Baldrige Focus Quality Tools to Manage a Non-Profit Organization

This blog post is in response to June 2015 ASQ Influential Voices topic "Using Quality Tools in Everyday Life".

In 1989, we established "Blind Foundation for India (BFI)" in Naperville, Illinois, USA as 501 (c) (3) charitable organization to serve over 15 million blind people in India. The BFI Mission is to prevent and cure blindness and educate and rehabilitate permanently blind people in India. India is home to one third of world's blind population.

Working in the quality management area at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Naperville, IL and being familiar with the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, we decided to use various quality tools to manage BFI right from its inception.

• Leadership - Vision, Mission, Values, Ethics, Governance, Social Responsibility, Lean Board of Directors (6 members), PDSA

• Strategic Planning - SWOT Analysis, Balanced Scorecard, and Hoshin Planning

• Customer Focus - Voice of the Customer (VOC), single yearly update to donors (Lean)

• Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management - Benchmarking with other non-profit organizations

• Workforce Focus - Recognition of Donors and Volunteers

• Operations Focus - Brainstorming, Affinity Diagram, Pareto Principle, Ishikawa Diagram, Lean, Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI), Process Mapping, SIPOC, Problem Solving, Medical Partner development in India

• Results - Feedback Reports to Donors, Gantt Chart, Critical Path Method (CPM), Risk Matrix

Use of the above mentioned tools have served BFI well for the last 26 plus years. So far, the BFI team has raised over $4.0 million and performed 125,000 free Cataract operations, donated 10,000 Braille kits to blind children for their education, and funded 115 vans to transport doctors and patients. Additionally, on the prevention front, examined eyesight of over 750,000 school-going children and provided necessary interventions such as eye drops, glasses, Vitamin A, and in rare cases Cataract removal. 

For more information on BFI, visit: http://www.blindfoundation.org

You can also listen to my TEDxIIT Chicago talk on "Exponential Power of the Gift of Giving" at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-fmkivYcVg&feature=share

Bottom line is, quality tools find application in our day-to-day life. We need to proactively use quality tools as appropriate to achieve desired results.

I am looking forward to your experience using quality tools in everyday life.