Enhancing Foster Care Home NGO Sustainability via Social Franchising

Abstract

Research Question: This paper investigates how the social franchising approach may enhance the sustainability and capability of Foster Home NGOs in the Global South. Motivation: While many programmes exist to address issues such as poverty and lack of education for children in nations of the Global South, many operate in isolation, and are grassroots and/or stand-alone operations. Little research has been undertaken to understand how various approaches to organizational sustainability may be enacted for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) seeking to provide care for children in foster care homes. Our goal was to apply franchising and social franchising concepts as a framework for NGOs and non-profit organizations to use as a way of enhancing both the capability of achieving their mission as well as a method of organizational sustainability. Idea: Much of the literature on social franchising has been in the area of providing health care and services – however, this model may be useful to enhance the sustainability for NGOs and non-profit organizations that provide other critical services as well, such as foster care homes in the Global South. Findings: The social franchising model offers a concrete and actionable business model to foster home organizations with multiple homes to standardize care delivery as well as develop a strong core organization. Contribution: This paper explores how applying the social franchising model could enhance sustainability of NGOs with foster care home programmes, as well as some of the opportunities and challenges in applying this model to such NGOs and non-profit organizations.

Keywords

• social franchising
• non-profit
• NGO
• organization
• Global South