This report examines a nonprofit executive education provider, The RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service (RGK), as a conduit to understanding challenges that nonprofit executive education providers in the U.S. are experiencing in the current economic environment. These challenges include attracting participants (who are presently less likely to invest in executive education because of budget constraints), cutting costs, increasing revenue, coping with slashed budgets, and trying to stay innovative by developing timely, relevant content that meets nonprofit leaders’ evolving needs and desires during economic hardship. RGK aims to strategically use its limited resources to expand its executive education programming, called the Strategic Management Program (SMP), in hopes of increasing revenue while better meeting the needs of its local nonprofit leadership community. This report provides the first steps in planning for SMP’s strategic expansion with a market analysis that will give RGK a thorough understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of current SMP programming, as well as a comprehensive view of the environment in which the SMP is operating. The market analysis is achieved through examining the external environment, RGK’s internal SMP environment, and a target audience assessment. Second, the report gives specific recommendations and strategies for expanding SMP, based on insights garnered from the market analysis and other research. / text

Organizations of all types are now able to operate in virtual capacities through time, space, and distance across multinational boundaries; therefore, geography no longer limits business functioning. In fact, many corporate executives and boards employ virtuality in their work regimen. Therefore, organizations employ virtual executives to work teams with ideal skill sets to effectively persevere and complete tasks through distance, space, and time. The purpose of this study was to identify and yet understand the experiences of executive multinational, virtual board members working as a team in a virtual environment. Through this research the virtual dynamics of the virtual team have been studied, prodded, purposely mismatched, and weaved together to understand the culture of the virtual environment in which the team members interact and perform duties. With this particular board, there has been a history of previous work experience or exposure in some capacity; however, it has no great impact on their interaction and work with the entire board. In this study, an exploratory look at the experiences, perceived team dynamics, and strategies used to successfully function as a virtual team are highlighted from a qualitative perspective. The purpose is to describe the individual perspectives of how a multinational executive virtual team best works. The findings of this study reveal that there are many ways to communicate utilizing technology, but the objective for this virtual team is to be multidimensional in use. That means that honest communication is necessary for the board to perform at their optimal level. Therefore, the theoretical framework is based on team performance as a teamwork process-based construct which depends on communication, relationship, and trust to add success for virtual teams The framework results in three step process for team flow and success i.e., the importance of face-to-face meetings; advantages of virtual teaming; and challenges of virtual teaming to result in virtual team performance dependent on the team having communication, relationship, and trust present.