CASE STUDY

BUILDING THE FUTURE

HABITAT FOR HUMANITY

Ayesha Khan 683-FSS/BSIR/F19

Aqsa Wali 691-FSS/BSIR/F19
Faiqa Khattak 679-FSS/BSIR/F19
Maheen Ahmad 699-FSS/BSIR/F19
INTRODUCTION
• Habitat for humanity is a non-profit, ecumenical Christian housing ministry whose
mission is to eliminate poverty and homelessness from the world.

• Founded by Millard and Linda Fuller in 1976 in Americus, Georgia.

• More than 300,000 Habitat houses have been built, sheltering more than 1.5 million
people around the world.

• Habitat’s approach is simple. Families in need of decent housing apply to local Habitat
for Humanity affiliates and homeowners are chosen based on their level of need,
willingness to become partners in the program and their ability to repay the loan.
 Introduction:
• Families chosen to become homeowners have to make down payment and
monthly mortgage payments and invest hundreds of hours of their own labor into
building their Habitat home and helping build other Habitat houses.

• In 2009, J. Ronald Terwilliger, who also has been a long-time member of

Habitat’s board of directors, made a $100 million commitment to Habitat.

• According to Center on philanthropy at Indiana University, “It’s one of the

largest gifts in recent years to a group devoted to social services.”

• As for Habitat, its CEO, Jonathan Reckford, said, “This is a chance to have a
really deep impact.”
What role do you think goals would play in planning for the wise use of this gift? List some
goals you think might be important. (Make sure these goals have the characteristics of well-
written goals.)

•Goals play a substantial role in an organization’s planning for situations requiring coordination of resources.
Habitat for Humanity’s goal to effectively use the $100 million gift should follow the SMART format
introduced by Drucker. 

•The SMART format includes the following points:

 Specific (simple, sensible, significant).
 Measurable (meaningful, motivating).
 Achievable (agreed, attainable).
 Relevant (reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based).
 Time-bound (time-based, time-limited, time/cost limited, timely, time-sensitive).

•Goals should be specific means that the organization should extend its project in 5 more countries with
ongoing projects in 90 countries using this amount. The organization would extend its projects up-to 50% in
the upcoming year (means that goal is measurable) as we are setting our upcoming projects according to
estimating our resources we are already having so, goals are achievable. It is the primary characteristics of
management to be efficient and effective. Our goals are relevant as we choosing to extend house
manufacturing up to 50% in the upcoming one year using this gift amount. We are bounding ourselves in a
one-year time frame.
 
What types of plans would be needed in wisely using this gift? (For instance, long-
term or short-term or both?) Explain why you think these plans would be important.
• Developing plans are very important to integrate and coordinate work activities. This
largest gift of $100 million will help Habitat build thousand of homes around the World
that’s why both types of planning (long-term and short-term) would be of equal
importance.

• In order to make wise use of this huge donation, long-term planning would be
implemented which would be strategic and directional. Because acquiring sufficient land,
constructing homes and motivating the staff to acquire desired result would be a big
challenge for managers. And it would require long-term planning to build homes world
wide.

• While short-term planning can not be neglected because to accomplish long term goals
top managers have to allocate the funds for dividing tasks to middle and first line
managers. Short term plans will involve initial allocation of some of the gift and think of
possible outcome whether investment results in significant return or substantial loss.
What contingency factors might affect the planning Habitat executives have to do
for the wise use of this gift? How might those contingency factors affect the
planning?

• Contingency factors are those factors which influence an organization’s planning.

• These factors may be :

 Natural disasters/ calamities
 Scarcity of resources
 Planning mode; strategic/ operational

• At top level planning will be strategic in nature but it will be operational when
passes down to lower level.
What planning challenges do you think Habitat executives face with getting the
most use out of this gift? How should they cope with those challenges?

• As 100 million dollar gift is a lot of money and the planning challenges that the Habitat
executives will face when getting the most out of this gift is deciding how the gift should be
distributed.

• Because not all the executives will agree on specifically how the money should be utilized. If
it is not distributed evenly it can cause chaos amongst the families in the housing program.

• The Habitat executives need to plan. So for this plan they needed to know the common need
among the families in the program. Once this is done they need to make sure that the
common need can be taken care of with the gift for each family that is involved in the
program.