Knowledge Management Culture in non-profit organisations

As a production manager as well as a Knowledge Management (KM) student, it is not hard to relate work to KM process and concepts from time to time, which help me and my team to create better work flow to facilitate KM and benefit from it. On the other hand, I find it fascinating when I implement KM in a Non-profit Organisation (NPO), which is the choir that I participate as the president. To my surprise, I find it relatively easier to develop KM culture in a non-profit set up than a commercial environment.

After reading an article titled "Knowledge Management in NGOs" by Precious Chinanga, I agree to an extend that NGOs/ NPOs face difficulties in implementing KM. However from the KM Culture point of view, I believe they are in better positions than for-profit organisations, and I would like to illustrate with the choir as example in below areas.

1. Knowledge sharing

Members of NGOs/ NPO As there are no personal or team KPI in the community. They usually work towards the same goals as a group. The well-being of their peer will benefit the team. Therefore they tend to have a better culture of knowledge sharing. Take the choir as an example, those with stronger musical background will make recordings (learning materials) for members who are not strong in sight-singing. Members will also arrange additional practices in their own time and at their home as a small group. These benefits the whole choir if individuals have better performances. Their act reflect members are willing to invest time and offer advice and resources to their peer.

2. Knowledge storage

Since members are open and willing to share, with the technology nowadays, it is easy for NPO to book keep their knowledge as well. Their motivation of doing so would be to benefit the NPO itself, since they are contributing to the community through participating. Example from choir - everything is stored under a share drive. All members would have access to the drive, as a library. For new members, the drive is extremely useful, as all important information and past scores can be found. Shared calendar was set up so information was stored and spread among the group simultaneously with a tracked record. Members and committee are willing to take up the responsibility to maintain this process, knowing that this will benefit the team.

3. Knowledge creation

This is slightly more complicated than the two areas above. With no KPI in-placed, it seems predictable that the ability to generate and create knowledge will be limited. However, unlike Community of Practice (CoP), NPOs usually have a leading person to stimulate productivity of the group. This role will motivate the group to the next level and ensure knowledge creation. At the same time, since members of the organisation share the same vision and mission, they are more willing to contribute, take part and spend time on knowledge creation regardless of the return ( in forms of incentive or salary). The leader in the choir would be the conductor/ music director, who constantly encourages and pushes the team members for improvements - even though none of the members are full-time performers. As informal as it seems, with a proper direction, NPOs would have a less calculative and competitive culture and environment for knowledge to be created. Less judgement and comparison certainly encourage new knowledge to be created.

Above is purely my personal observation. After all, for-profit organisation should have more resources to carry out KM. Yet, culture is not something to be purchased. As per ISO30401 mentioned, "The development of a knowledge management culture does not happen by default, nor in a short time, but requires a deliberate and active programme of interventions to steward it towards the desired state." For the choir, it's very clear. To improve the performance to be more well recognised in the country, and in the world. This reflection is just an example to demonstrate the importance of KM culture to an organisation, which eventually would affect the entire KM strategy of the organisation.

If individuals are willing to devote in NPOs because they are sharing the same goal and desired state, how should for-profit organisations implement that concept and attitude into the mind-set of their staff, so as to let KM run organically?