Introduction
The Salvation Army is a not-for-profit Christian movement which provides social services to socially secluded and most disadvantaged families and people in the community. Salvation Army was established in Australia in the 1980s, and has been operational since them providing more than 1000 social activities and programs via a network of churches, community centres, and social support services across the nation. Salvation Army is currently devoted in sharing the love of Christ through working for justice, caring for people, developing healthy communities, and generating faith pathways. Its main values include integrity, collaboration, compassion, diversity, and respect. The organization is committed into praying for the people and land of Australia, seeking equity, unity and reconciliation. The organization lives its mission via unified, diverse expressions across Australia. It attains its goals via courageous stewardship culture, commitment to delivering innovation, leadership, and progressive services in a framework of financial sustainability (Salvation Army, 2017a).
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Potential Sustainability of Salvation Army
Salvation Army has an annual operational budget that varies from $300-600 million, which is used to offer services to people through more than 1000 social activities and programs in the country. The organization gets its funding from various sources that include 47% from the government, 27% from trade revenue, 10% from Red Shield Appeal and other donations, 5% from legacies, 5% from residents contribution, 3% form their investment, and the other 3% from other sources. The organization thus has sustainable forms of financing, depending heavily on the government. The organization is involved in trade which earns it a good part of its revenue. It has also invested some of it money in financial generating investment and still continues to invest. These among other sources demonstrate that the organization has a high level of financial sustainability, though government withdrawal would be very costly for the organization (Salvation Army, 2017b).
Salvation Army recognizes the environmental challenges facing the country. Its environmental measures include reducing the volumes of illegal rubbish dumping to reinforce sustainability. To enhance this, the Salvo Stores employed measures to lower their Greenhouse gas emission. Irrespective of the high costs related to cleaning up waste that is generated by the community, Salvo Stores defensibly prides itself for having the capability divert huge volume; about 17000 tonnes, of its product from annual land filling via Salvos Stores retail chain sales. This has contributed to the reduction the emissions of greenhouse gas by about 16000 tonnes (Salvation Army, 2013).Salvation Army depends on both volunteers and employees to accomplish its mission. It mostly sources its volunteers from Red Shield and Salvos. The organization has a sustainable source of volunteers in normal operations. However, an appeal for more is normally done during crisis where more volunteers are needed to harness the situation.
Need for Volunteers In Salvation Army
Salvation Army depends heavily on volunteers to support the needs of the community. These volunteers are engaged in helping those in need of clothing, and food among other practical needs. They also assist during emergencies where they offer social support and care using their specialty, skills and advisory ability among others. The volunteers offers expertise, knowledge, and skills in a number of programs and roles, from gathering for Red Shield Appeal to offering support to the members of the community in need.. They offer consultancy support, and work as shop attendants in the local community stores. Salvation Army normally advertises its available volunteer positions, where those interested apply. Individual can also apply for their respective interested volunteers’ position without any form of advertisement and they are given a position if eligible for any (Salvation Army, n.d.a, p.10).
Treatment of Volunteers versus Paid Workers
Unlike paid workers, volunteers in Salvation Army do not receive any salary or wages. The only possible benefits include insurances from harm or injuries maintained during work. However, just like other paid employees, Salvation Army volunteers are required to adhere to the organization workers safety and health policies. They are also required to report any form of harm or injury to the manager of the centre. Similar to other workers, a volunteer is required to follow directions provided by the manager or supervisor. A volunteer is also required to uphold the principles and standards of the organisation (Salvation Army, n.d.a, p.14). Volunteers also get to enjoy other free facilities and services provided to other workers in the organization such as free counselling, tax-free meals. Contrary to volunteers, paid workers get to enjoy more benefits that includegood salary packages, holiday accommodation, entertainment, and discounts in the organization stores, and in health insurance. Contrary to volunteers who only get free counselling for themselves, workers get free counselling services even for their immediate family members.
Point of Differentiation within the Community
Salvation Army focuses in a wide range of operations in a community. It manages more than 1000 different programs in Australia. Some of these programs include domestic violence children and survivors support, addicts rehabilitation, emergency relief and family support, supporting homeless people, assisting missing people to trace their families, aged care, salvos stores, emergency services, prison and court services where programs, counsel, rehabilitation, support and presentation for individuals accessing post-referral, prison, and court services. Other programs include asylum seekers support, disability program, and overseas aid (Salvation Army, n.d.b, p.2.).
Positive or Negative Issues Regarding the Sustainability of the Organization
The largest part of the organization finances is contributed by the government. The government mostly caters for more than 45% of the total amount of organization revenue comes from the government. This implies that Australian government is the backbone of Salvation Army operations. This simply means that government withdrawal or reduction of the percentage given to this organization would possibly cripple the organization operations. The environmental sustainability is highly challenges by increase in illegal dumping and general increase in the national costs due to carbon price mechanism implementation. This has resulted to general increase of waste received in volume, and personal state levy. This increases environmental sustainability challenges (Salvation Army, 2017a).
Stakeholders Concerns
One of the main stakeholders concern is the organization financing with relation to increasing social problems that the organization needs to handle. The number of organization’s dependants from all provided programs is increasing daily, creating the need for advancing the organization’s source of finances. Another concern is the effectiveness of some of the services provided by the organization, especially financial counselling. Most of those who receive financial counselling still recorded high rates of unmanageable loans, generating questions on the effectiveness of this program (Salvation Army, 2012, p.3).
Conclusion
Salvation Army is one of the main non-profit organizations that carters for the social needs of people in a great way. The organization has employed various programs to ensure that it reach to all people in the country that are in need of help. It plays a great role in ensuring effective humanitarian services to those that needs them. It therefore needs to be supported in the best way possible through donations and volunteer works to enhance the effectiveness of its services.
Recommendation
Salvation Army deals with a huge number of people who are in great need of humanitarian assistance. These people keep on increasing with increase in civil war in the world, family instability, social and financial problems. It is therefore important for the organization to ensure a high level of its financial sustainability. This can be done by increasing the financial revenue from the organization trade and investment, and reduce reliance in donation and the government. The Organization should perform constant analysis of the efficiency of its services and programs to ensure correction where need be.
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