Knowledge Management in Community Foundations

YunChing Tseng, Emerging Leader, International Fellows Program ~ 2004

Abstract

Yun-Ching Tseng builds her research on two assumptions: 1) That community-based organizations (CBOs) are knowledge-intensive bodies that depend on that knowledge to strengthen their communities; 2) That organizations must use their intellectual assets effectively to survive.

Ms. Tseng argues that community foundations need to enhance their operations through improved knowledge management, and maintains that Taiwan 's nonprofit sector has much to learn from the US grantmaking community. Ms. Tseng presents a series of suggestions for Taiwan's CBOs, including:

• Identifying the core values of the organization, specifying areas of intellectual capital to be created and maintained, and determining each departmental employee’s mission;
• Building a learning environment (e.g. encourage employees to acquire, create accumulate, and share knowledge);
• Improving the use of the information technology by creating an internal information portal and developing IT solutions for knowledge accumulation, acquisition, and sharing.

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