In a narrative format, discuss the key facts and critical issues presented in the case “Big Brothers”
Big Brother Case Study

The critical issues about the Big Brother agency is that volunteers are limited. As a result of this, the total matches between big and little brothers have dropped by 40 percent through the years. Moreover, there are a number of boys on the waiting list sometimes for 2 years or more waiting to be matched with a big brother. However, there were other problems with recruitment and retention of Big Brothers volunteers which became a crucial issue for the organization as well. Because the organization main funding was from the United Way Champaign, the BB organization must remain effective in meeting its objectives. Therefore, the BB organization current goal is to increase the number of matches to improve its image and chances of benefiting from the larger donations and from United Way allowance.
The whole concept of the BB organization is to provide boys who are ages six to sixteen years old with a male mentor. These particular boys are individuals who do not have a farther in the home, and or have no connection with their father at all, and live in a single parent home. In general, these particular boys have also had previous bad experiences with male adults through the acts of mental and physical abuse which caused mental scars in their attitude toward men. Additionally, the organization also focused on boys who had been in previous trouble with the law, and or in the juvenile court system. However, when a boy was finally assigned a mentor, their attitudes change toward the way men were perceived. Thus, due to the lack of volunteers, the BB organization had to reconsider the age limit to concentrate its efforts towards boys’ ages seven to thirteen.

The BB organization ran operations in several cities which include London, Cincinnati, New York, Ontario, and Canada, but originated in NYC in 1909, and in Toronto Canada in 1913. However, in 1971, a local court judge approved the BB of London to be incorporated. Consequently, by the year 1980, according to Kinicki & Kreitner (2008), in Bethel’s Organizational Behavior, “the initial 50 per year. There was an overabundance of volunteers willing to make a two-year commitment to a father-absent boy, and as many as 90 matches were made annually” (p.313). Conversely, “in 1994, 213 men inquired about becoming a Big Brother; however, the number of volunteers who applied plummeted to 41. Despite the fact that a stipulated commitment for volunteers was reduced from two years to one, the number of matches dropped to 32” (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2008 p. 313). Accordingly, due to the current economic decline in 1994, BB of London Executive Director Glen Mitchell speculated that it was a major factor in the decrease of volunteers. Likewise, “some potential volunteers claimed that unemployment had rendered them little time for activities other than job searches. Newly unemployed me faced the likelihood of relocation to another city, presenting the possibility that they would be unable to fulfill the year’s obligation to a boy (Kinicki & Kreitner 2008, p. 314). Hence, one solution was suggested by a volunteer whom understood how the declining economics might discourage individuals from volunteering. “His suggestion for overcoming this problem was that the agency create and staff a general purpose room in its headquarters. His objective was that a renovated room at any central location could function as a meeting place to interact with the boys and play games, watch videos, and play dominoes. By the same token, this way people from different areas of the city can access the organization easily on their way to or from home, or work which can help to avoid the long tired commute, which could be more often one of the reasons volunteers avoid the organization. Although this might seem like a minor problem, this solution was