This article examines venturing, or the commercial sale of services and products, as a strategy employed by voluntary social agencies to bolster their faltering budgets. It reports the findings of a descriptive study of a population of 101 such agencies in greater Philadelphia. The authors suggest that the increase in commercial ventures by nonprofits is to some extent a by-product of the expansion of government contracting in the social welfare field. They conclude that even when successful, commercial ventures pose significant risks to nonprofit agencies.

Why should an employer hire a former welfare client?What human resource management practices can help employers retain former welfare clients? This study addresses these questions against the backdrop of changes in welfare legislation in the United States that have lessened support to welfare clients and their families and emphasized movement into the workplace. We conducted a large‐scale empirical study of the effectiveness of a wide range of HRM practices and found that higher wages, better financial and health benefits, and development opportunities were positively associated with job retention. Unexpectedly, supervisory training had no relationship to retention, and appraising supervisors on providing a supportive and inclusive work environment showed a negative relationship. We provide suggestions to employers for improving the job retention of former welfare recipients along with directions for additional research. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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Resource shortages have stimulated a change in focus among leaders of social service agencies, moving them away from a mission and toward a professional orientation more concerned with self-preservation. This is manifested both in a greater concern about resource mobilization than mission and professional issues and in an inward orientation among administrators rather than an orientation to the environment. This represents a dramatic change since the 1970s, when organizational theory first came to recognize the environment us an important factor in organizational behavior, and when successful organizational strategy was understood to require moving beyond organizational boundaries. This article reports on a national survey of executive directors and board presidents of family service agencies in major cities. It shows substantial consensus between these two groups that resource issues are more important than mission and professional issues, and that solving resource problems involves strategies that emphasize organizational autonomy.

Managerial supervisors are those persons who supervise direct service staff, who oversee human service programs, and who perform macro practice tasks in their agencies on a daily basis. They are not clinical supervisors who oversee the treatment aspects of direct practice; nor are they administrators at the executive level. This book addresses the challenges facing the often under-appreciated managerial supervisors who oversee and provide a crucial organizational structure for work that occurs in human service across the country. The successful managerial supervisor must be able to create and develop the organizational culture in which client-centered practice can occur, balance the demands of administrative leadership with those of workers who see clients, keep a client-centered focus amid the paradoxes that arise in the process, and maintain a healthy professional presence.