Archive for December, 2008

Questions I Still Have!

December 2, 2008

This course has definitely answered a lot of questions for me, some that I didn’t know I had. It also sparked my interest in other areas.  The first area that I would like to research is nonprofit fundraising. I have experience with planning events and fundraisers for my student organizations. However, I would like to learn how larger non-profits raise money. Although, my focus at this time is going to law school and having a career in the legal field, I plan to research careers in nonprofit fundraising. I know it’s a serious “business” but I think I would enjoy planning and executing events and campaigns to get money for a good cause. 

The second area I would like to learn more about is the changing need for civil society organizations. Recently I read an article (I can’t remember where) in which a man argued that organizations that focus on HIV/AIDS are no longer needed because awareness has increased so dramatically.  Instead, the man argued that money should be focused on other diseases such as leukemia. It is a very vague topic but I’m sure there is some type of trend or relationship between the need for and effectiveness of a certain non-profit.

EL POST 9

December 1, 2008

I made a mistake and pressed SAVE for this post rather than PUBLISH.

This last post was very challenging to write because I felt that I had absolutely run out of examples of non-profit sector’s affect on my life.  However, after thinking long and hard I began googling stores that I frequent to find out whether they were affiliated with non-profits and in what way.

The first company that I researched is Wal-Mart. I found that Wal-Mart has a nonprofit organization called “The Walmart Foundation”.  Its purpose is to provide opportunities to improve peoples’ lives. The foundation focuses on aiding initiatives to create opportunities in the areas of workforce development, education, environmental sustainability, health and wellness. The Foundation’s website has a list of its contributions to other civil society organizations. Not surprisingly, the donations are very large sums of money. For example it donated $5 Million dollars to YouthBuild USA and over $1 Million to other organizations such as the Boys & Girls Club of America, American Cancer Society and other civil society organizations focused on the Foundation’s target areas.

The Foundation’s charitable giving has been recognized by several organizations including Forbes Magazine, who in 2007 names Walmart the “#1 most generous company overall”. According to the Forbes article, Walmart, through it’s foundation gave away around 1.3% of it operating income. I searched for a way for the public to donate to the Walmart Foundation, but apparently there is no such thing.

The URL for The Walmart Foundation is: http://walmartstores.com/CommunityGiving/338.aspx 

The URL for the Forbes article is: http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/10/16/most-generous-corporations-corprespons08-lead-cx_mk_1016charity.html