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Chapter 13

The problem of multiple objectives

The primary objective in not-for-profit organisations is not to make
money, but to benefit prescribed groups of people.

 As with any organisations, NFPs will use a mixture of financial and non-financial
objectives. Multiple stakeholders in not-for-profit organisations give rise to
multiple objectives. As a result, there is a need to prioritise objectives or to
make compromises between objectives. With NFPs the non-financial objectives
are often more important and more complex, because of the following:

 Most key objectives are very difficult to quantify, especially in financial terms
e.g. quality of care given to patients in a hospital.

 Multiple and conflicting objectives are more common in NFPs, e.g. quality of
patient care versus the number of patients treated.

Illustrations and further practice

Now read illustration 3 ‘The problem of multiple objectives’ and try TYU 3.

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