design was descriptive using primary data collection tools of semi- structured questionnaires to gather information from the target population’s respondents. The researcher quantitatively analyzed data collected from board members using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software and presented the distribution of responses in tables showing frequencies in their percentages, graphs and pie chart figures. The researcher interpreted the data thematically in narrative by comparing the findings to literature review. The target population was board members of charitable organizations in Nakuru town offering legal aid in court representation for children, palliative care for cancer patients, water aid infrastructure and shelter for survivors of domestic violence. At the time this research was undertaken there were only four organizations in Nakuru town offering the said services. The total population of respondents was 40 board members. This number being manageable a census approach including all the respondents in the study was used to gather information from the board members. The response rate was 75%. The Key findings of the study were that different aspects of the board competencies studied had varying effects on project sustainability of the organizations under study. The reason for this was that the organizations did not have board competency management programs that were informed by prior assessment of the boards’ competency needs and this had a negative effect on project sustainability. Also, Board recruitment was not done timely thus boards lacked benefit of change in the constitution of their board competencies for new and much needed competencies to come in and enable them achieve project sustainability. The study recommended the development of board competency management programs based on identification of board competencies’ needs in order for organizations to build competency capacities that better achieve project sustainability.