Feature of the Month : Business & Charity

Charities have two main goals: raise money from donors and distribute those funds to the cause they support.  This can be a difficult balancing act at times as donors want to be sure their funds are being used effectively, but many charitable goals are slow to come by and difficult to quantify. This has led many to debate how charities should be run - like a business, or like a giving organization. Those who argue for a business-type structure believe that charities should have a detailed strategy that they try to reach through discipline and a strong emphasis on results. Others argue that grassroots efforts - movements that are community-based and typically have slow progress - would likely receive fewer donations if donors only sought immediate progress.

Charitable beliefs also differ from country to country; structural, as well as cultural, differences impact thinking about charity. For example, the United States has the most appealing charitable tax structure in the developed world and sports the highest proportion of giving as a percentage of GDP. The United Kingdom has the second highest giving as a percentage of GDP, but donors prefer to be less public than those in the U.S. In France, giving is a smaller percentage of GDP in part because citizens expect more form the state. On the other hand, some politicians in Germany are concerned that a growth in philanthropy could cause the government to lose some power. Emerging markets are also stepping up donations, but face different challenges. Russia has seen donations grow steadily but donors must still be careful to not be perceived as a threat to the Kremlin.

Featured Resources

Business for Social Responsibility (BSR)
Business for Social Responsibility is an organization that promotes social responsibility for companies of all sizes. It provides its members with a wide array of tools to design and successfully implement policies that are in line with social, economic, and environmental responsibility. Additionally, BSR provides news and analysis of current issues as they pertain to sustainable development, and training and advisory services for member companies.
Category: Social Responsibility

Traidcraft
Traidcraft is a trading company and development charity dedicated to fighting poverty through trade. The site provides information on buying fair trade, outlines organizational programs relating to international development and includes various fair trade resources.
Category: Fair Trade

Featured Academy

International Entrepreneurship
The module on international entrepreneurship is helpful for understanding the forces that make it possible for entrepreneurs to rapidly internationalize. This module will discuss the drivers of international new venture creation, the technology associated with new venture creation, as well as the barriers and incentives.
Category: Entrepreneurhsip

Multinational Sourcing
The Multinational Sourcing module contains information pertaining to the following issues: what international sourcing is and why companies chose this option; the international sourcing process, including the steps of progression from domestic to full international sourcing; countertrade, the different types of countertrade, and the issues to consider when conducting countertrade. A case study on multinational purchasing at Paradyne is also provided.
Category: Functions

globalEDGE Business Review

"Job Satisfaction – A Comparative Analysis"
by Susan J. Linz (Volume 3, Number 6, pp. 1-3, 2009)

The objective here is to report job satisfaction results from an employee survey conducted between 2005 and 2007 in four formerly socialist economies: Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, with a focus on gender and generational differences in response patterns. Personal contacts, the currency used to achieve objectives in formerly socialist economies, dictated the survey locations. Foreign scholars, part of a mentoring program that involved training in survey research, became the local project coordinators; so by default, the project locations included: Ufa, Russia; Yerevan, Armenia; Almaty and Taldyquorgan, Kazakhstan; and Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. While a single location cannot possibly capture the population or workforce diversity in the country, for convenience, I refer to country name when discussing results.