College of Business Administration

GROUP MEMBERS:

Katie Downey
Vu Tran
Angel Serafico
Grant Tondro

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Our social change project was a Thanksgiving food drive to benefit Mama's Kitchen. Mama's Kitchen is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing nutritious meals to people suffering from HIV/AIDS. Our initial goal was to collect 1,000 cans or boxes of nonperishable foods. We then volunteered our services on Thanksgiving morning.

In order to make our project work we had to jump over many hurdles. We had to ask stores for support and write them a letter explaining our project. We set up barrels and passed out flyers, we also put out a list of suggested goods on the barrels just in case someone wanted an idea of what Mama's Kitchen might need. We then picked up the donations and dropped them off at Mama's Kitchen so they know what they have and what they still need to get. Lastly we volunteered our time on Thanksgiving morning to help prepare meals.

The Ethic of Care ties into our project. These people need a caring relationship. All of the volunteers at Mama's Kitchen are aware that they may be the only visitor that those people have in a day. Without donations Mama's Kitchen wouldn't be able to accommodate all of the people that need them.

We went above and beyond with our project. Instead of getting 1,000 cans we had 2,600 donated. 650 people received a Thanksgiving dinner due in part to our project. Channel 6 news came to Mama's Kitchen showing we were successful in giving back to the community. As a group we went out and talked to many organizations and businesses and got them involved. Some of our businesses are continuing the project thru Christmas. Our project shows that many people truly care about their fellow man.

Cost/Benefit Analysis for Mama's Kitchen

Benefits:

2600 cans collected X $0.50/can = $1,300.00
Increase of aesthetic value and quality of life (260meals) X $100/meal = $26,000.00

Total: = $27,300.00

Costs:

104 total hours by group X $18.85/hr = $1,960.40
1280 miles driven at 22 mpg X $1.49/gal = $86.69
200 flyers X $0.05/flyer = $10.00

Total: = $2,057.09

Net Benefit: = $25,242.91

The project with Mama's Kitchen constitutes a Pareto improvement because it improves the quality of life for some people, but does not make anybody else worse off. The cans that we collected provided nutritious meals to those individuals who are living with HIV/AIDS and who could not provide for themselves. They benefited from the project and nobody participating was worse off. The project also constitutes a potential Pareto improvement because the benefits outweigh the costs.