A Heuristic Model to Measure Nonprofit Management Deficiency

Abstract

A mathematical technique to measure nonprofit management performance has eluded researchers for more than three decades. Traditional, analytical techniques have failed to find a solution that has broad acceptance. This problem raised the following question: will heuristic methodology provide an acceptable, approximate solution to the measurement of individual management deficiency in a nonprofit organisation? The purpose of this study was to demonstrate that a heuristic methodology can be used to build a model that will measure individual management deficiency and produce an assessment of management strengths and weaknesses for the board members of nonprofit organisations. The heuristic methodology known as simulated annealing was adopted in an attempt to find an acceptable, approximate solution to the measurement of individual management deficiency. A heuristic model was built and tested and satisfactory results were obtained. The results were validated by demonstrating that there was an alignment of the results produced by the heuristic model and those obtained by an alternate method. Therefore, it has been established that this heuristic model will produce an acceptable, approximate solution to the measurement of management deficiency across a wide range of factors in non-profit board members.