Global Logistics and Supply Chain Strategies - May 2008 - (Page 10)

Matching Up Donors, School Projects Calls for Supplier Management Editorial Director Jean V. Murphy A conversation with Cesar Bocanegra, executive vice president for operations at DonorsChoose.org, which matches donors with classroom projects submitted by public school teachers. DonorsChoose.org, a not-for-profit organization based in New York City, was pioneered by teachers at a Bronx public high school in the spring of 2000. Charles Best, then a social studies teacher, saw firsthand the scarcity of materials in public school classrooms. Looking for a way to address this problem, he launched DonorsChoose.org, a web site connecting classrooms in need with individuals who want to help. As of April 28 this year, DonorsChoose.org had received $21,885,876 from donors in 50 states. These funds have been used to support 51,830 projects impacting 1,220,478 students. In order to maintain control, DonorsChoose.org purchases all materials needed for projects, once they have been fully funded by “citizen philanthropists.” To help manage this growing activity, it recently implemented software from Ariba. actually look at every single proposal that we receive and screen them to make sure they meet our minimum guidelines and requirements. If approved, the proposed project gets posted on our web site and donors—or ‘citizen philanthropists’ as we refer to them—choose projects that they would like to partially or fully fund to make these classroom wishes a reality. So once a project has been screened by us, posted to our web site and funded by philanthropists, we in operations go ahead and buy the materials and resources from our vendors, who deliver these materials to the classrooms. The teachers do not get the money directly; they receive the materials. So there is a lot of coordination that has to happen between the teachers, DonorsChoose.org and our vendors to make sure that the materials arrive at the classrooms when they are needed. That’s the front half of the supply chain. The other half is that we then send teachers out a feedback kit, including disposable cameras, so they can take pictures of the material when it arrives and as it is being set up and as the students are using it. Then the students write thank-you notes to the donors describing how their specific donation helped the classroom and those notes and the cameras are sent back to us in a pre-paid envelope that is included in the kit. The thank-you notes that the students send are often very creative. It is just wonderful to receive all these notes and pictures from the students, who all have big smiles on their faces. So we take this information and build donor feed-back kits. We divide the pictures and thank-you notes among the donors who contributed to that project and send those out. Q: How did you become involved in DonorsChoose.org? Bocanegra: Besides the passion I have for the business model and the non-profit aspect of this organization, I basically am here because of my educational background and experience. I am an engineer, and as a graduate student at MIT I did my thesis on the Toyota production system. What I have been trying to implement here are a lot of the tools and philosophies from the Toyota system. I also spent 11 years at AT&T, where I was involved in operations and supply chain management. Q: How does the supply chain support the operations of DonorsChoose.org? Bocanegra: Teachers at public schools can go into the DonorsChoose.org web site and post a proposal requesting materials or resources, or experiences like a class trip or expert visitor, to enhance the learning experience of their students. The proposal that they draft and submit to us becomes the initial part of the supply chain. We 10 MAY 2008 Q: So you combine the buying power of all these projects to get better deals for the schools? Bocanegra: Yes. The idea is to balance the purchasing power that we get by aggregating all http://www.DonorsChoose.org http://www.DonorsChoose.org http://www.DonorsChoose.org http://www.DonorsChoose.org http://www.DonorsChoose.org http://www.DonorsChoose.org http://www.DonorsChoose.org http://www.DonorsChoose.org http://www.DonorsChoose.org

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Global Logistics and Supply Chain Strategies - May 2008

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