Direct Solicitation and Making the Case for Cathedral Kitchens Culinary Arts Training Program - Essay Example

Direct Solicitation and Making the Case for the Cathedral Kitchen’s Culinary Arts Training (CAT) Program Summary of the Organization and the Program Since 1976, the Cathedral Kitchen has served meals to the hungry and destitute of Camden City in New Jersey. In about four decades, the Cathedral Kitchen has grown from a simple ministry offering soup and sandwich to a handful of people into the largest provider of emergency food in Camden City. In 2012, the Kitchen served over 232,000 meals (The Cathedral Kitchen ). The people who come to the kitchen for meals are some of the poorest in the city: the working poor, the homeless, the jobless, the physically disabled and those suffering from addiction. The kitchen’s chefs prepare fresh meals every day from purchased and donated food. Each night 20 to 25 volunteers help in serving the meals. The Cathedral Kitchen runs the Culinary Arts Training (CAT) Program. The 17-week program seeks to impart knowledge and develop high-quality culinary skills in learners (The Cathedral Kitchen ). Each year, the program enrolls forty students all of whom are trained free-of-charge: the Kitchen meets the costs of their textbooks, meals and uniforms. In addition, the Kitchen assists the students with job placements at no cost. This paper seeks to raise $270,200 to help increase the intake into the CAT program from the current forty to eighty. The paper explains how this amount is going to be raised by each of two methods of solicitation: email and traditional mail solicitation. Part 1: Email Solicitation Developing the Cause This phase of our funds drive targets the business community in Camden City. Indeed, the business community has stood by the Cathedral Kitchen since its inception in 1976(The Cathedral Kitchen). The City’s small and medium enterprises and large corporations alike have continually supported us by making donations in both cash and kind. Therefore, we are once more counting on their unceasing generous support to help us raise the initial $270,200 we need to double our intake from the current forty to eighty students. In recent years, the Cathedral Kitchen has been receiving an ever growing number of applications for the CAT program. However, given the limited capacity of the program, many qualified candidates have been turned down. Hence, the need to expand the program. Even though by doubling our intake we still may not be able to take in everyone, we believe the move is a step in the right direction. Most of our students are drawn from some of the poorest families in Camden City and elsewhere in the state of New Jersey. Therefore, by keeping a student in the CAT program, one is transforming an entire family. Our graduates are employed and serve in the leading hotels and restaurants in Camden City and elsewhere in the country. Evidence for the Success of Email Solicitation A 2011 review of more than 500 empirical articles on charitable giving revealed that solicitation is one of the major drivers of charitable giving: most charitable giving is due to solicitation efforts (Wiepking and Bekkers 931). The other factors were the level of awareness of a need, the costs, and benefits of charitable giving, altruism, efficacy, values, reputation and the psychological benefits associated with giving. Solicitation simply means approaching individuals and organizations and asking them to give money toward a cause. To underscore the importance of solicitation in charitable giving, a 1996 study found that 85% of the respondents gave to charity because a charitable organization approached them in one way or another and asked them to give. The implication is that the more opportunities to donate a person encounters, the more likely they are to give. However, the literature assesses is silent on the effectiveness of solicitation through email from the available literature. Cost-benefit Analysis of Email Solicitation Today there are a number of email solicitation services such as MoveOn.org (Community Tool Box). These services have increased the popularity of email solicitation as a tool for asking for support. However, the method has its drawbacks. For instance, many people find email solicitation annoying, especially if it is from strangers. Also, an email can be easily lost or ignored in the inbox. Nonetheless, email ha the unique advantage of reaching several people at one click of the button, making it more cost-effective than traditional mail, for instance. In addition, through links provided in the email, it can direct people to our website where they can obtain more information. For our email solicitation campaign to be effective it will have to be carefully targeted – the campaign will be aimed at businesses that have already supported us in the past, or at least those who are familiar with us and what we do. Target Amount We intend to raise $270,200 through this funds drive. We reached this figure by taking the total cost of keeping a student in the CAT program for the seventeen weeks and multiplying the figure by forty, which is the number by which we intend to increase our enrolment. The costs of training a student include tuition, uniform and stationery, the chef’s uniform and shoes and graduation gift. In total, the cost of seeing one student through the program is $6,755(The Cathedral Kitchen). Our aim is to get every donor to commit to seeing at least one student through the program. Given the relatively low cost of email and the fact that the scale of the funds drive is small enough to be handled by staff, we expect that the cost of the undertaking will be negligible and will, therefore, not affect the net amount raised in a significant way. The Mailing Plan This is the sequence of events in the funds drive. First, we will constitute an in-house team to lead the initiative. As much as possible, the members of the team will be people with considerable business contacts and possess good negotiation skills (Gerber, Hui and Kuo). Next, we will compile a list of existing and potential donors together with their full contact information. As a rule, the list will comprise only those businesses that have contributed before or those who are familiar with our activities (Community Tool Box). Having identified who to approach, the next decision is when to approach them. We believe that the last quarter of the year is the best time to go knocking on businesses doors. The rationale is for the solicitation to coincide with and exploit the festive season and the associated festive mood. Therefore, the solicitation list will have to be completed before the end of September. The next stage is to get the appeal out by sending the emails. As we send the emails, we will include a link to our website through which donors can contribute. Besides the link, we will also provide information on the other methods a donor may use to contribute. Next, we will follow up on the emails. We will send thank you letters to all organizations that that will have pledged. In the letter, we will bring to their attention the amount they pledged and provide information on how they may make their payments (Community Tool Box). The letters will also be accompanied by return envelops. After all the money has come in, again we will thank contributors and record all their details. Next, we will clear our records by striking out businesses that will not have contributed in three years. We will assume that those businesses will never donate. Meanwhile, we will start to plan our next fundraising given the need to sustain the expansion of the program. Part 2: Text Message Solicitation Developing the Cause This component of our solicitation targets the residents of Camden City. Like the business community, individuals and families have supported us over the years in various ways; while some have donated cash, others have donated food. Given the need to sustain our expansion program (List 162), we must tap into the generosity of the people of Camden even as we approach the corporate community. Admittedly, the organization will have to develop more effective means of sustaining the expanded program as we believe that in the longer-run, donations may not be sustainable (Barry, Hence and Lamb 10). This component of the solicitation seeks to solicit the same amount of money - $270,200 from the business community through text messages. Inevitably, at times the text message solicitation will be accompanied by phone calls. In order to motivate people to give, the text messages they receive will try to draw the link between their giving and public safety in the city: by donating, they make possible for a destitute resident of the city to receive training in culinary skills. Without the training, the person may resort to criminal activity in an effort to make their ends meet, thereby compromising public safety. Evidence for the Success of Email Solicitation A 2010 survey involving 1,526 Americans who reported themselves as donors demonstrated the growing importance of text message solicitation (Bhagat, Loeb and Rovner 7). Participants in the survey were drawn from the four generations: Generation Y, Generation X, the Baby Boomers, and the Matures. Following the devastating Haiti earthquake, the prominence of SMS solicitation has been on the rise. A small percentage (9%) of Generations X and Y donors reported having donated at least once as a direct consequence of SMS solicitation. However, the level of awareness of it as a channel of giving is considerable. The proliferation of the smartphone in recent years is a major factor contributing to the growing popularity of SMS as an option of solicitation and giving(Bhagat, Loeb and Rovner 8). Cost-benefit Analysis of Email Solicitation We believe that text message solicitation is the most appropriate approach to soliciting donations from individuals and families as the mobile phone is a personal and handy device(Community Tool Box). Thus, while many people may go for days without checking their personal email, they always have their mobile phones with them and should be able to read a text message as soon as it reaches their phone. Given the tendency of some people to ignore text messages, the service may be used concurrently with making calls even though there is a catch: the main limitation of this method is that most people find unsolicited calls and text messages intrusive and annoying(Community Tool Box). In order to minimize the annoyance, we will try as much as possible to solicit money only from those people who have prior knowledge of or experience with the Cathedral Kitchen. Also, compared to email, phone solicitation is more costly, although we believe that the associated costs will not significantly affect the net amount we will raise. TargetAmount We intend to raise another $270,200 through the text message solicitation. We arrived at this amount by taking the total cost of keeping a student in the CAT program for the seventeen weeks and multiplying the figure by forty, which is the number by which we intend to increase our enrolment. The costs of training a student include tuition, uniform and stationery, the chefs uniform and shoes and graduation gift. In total, the cost of seeing one student through the program is $6,755(The Cathedral Kitchen). Our aim is to get every donor to commit to seeing at least one student through the program. Given the relatively low cost of email and the fact that the scale of the funds drive is small enough to be handled by staff, we expect that the cost of the undertaking will be negligible and will, therefore, not affect the net amount raised in a significant way. The Mailing Plan These are the major steps of events in the funds drive. First, we will constitute an in-house team to lead the initiative. As much as possible, the members of the team will be people with considerable personal contacts and who possess good negotiation skills. This way, we can minimize the annoyance that comes with unsolicited calls from strangers.(Meer 1)Next, we will compile a list of existing and potential donors together with their full contact information. As much as possible, the list will comprise only those individuals and families that have contributed before or those who are familiar with our activities. Having identified who to approach, the next decision is when to approach them. We believe that the last quarter of the year is the best time to go knocking on businesses doors. The rationale is for the solicitation to coincide with and exploit the festive season and the associated festive mood. Therefore, the solicitation list will have to be completed before the end of September. The next stage is to get the appeal out by text messages and, where necessary, phone calls. The aim of the text messages or the calls is to get their recipients to pledge (Community Tool Box). As we send the message or make the call, we will also provide information on the methods a donor may use to contribute. Within three days of receiving a pledge, we will send a thank you letter to all the person that that will have pledged. In the letter, we will draw their attention the amount they pledged and provide information on how they may make their payments (Community Tool Box). The letters will also be accompanied by return envelops. After all the money has come in, again we will thank contributors and record all their details. Next, we will clear our records to remove people who will not have contributed in three years. We will assume that those businesses will never donate. Meanwhile, we will start to plan our next fundraising given the need to sustain the expansion of the program. Works Cited Barry, Frank, et al. Cultivating Lifelong Donors: Stewardship and the Fundraising Pyramid. Charleston: Blackbaud, Inc., 2010. Web. Bhagat, Vinay, Pam Loeb and Mark Rovner. The Next Generation of American Giving: A Study on the Multichannel Preferences and Charitable Habits of Generation Y, Generation X, Baby Boomers and Matures. Research. Arlington: Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), 2010. Web. Community Tool Box. "Section 11. Soliciting Contributions and In-kind Support." n.d. Community Tool Box. Web. 27 February 2015. Gerber, Elizabeth, Julie Hui and Pei-Yi Kuo. Crowdfunding: Why People Are Motivated to Post and Fund Projects on Crowdfunding Platforms. Thesis. Evanston: Northwestern University, 2011. Web. List, John. "The Market for Charitable Giving." Journal of Economic Perspectives25.2(2011): 157-180. Web. Meer, Jonathan. "Brother, can you spare a dime? Peer pressure in charitable solicitation." Journal of Public Economics (2011): 1-16. Web. The Cathedral Kitchen. About Us. n.d. Web. 27 February 2015. —. Cathedral Kitchen Culinary Arts Training Program specifications and requirements. n.d. Web. 27 February 2015. The Cathedral Kitchen. Monetary Donations. n.d. Web. 27 February 2015. Wiepking, Pamala and René Bekkers. "A Literature Review of Empirical Studies of Philanthropy: Eight Mechanisms That Drive Charitable Giving." Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly40.5(2011): 924-973. Web. Read More