Organizational Culture – Week 2 Perkinson
My first week at Youth Life was training, which helped me see the nonprofit’s administrative organizational structure. Additionally, my second week was the first week of summer program, which allowed me to note the structure of the organization with the students present. Across these two weeks, it has been evident that Youth Life has strong values of support, guidance, and inclusion. Every employee at the organization has been more than welcoming and helpful as I have navigated these first two weeks. Since I had experience working with Youth Life prior to starting this internship, I knew that the employees were great. I did not expect however, for the summer program to be so structured. I really like how the organization communicates well with the interns, so I know what each week and day will look like. This has made my adjustment to interning for the company easy and simple.
At my internship site, there is an expectation that interns will be flexible. Since Youth Life is a nonprofit organization that works primarily work with young children, sometimes things do not go to plan. For example, this week, three students dropped out of the summer program because of an issue their mother was having with Social Services. Not only was this upsetting emotionally as the teacher as one of the students, but it also required me to be flexible and alter my lesson plans. Unpredictable events such as this are likely to occur now and then, given the work that we do. As an intern, it is difficult to learn to adjust to these last-minute changes, but it is a large part of the organizational structure of the company.
Overall, I have been able to find more strengths of Youth Life than weaknesses. One strength is the organization’s focus on support. Youth Life supports its students in any way that it can. Additionally, the directors of the organization support the interns. I feel like there are many resources for me at the organization. Secondly, the organization is very structured. Every day has a clear plan and focus, which is beneficial as a teacher. Third, there is a strong organization culture. All of the employees seem to be close friends, which makes the office a positive environment to work in.
The only weakness that I can think of regarding the organizational structure of Youth Life is that since there are many different sites with different site leaders, there are inconsistencies between sites. For example, the different sites follow different procedures and rules. This was initially hard to follow as a new intern during training. However, after spending a week at my new site, I do not think that this is hard to understand any longer.
In my experience with YouthLife, as one of our Justice partners, I too have found more strengths than weaknesses. I probably would have identified the same weakness. It is surprising to me that there are inconsistencies between the different centers as so many other elements of YouthLife are structured and consistent. Sounds as though the values and norms/expectations were shared directly with you as a new intern (versus having to be learned) and that if anything, you just had to identify that which you learned in training that was relevant to your site. I’m glad that the communication is good. Is it predominantly face-to-face; do you use electronic correspondence; are their individual meetings (with your supervisor) or staff meetings?