College of Business Administration

GROUP MEMBERS:

Mia Schoder
Molly Markey
Ali Binder

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

During the holiday season it is important that we look at the less fortunate and ways to contribute in assisting them in any way possible. There is a high need for donating food to the poor which is why many companies take pride in assisting such people. As a group, we have become involved with the San Diego Food Bank to help companies in San Diego participate in and contribute to the Food Bank through the donation of food and/or monetary donations. The fact that thousands of people in San Diego alone are in need of some assistance during this time of the year will help to get donations as well as to justify our project.

Once we obtain both food and monetary donations, the San Diego Food Bank will collect the donations and allocate them as appropriate. The Food Bank provides food to over 200 non-profit, charitable organizations as well oversees the Holiday Food Drive. The San Diego Food Bank was established in 1977 and has since gathered food for millions of individuals and families annually. Their organization has a great deal of credibility and shows an immense sense of commitment to low-income people in the community. This greatly influenced our decision to work with this organization.

Our work with the Food Bank to assist others relates to several ethical frameworks, including the social contract theory, deontology, and the ethic of caring. The social contract theory demonstrates the importance of how people are to treat others and the mutual benefit that, in this case, involves helping the less fortunate. Deontology plays a role in that finding donations for the Food Bank is an altruistic action that benefits people in the community who need assistance. Our project relates to the ethics of caring because we are showing interest and concern for those who do not have adequate resources for dinner meals during the holidays. By securing the help of as many businesses as possible we are attempting to make an impact on those in need so that they may have a better holiday. Although we did not individually make contributions, we put forth the effort to organize and to get others involved in the caring aspect of the project and make donations as they saw fit.

Our goal is to target businesses that have employees who can and are willing to contribute to donate. However, the success of our project is limited by several factors. The main limit is that many companies are already involved in donations through different businesses and have established holiday charities. We have also run into the problem that many companies did not want to participate in our project due to a lack of interest in general, or their perceived inability to do what was necessary to gather donations. A success of our project was that we were able to get eight companies actively involved in the donation process. Overall, our project was a success because as shown in our cost/benefit analysis we were able to gather an adequate amount of monetary and food donations, which in turn will benefit 3,920people in our community.