The Knights of Nutrition – Feed My Starving Children

Project Description:

 

For our project, we chose to work with Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) located in Schaumburg, IL. In order to support and raise awareness for FMSC we coordinated an online fundraiser, as well as a food-packing event. Our food-packing event was held on May 31st, 2019 at the FMSC location in Schaumburg from 12-2pm. Our goal for the event was to have 40 volunteers and raise $1,000. The event was a great success and we were able to pack enough meals to feed 102 children for a year. Prior to the event, we created an online donation page through the FMSC website in an attempt to raise our goal of $1,000. We were able to raise a total of $1,222 through Facebook and the FMSC donation webpage. We also were able to secure a $1,000 matching contribution donation from Robert Bosch Power Tools.

Description of Charity:

 

Feed My Staving Children is a non-profit organization founded in 1987 that provides volunteers the opportunity to pack dry ingredients, vitamins and minerals into individual bags. These meals will reach people around the world and help feed and save the lives of many people. Feed My Starving Children’s mission is, “Feeding God’s starving children hungry in body and spirit.” Through donations received from individuals, they are able to purchase the ingredients for their meals.

Goals:

 

  • Raise $1,000
  • Secure Bosch matching contribution
  • Recruit 40 volunteers

Results:

 

  • Raised $2,222
  • Bosch matching contribution of $1,000
  • Recruited 45 volunteers

Lessons Learned:

 

There were many lessons learned throughout this project. The most important were organization and effective communication with your team. These were very important to us because we were a small team and needed to be organized in order to successfully complete this project. We quickly learned that it was necessary to communicate via multiple methods of communication. A combination of emails, texts and in person meetings were necessary to keep us on track with all the project deliverables.  We also realized that organization was important to ensure all members were on the same page.

Advice to Future Teams:

 

Our advice to future teams would be to have fun, trust your team members, start the project as soon as possible and do not be afraid to deviate from your initial plan. There are many deliverables and tasks that need to be completed, but if you start early enough and work well with your team members, your project results will be great.

 

The Women’s Treatment Center Clothing Room Project

Project Description

For our project we wanted to update the clothing room at the Women’s Treatment Center in Chicago, Illinois. The clothing room is where all of the clothing donations are stored. The women can get clothing for themselves or their children in this room. Our update included new paint, new shelves, new clothing rods, a new folding table, a new door sign, and plaques for the shelving. Due to the expenses of this project, we needed to raise a significant amount of funds, so fundraising was done before the building was able to start.

Description of Charity

The Women’s Treatment Center helps women who are recovering from addiction. Some of the services that this center offers are medical detox, parenting classes, an emergency nursery, a CPS certified pre-K, housing, and career training. The fact that the women can live with their children (up to 5 years old) in this center is one of the reasons it is unique.

Results

For our project, we had various goals set during our project proposal. These goals included raising $1000 from donations, getting corporate donation matching up to $1000, raise awareness of the organization through fundraising, recruit at least two volunteers to help, install new shelving and clothing rods, and complete the work within one 8 hour day. We had two stretch goals, which included painting the room and adding a new sorting table.

We were able to achieve all of the goals that we set. We raised slightly over $2000 in donations, which more than doubled our goal. Bosch agreed to match $1000 of those donations. We had more than 50 shares on our GoFundMe page which means there was awareness driven. For our paint day we had one volunteer, and for our build day we had three volunteers. This also doubled our goal of two volunteers. We did complete the painting in one day (4 hours) and the building within one day (6 hours). Due to the stretch paint goal completed, we did use two days rather than one, but the original build day scope was within our timeframe of one day. We were also able to purchase a new sorting table due to the extra funds raised.

Lessons Learned

There were many lessons learned through this process. The most important lesson from this project was looking at all of the possible risks associated. The day before the build and the day of the build we had some issues arise and were able to overcome all of them to successfully complete the project in the given timeline.

Next, assigning specific tasks with deadlines is extremely important. Just having a list of tasks and roles assigned is not enough. Setting deadlines allows you to determine your critical path to ensure everything is complete by the project deadline.

Finally, I think it is important to enjoy yourself during the project. This was one of the assigned goals but we realized that if we were not having fun and enjoying what we were doing then we would not be motivated to complete the project and hit our stretch goals.

Advice to Future Teams

The most important piece of advice I can give is to get started early. This is something we were told in class #1. Luckily, we started right away raising money and not waiting for class deliverables to get started. This allowed us to raise much more money than expected.

Next, having weekly update meetings to ensure tasks are moving forward. If you just discuss verbally and do not have a living document then it is easy to forget necessary tasks.

The last piece of advice is to run through the user journey with your group a few times to write down anything you might miss. In doing this, we remembered many critical things like moving carts, garbage bags, and specialty tools.

Photos

Before

 

Paint Day

 

Complete Project!

Sponsorship are important, but how do we get them?

Fundraising events are a great opportunity to bring awareness to your organization and your cause. However organizing an event requires resources and costs to produce. Over the past few weeks of planning our charity event, I would have to say (and I think the class would agree) that there were so many more components in project management and event planning than we initially planned for. These components may be a small fraction of your event but detrimental to the entire project if neglected or not executed properly. For example, getting donations for prizes and sponsors may not be necessary for your event, however it is a great way to spread awareness and gain exposure for your event. Luckily our particular event did not require a significant amount of upfront cost to produce, however if we neglected to focus our efforts on soliciting sponsors and donations, the financial risk would impact all team members.

The Fundraising Authority, an online resource that helps non-profits fund work that matters. They published an article with helpful tips for securing donations and sponsors for your fundraising event. I thought these tips were very useful and hopefully can benefit others in their fundraising efforts.

  1. Utilize your network: Before going on a search for sponsors, talk to people you know whether it be coworkers, friends, and family members. You may be surprised to find out what connections others may have with businesses or local community members. Plus, the conversation may be easier to have with people you know.
  2. Do your research: Find out if there are businesses looking to sponsor an event. After all, there is a tax benefit for businesses since their sponsorship is considered a donation. Research what businesses nearby have sponsored other events in the past.
  3. Media sponsorships: Media sponsors are great partners to help spread the word for your event. Local newspaper and radio stations are always looking for stories to share about the community and it’s free advertisement.
  4. Outline detailed benefits: What will businesses get in return for sponsoring your event? Remember to provide them a list of benefits from sponsoring event. This can be free advertisement on your promotional materials, allowing the business to provide sampling of products, or on-site event promotion.
  5. Create customized pitches: One size does not always fit all. In order to persuade a potential sponsor, create a customized pitch that is personalized for that prospects brand or business goals.
  6. Manage sponsorship relationships: This should go without saying, be sure to treat your sponsors well. In the end, they are helping you and your charity. Keep those networks there in case for future events. Doing so may require designating a team member to manage the relationship to ensure obligations are met.
  7. Event re-cap: Lastly, send thank you notes! Provide a recap of the event, outlining the success that their sponsorship helped bring. Tying back to tip #6, providing a recap and showing gratitude will help maintain relationships for the future.

More details on ways to secure sponsors can be found at http://www.thefundraisingauthority.com/fundraising-events/securing-sponsors-for-your-event/

 

 

Risky Business

 

This week in class we had to turn in our risk assignment for our fundraiser project.  As a financial analyst I work closely with risk on a daily basis.  Something we touched on in class when we created the risk was just the basics. What sort of risk, probability, value of the risk and contingency plan.  In reality, there is so much that goes into risk.  That it why I chose to research risk and see what else there is to know about risk.  I found a great article that talked about the fluidity of risk. The project management realm deals with an ever changing environment, which means risk is changing on an almost daily basis as well.  In my business, the programs I work on are very complex, which makes risk management and analysis complex as well and needs to be continuously re-visited and re-analyzed.

When creating our risk at my company, we don’t know how many out of box failures we may have on a program.  We don’t know how many parts might fail.  That is why over time, it is pivotal to continue to re-visit our risk.  Something I use in my job is called a “gating month”.  It is a month when we think our risk will be retired or OBE (overcome by events).   That being said, looking at risk on a daily basis is so important to monitoring project health.  As a project progresses and evolves, potentially so does the risk.

A personal example from my job as a financial analyst on government programs has to do with gating months.  For example, on my current program, we build and deliver hardware to the customer.  Because of that, a risk we carry has to do with our second sourced suppliers.  If a supplier who makes a part for our hardware build goes out of business or stops making the part, we need to be prepared for the costs that will go into replacing that part.  That includes finding another supplier, validating them and then potentially modifying the part to our specs.  This isn’t just a risk we carry throughout the entire program.  Over time, as we deliver hardware, this risk becomes smaller and smaller.  Why carry risk for 500 deliveries when we only have 50 left?  That is why, as a financial analyst, I work with the PMO to analyze our delivery schedule in relation to our risk items.  I help plan when this risk item should be reduced and when it will be OBE. When that happens the PMO needs to make an important decision.  Do we want to retire the risk to our bottom line or do we want to re-visit the program health and plan risk items for other problems that, over time, have now presented itself?

I have learned through personal experience, class and this article that risk is something that needs to be looked at continuously.  It needs to be managed daily and analyzed daily for any changes to the project and its environment.  It needs to be reduced or increased.  It needs just as much attention as the project execution itself.  In the article I read I found a great chart that shows the fluidity and cyclical nature of risk management and risk analysis:

 

Now a few questions on risk management and risk analysis:

1. Do you use risk at your job?  What sort of risk management and analysis do you perform?

2. Have you experienced a unique risk circumstance? What happened and what did you learn from the experience?

3. Do you have anymore insight and input into risk management and analysis?

4. Any other questions and comments are welcome!

 

http://www.pmoplanet.com/cross-discipline-elements/risk-management/

Movie for a Cause-Supporting Autism

 

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Project Description:

Many different ideas and proposals were generated for our field project, however we had less than two weeks to prepare and implement so it had to be something not too big and feasible. We decided to do a Charity Movie Night and to partner with the Bahrain Society for Children with Behavioral and Communication Difficulties and Alia for Early Intervention to raise funds and awareness supporting autism.

 

We had a screening of the movie “Temple Grandin”, a biopic of a woman with autism who became one of the most prominent female animal scientists. In addition to the movie screening, we had an informational speaker who gave us a short interactive presentation about autism. We managed to generate funds by selling entrance tickets, as well as selling food and beverage to the audience. We also made donations open to anyone who wanted to contribute, even if they were not able to attend the event that way we were able to maximize fundslogo

 

Project Objectives and Methodologies:

Our project objectives were to raise funds, and to create awareness about autism.

We started planning for the event on 7th of April 2015 and we scheduled our event to be on the 15th of April 2015, so we only had a total of 8 days to plan, schedule, organize, and implement our plans for the event! So we had to have a very hands on approach with this project in order for it to have been successful.

We split our tasks and gave each other functional roles that were split into marketing, operations, logistics, finance, public relations and having a project manager to overlook all the tasks. Even though we distributed tasks we had a cross functional team strategy which allowed us to help each other when necessary.

Our primary tasks were to secure a location as well as have proper advertisement.

Since we had such little time, we wanted to spread the word as soon as we could. We created an Instagram account “@movieforacause” and used other means of social media  in addition to posting flyers on notice boards and digitally as advertisement. We also managed to get a local news crew cinstagramover the event.

In terms of the location we managed to secure a venue within a day from planning with Bahrain Polytechnic, a local university, who gave it to us rent free, including technical support for the event. We also had a few other sponsors, Canar who provided us with funding for the event and Janahi Design who created our banners and flyers.

In terms of logistics, it was very simple as the venue was fully equipped with chairs, speakers, screen and projectors. It also conveniently had a food area to set up stalls. For food and beverage, we had those delivered by either family members or the vendors themselves.0c8d8c404bbe8b521245f9dec24cdc8b

Also, plenty of parking was available as the event began after regular work hours, so a lot of free parking was available by then.

In terms of revenue, we charged entrance fees for 3 BHD (Bahraini Dinar) and for snack and beverage, we sold popcorn, nachos, chips, chocolate, baked goods, soft drinks and water.

We managed to have 75 attendees which equated to 225 BHD from entrance fees alone, 130.2 from snacks and beverages, and we also sold 87 BHD worth of autism accessories provided to us from the society. In addition to the money we received from the event itself we managed to raise 878.2 BHD worth of donations, so total funds raised were 1381.2 BHD. All in all we managed to create a very successful event in a very short period of time.

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Advice for Future Teams

  • Make sure all of you communicate well with each other, because communication is a key factor in helping you succeed. Use the most compatible means of communication for your team. Ours was meeting before and after every class and creating a shared whatsapp group.
  • Make sure you plan and document everything from the get go.
  • Have contingency plans in place, and if you’re doubtful of getting last minute approvals from somewhere or someone it is ok to work in parallel with your contingency plan.
  • List down all the possible challenges and consider the mitigation process in order to overcome any surprises.
  • Most of all, remember you’re doing it for a noble cause, so have fun with it and remember that it is very possible! We only had 8 days to deliver, so anything is possible if you put your mind to it.

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Lessons Learned:

We learned three main things from this project:

  • Planning. Planning is a key element that will contribute to the success of your project, it will help you think of every detail that you might have missed, and it will definitely help you avoid any risks.
  • Communication. We made sure we always had a way of communicating with each other; the workflow of our project went very smoothly thanks to that.
  • Commitment. Although a lot of us had prior engagements either with work or our personal lives, we were all committed to completing our tasks and meeting deadlines. No one fell short in that aspect in our group and everyone delivered on time which is what helped make our project so successful.  food2foodsponsor3sponsorsponsor1