Windsor Nonprofit Research Initiatives

Getting to know you…

Windsor Recruitment has enjoyed strong relationships with the nonprofit sector since it first set up business almost eleven years ago. It’s a commitment that’s grown steadily over the years.

Today, the consultancy provides advice, support and recruitment services to many of Queensland’s largest and best recognized nonprofit organizations. In fact, nonprofits make up a high proportion of its total client base.

Due to the need to match new recruits to existing teams, cultural cross-matching is an integral part of all nonprofit placements.  But it goes deeper than that. Windsor has proven time and again that ‘getting to know you’ is the dynamo that drives all highly effective placement strategy.

While that’s relevant to mainstream business, this requirement for deep knowledge and understanding rings particularly true before any advice can be offered in the nonprofit sector.

One of the first agencies to recognise increasing change to nonprofit organisations, Windsor uses its developed skills to help ‘raise the bar’ for its major and emergent nonprofit corporate clients and to help them acquire the self knowledge needed to build a better future.  

Nonprofit recruiting is more complex than providing a comparable mainstream service.
Numbers of inter-connected stakeholders tend to be very high; emotional quotients are more intense; missions more powerful and the need for new talent to ‘fit’ an established culture is compelling.

There’s frequently an element of vulnerability affecting end-service clients and /or volunteers that is rarely present in mainstream corporate dealings.

Understanding all of this and having a working knowledge of hundreds of active nonprofits across the State of Queensland, sees Windsor well placed to offer constructive advice on a range of human resource issues.

Formalised research was first dreamed up in 2007

In an effort to take this knowledge bank one step further, Windsor Recruitment commissioned the first in a series of three research surveys into HR-orientated areas of practice in the Australian nonprofit sector.

The first study that began in 2008, was entitled A Survey of Human Resource Management in Nonprofit Organisation. It was repeated in 2009 and again in 2010 to allow changes to be tracked over time.

It captured information relating to:

• The responsibilities of managers
• The types of activities and sectors engaged
• The employee size of nonprofit organisations
• Entitlements
• HR activities engaged
• Satisfaction
• In total, 350 CEOs of nonprofit organisations were invited to participate in the survey. A total of 63 responses were received representing a response rate of just over 18%. 

Windsor Research gained approval and support through two further studies
As the first study was followed by two more ongoing surveys, support from nonprofits – particularly in Queensland - began to strengthen dramatically.

Results from an enquiry into the contemporary effectiveness of Nonprofit Boards was influential in Windsor deciding to add the recruitment of skills-specific non-executive Directors to its services menu.

And, the third study, a two part enquiry into the situations of both paid workers and volunteers in the Australian nonprofit sector prompted numerous requests from client companies for further individual, customized research surveys of their organizations.

The initial series of three ongoing surveys was commissioned by Windsor but designed and managed by QUT Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer Dr Cameron Newton and his team. It was completed in 2010.

Today, Windsor organises specific research requested by client companies
Now, the proven teams of Windsor and Dr Newton are deep into specific research projects that have been requested by nonprofit organizations.

Interestingly for Windsor (which has always believed implicitly that ‘it’s the fit that counts’), its present research focus appears firmly fixed on comprehensive, multi-faceted evaluations of cultural change in fast growing nonprofit organizations.