Strategic Resource Mobilisation amongst Founder-CEOs of Social Work Organisations in Mainland China

Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with twenty-one founder-CEOs of social work organisations (SWOs) in Mainland China, this article develops the concept of ‘strategic resource mobilisation’ and investigates how founder-CEOs’ professional backgrounds influence their mobilisation of resources in three areas—funding, human resources and government relations. We find that founder-CEOs adopt different strategies in mobilising resources, presenting distinct advantages and disadvantages according to their professional background. In particular, founder-CEOs affiliated with universities are viewed with trust and respect by the government and have social work students as human resources but report a lack of management skills; founder-CEOs from a business background have wider access to financial support and make good use of their management experiences and skills but are challenged by frontline social workers; and founder-CEOs with prior government experience rely on connections with officials to secure funding but face greater administrative constraints. The findings provide valuable insights for SWO executives to better assess their organisational capacity, leadership and management. The research further suggests that, to ensure the sustainable development of SWOs in Mainland China, government policies could be introduced to help diversify the funding sources, and efforts should be made to improve the partnership between the government and SWOs.