College of Business Administration

GROUP MEMBERS:

Janida Disengomoka
Silvia Kupcova
Coleen Sawaya
Laurie Herrin
Cagri Kurt
Jorge Valdespino
Jesse Huskey
Armando Lacar
Neil Wolstenhome
Stephen Kennedy
April Mills

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Becky’s House is an 18 month transitional housing program for victims of domestic violence. Four years ago, the YWCA of San Diego had a vision to raise enough money to build a transitional home for these victims and their children. With the help of the San Diego community, including private citizens, businesses, and politicians, that dream became a reality when Becky’s House opened in 2001. Becky's House consists of ten townhouses and is managed by the YWCA of San Diego. The services they offer to their residents include, case management, counseling and support groups for the women and children, legal assistance, tutoring and GED assistance, parenting workshops, job skills assessment and training, and extensive activities for the children.

Our project mission: Changing the way we think about business. Our primary goal of the project was to utilize the San Diego business climate to provide resources in setting up a charity luncheon and auction with the goal of raising money for Becky’s House. The objectives of Project Becky’s House team were to: 1) organize a donor business to provide food, labor, entertainment, and venue for a charity dinner and auction, 2) utilize STAR 100.7 (affiliated with Becky’s House) for event PR, 3) get a San Diego business to design and print brochures, flyers, and tickets for the event, 4) solicit San Diego businesses to donate merchandise or gift certificates for our silent auction, 5) get business professionals to buy tickets to our event. Our original goal was to donate $5,000 to Becky’s House.

Successes / Challenges

Throughout the long process of the planning and development of our charity lunch and auction event, we ran into some difficult obstacles to get through. First, we had a difficult time with the most important aspect and that is finding a location to hold our event. We contacted many different businesses such as hotels, restaurants, and even Viejas Casino. We had no luck as they all kept turning us down. Finally, we were able to find a location. Jorge, one of our group members, convinced the owner at Hunter Steakhouse to donate his restaurant space just for our event. He agreed to let us use his space on Saturday, April 3rd from 11:00am to 2:00pm.

Next, we encountered some trouble with getting businesses to donate items for our auction and then problems with selling tickets for our event. We even did a trade off with Victoria from Heartland Foundation. We provided 3 hours of our labor digging holes for her fence to go in and she gave us a short debriefing of how we can contact businesses better. After this, we kept on encouraging each other to continue contacting businesses as much as possible. Through excellent teamwork and communication, we were able to eventually obtain over 10 different auction items! Then with ticket sales, we sold some at the full asking price of $50, but then decided to discount the price for some tickets. This made us successful of selling more tickets.

Then we were very shocked to find out that Star 100.7 couldn’t help us obtain some air time. We assumed that since Star has affiliation with Becky’s House already that it wouldn’t be a problem to advertise our event on air. We assumed wrong and they just refused to help, they said that they can only post our advertisement on their website. We really wanted some air time so we contacted other radio stations but they all turned us down too because of conflict of interest. This really disappointed us but we still got some publicity by getting an ad in the Daily Aztec, getting flyers professionally designed, and getting the ad on Star’s website.

Finally, we had some difficulty with getting Becky’s House to pay the Hunter Steakhouse bill. We figured that since all proceeds are going directly to Becky’s House that they wouldn’t have a problem with paying the bill afterwards. This was very complicated as they refused at first. We even tried opening a bank account for Project Becky’s House but this was very complicated. After persistence and many follow-ups, we eventually convinced Caitlyn, the representative of Becky’s House to agree to pay a check to Hunter Steakhouse at the event. Then at the event, we successfully raised so much cash that she just paid the bill in cash after all!

Even though we had some major obstacles to get through, our project was very successful because we overcame the obstacles through excellent teamwork and dedication!

Cost/Benefit Analysis

After more than 500 miles of driving, hours of frustration, and the sheer pressure of other work for other classes, we ultimately pulled through with success. But how successful were we? We had in attune of $3,611.00 comprised of ticket sales, auctioned items, and donations received. After calculating our costs we found our Hunter Steakhouse bill for covering the cost of the meal amounted to $523.00, and our advertising cost ran us to a thrifty $20.00. In the end left us with the ability to write Becky’s House a check for $3,067.00. As a group we think this donated amount is only fitting for our hard work, determination, persistence and teamwork.

But how do we know the hours of driving, the frustration endured and the stress placed upon us was worth the $3,067.00 in donations we acquired for Becky’s House? The answer: Cost-benefit analysis. This analysis presents an efficient process to catalog benefits and costs. As straightforward as this analysis may seem, the process is not. Because of the nature of this analysis is primarily concerned with public policy, we are forced to realize the benefits and costs that are indeed more extensive than a decision focusing merely on making a profit. Nonetheless, our group has been successful in extensively evaluating our work in terms of a Cost-Benefit by using accurate and realistic mathematical models as opposed to using a set of contrived numbers we just thought up.

For instance, when viewing our total costs for Project Becky’s House we have calculated an account entitled Frustration which amounts to $825.00. How do we place a dollar amount on the feeling of frustration? Most people can agree a parking ticket is a frustrating experience and so we have proposed that the dollar amount of the ticket would be in part of calculating the cost of frustration. After a few simple calculations we have found that collectively we experienced 220 hours of frustration at a rate of $3.75 per hour. In addition to our costs we have realized an opportunity cost which is the cost of alternately being able to acquire pay during the Project Becky’s House meetings, events or work related activities. We have come up with a straight forward transportation cost that takes into account the wear and tear of a vehicle that has accumulated to a total of $1,228.35. Lastly, our administrative cost covers essentially the tools such as ink, paper, pens, fax transmittal etc. This cost came to a total of $463.00. In total our costs came to $6,358.45.

In addition to costs, our benefits were a sum of the total donation amount (quality of life for victims), the joy of helping (students), and lastly the educational value brought about from doing a project such as this. Our total donation amount as stated earlier came to $3,067. Our second benefit of the joy of helping came about by asking ourselves, “What would bring us joy for one day?” We came up with spending a day at the Disneyland theme park. Ticket price for a one day is currently at $49.75 while we added souvenirs, food and miscellaneous necessities (for enjoying one self) which ultimately came to $100.00 a day. With 11 group members at $100.00 a day, we worked out based on 220 hours of estimated joy that our total was $1100.00. In addition to joy of helping we also received an educational benefit. This benefit was calculated by determining which students were resident or graduate students. Based upon that information we calculated the hour load of work per class which came to 180 and lastly the tuition paid by each student. The educational value amount came to a total of $4,681.78. In total benefits our group as well Becky’s House amounted to $8,848.00.

When looking at total benefit of $8,848.00 and our total cost of $6,358.45 we come to realize a net benefit of $2,489.55.

Ethical Importance

Let us now discuss the ethical aspects of the project. First, we as a team expected corporate managers to acknowledge their corporate social responsibility, which some did. Also we can now apply a few different ethical frameworks for individual actions throughout this project.

Justice theory seemed to guide the principle behind Becky's House's existence, namely to give victims of domestic violence the chance to a fulfilling life without violent oppression, as we all deserve. The goal is to right a societal wrong, thus implementing compensatory justice. Also, according to justice theory, the individuals in the group deserve a fair and high grade for their accomplishments.

According to deontology, the group used patrons' convictions of right and wrong to persuade them to sponsor the event. Also, we emphasized that these victims of domestic violence are to be seen as ends in and of themselves.

And according to Utilitarianism, we argued for the greater good of our fellow man and woman against the costs of sponsoring the event. Economic Utilitarianism reared its head as well, as some possible contributors saw no foreseeable impact on profit and the maximization of shareholder wealth.

Observationally speaking, we as a group noticed descriptive ethical ideas such as those brought up by Robert Jackall. These ideas include moral dilemmas, moral schizophrenia, habit of the mind, and ultimately self-interest. These ideas were most evident as we solicited certain supervisors in those clouded business settings.