Thesis (Master in Management) -- University of the Philippines Mindanao, April 2019

Cotabato Mill District Development Council Foundation Incorporated (CMDDCFI) is an agency which is considered as one of the prime-movers of the sugarcane industry in the Cotabato District. Its main objective is to promote the industry among farmers and stakeholders in the district through extending services beneficial to all its partners. It also engaged in different kinds of income-generating projects and activities in order to thrive and support its operation. The Foundation is a non-profit organization however, because of the nature of its business, it has to earn a modest income in order to sustain its operation. Review of the financial results of operations and the financial health of the Foundation revealed that their finances were dwindling for the last five years. It incurred heavy financial losses on its operations which supposedly had brought-in funds sustaining the services of the Foundation. The five-year average presented a 13.5% deficit in its profit and loss statement. Primary to the issues are the uncontrolled expenses, low productivity in asset utilization and the high cost of maintaining 16 year-old Equipment and Tractors that instead of delivering funds for the organization consumed the Foundation?s funds which initially were contribution support coming from the farmers and the sugar mill. Primary contributors to its losses are nursery project delivering a 22% deficit, and more disastrous are the hauling and tractor services losing badly at gross margin level with an average deficit of 87%. The Foundation was given mill by-products for their own disposal to generate income. Despite this, their income remained less and didn't have ways pushing the products and depended only on banana plantations as its market through intermediaries. The organization also lacks the necessary manpower to take charge in the different projects and does not have documented guidelines for the operation and for the decorum of its human resources. As a methodology, the intervention process was actually guided by the conceptual framework of strategic planning by Fred David (David, 2011). The initial factors were mainly evaluated previously discussed, looking at its financial performance and health. It went through evaluating the external environment using the PESTLE, determining the opportunities and threats. There are enabling laws and policies mostly under the Department of Agriculture which could definitely help the Foundation. However, there are threats like the conflict on some areas of the Foundation brought by socio cultural clan wars, the unpredictable severe weather pattern threatening the surgarcane crops and the unstable prices of sugar and farm inputs alike. Analysis went through using the internal and external factors evaluation to weigh the most relevant and threatening factors for the Foundation and its main strength and weaknesses. Strategies were formulated and implementation plan was prepared, fitting it on each functional areas of the firm, from Organization and Human resource, to Operations, Marketing and Finance. Priority for the implementation are the acquisition of new units of Trucks and Equipment, hiring of capable manpower and putting additional personnel to exercise control on its finances and establishing Policy and Operations Manual to professionalize its decorum. Finally, monitoring and evaluation systems were crafted using Balanced Scorecard to monitor process of the implementation by looking at the different key results areas and key performance indicators to assess if the target parameters are achieved upon the execution of different action plans. The eventual success of the strategic plan for the foundation relies so much on the people involved in the implementation of its strategies. The plan needs the full support of the whole CMDDCFI team, primarily its management. The scrutiny presents a lot of chances, plans are very doable and any of its success shall be mostly attributed to the people working for its achievement. Generally, its barometer is the efficiency of its services to its stakeholders, the farmers, the sugar-mill and other partners in the industry and to have a positive financial bottom line in its business.