Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Crises& Things That Stop People From Supporting the NGO

When we looked into the crises regarding the company, we actually found a lot of articles that state why people stopped supporting the organization.

1. The Telegraph - Why I Stopped Supporting Save the Children?

- the organization is giving cash to parents in UK rather in to the kids in developing countries and people find that move political.

There are no children suffering from malnutrition in Britain, and if there is, there shouldn't be because there are lots of ways and rights in the country that could help preventing that case.

Save the Children said that the money that they donate to UK is coming from the corporate donors rather than the regular contributors but people still do not like that situation.

"We want to do a little to help the kids of Mumbai, whose miserable lives we glimpsed from the comfort of our cinema seats when watchingSlumdog Millionaire; and the children who scavenge the rubbish tips of South-East Asia or Latin America for food or items that they can sell; or the truly malnourished of Africa. What do charity workers on the front line there feel when they see their organisations becoming quasi-political?"



2. The Independent - The Price of Charity: Save the Children Exposed After Seeking Approval of Energy Firms 




-The organization is protecting its corporate donors by censoring criticism about them. British Gas is one of them for instance, and it is said that Save the Children earned £1.5m over 10 years by the company. The charity is also accused of dropping a potential campaign on the effects of fuel poverty on children while it was under consideration for funding from EDF. The Independent reached emails that showed the senior staff was worried to damage the partnership with EDF. Reaction from Save the Children: The charity, which has a partnership with the drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline and a £23.5m deal with Anglo-Dutch conglomerate Reckitt Benckiser to stop children dying from diarrhoea, said earlier this year that a key part of its strategy was “not being afraid to be commercially focused”. However, one of the former senior managers claimed that the NGO went a bit too far to protect its partners and quashing the news. Dominic Nutt explains this to the Independent as: Dominic Nutt, the head of the press team at Save the Children until 2009, told Panorama he had been keen to campaign on fuel poverty because of the pressures it put on poor families but claimed press releases criticising price rises by British Gas were “spiked”. Writing in The Independent, Mr Nutt says: “When British Gas put their prices up, our policy colleagues asked us to send out a press release condemning them… I wrote the release, got it approved by the policy experts and prepared to press ‘send’. “But the release was spiked because, I was told, it would upset British Gas who were Save the Children donors. The quest for money is beginning to destroy the mission.” Save the Children acknowledged that a fuel-poverty campaign had been at the early stages of consideration but said the idea “didn’t get to first base” because of a separate campaign on UK child poverty. A spokesman said there was no connection between any publicity plans and the EDF funding, which eventually went to another charity. Justin Forsyth, the chief executive of Save the Children, said: “It is simply wrong and misleading to suggest our silence can be bought. We will continue to campaign on all the areas we think matter most to saving children’s lives both at home and abroad. Save the Children would never put in jeopardy our values and our cause by pulling our punches on a campaign for money from a corporate partnership.” http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-price-of-charity-save-the-children-exposed-after-seeking-approval-of-energy-firms-8994225.html 3. Daily Mail: Do You Donate to the Bosses and Employees in Save the Children? Save the Children increased performance-related pay to executives by a third compared to the previous year, a move that could prove controversial following criticism of the huge pay-packets enjoyed by charity bosses. Reaction From Save the Children: ‘Save the Children does not run a bonus pool for its senior executives. Instead, all staff pay increases are related to performance, and the salaries of our executive directors contain a performance related element.' Save The Children spokesman //www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2386616/Save-The-Children-bosses-160-000-bonuses-MP-calls-greater-scrutiny-charity-

Friday, May 9, 2014

Corporate Identity & Reputation

Vision:

Be the leading humanitarian response agency for children worldwide

''We aim to inspire breakthroughs in the way the world treats children, and to achieve immediate and lasting change in their lives by improving their health, education and economic opportunities.''



Values:

1) Accountability:
We take personal responsibility for using our resources efficiently, achieving measurable results, and being accountable to supporters, partners and, most of all, children.

2) Ambition:
We are demanding of ourselves and our colleagues, set high goals and are committed to improving the quality of everything we do for children.

3) Collaboration:
We respect and value each other, thrive on our diversity, and work with partners to leverage our global strength in making a difference for children.

4) Creativity:
We are open to new ideas, embrace change, and take disciplined risks to develop sustainable solutions for and with children.

5) Integrity:
We aspire to live to the highest standards of personal honesty and behaviour; we never compromise our reputation and always act in the best interests of children.


Reputation:


--> Leading organization assisting children in need throughout the world

--> Longstanding international development agency --> solid reputation amongst groups that evaluate humanitarian organizations

--> 89 % of donations go directly to children

--> Benefit for reputation of Corporate Partners

--> Won several Awards ( Forbes, Charity Navigator, Americas Greatest Brand, etc.)





http://www.savethechildren.org/site/c.8rKLIXMGIpI4E/b.6146417/k.F489/Awards_and_Rankings.htm?sisearchengine=399&siproduct={101248}



Employee Feedback:





















Internal Communication


How they manage their affairs:

Communication with Employees:

→ team briefings, weekly bulletins, regular updates from the Chief Executive and senior management

→ weekly newsletters

→ Chief Executive and other senior managers communicate regularly via monthly updates and open calls

→ decision-making process includes employee consultation

→ employee engagement survey

→ platform OneNet: communication and collaboration platform (includes blogs and social media tools)




Board of Trustees:
→ govern the business-operations of Save the Children
→ overseeing management of all the affairs
→ appointed,elected or re-elected for a fixed term
→ ensures that all the organisation's activites are within the laws of all the countries they work in

→ the board acts on advice & information from regular meetings with the Chief Executive and executive directors
→ other decisions made apart from them → reported to the board



Committees:

Donations Decision-Making Panel: 2 board members & 2 executive directors → considers potential donations

Nominations Committee: 4 board members → finds and recommends potential candidates for election to the board

Performance and Remuneration Committee: 4 board members → reviews the performance of executive directors and key senior staff

Audit Committee: 2 board members & Honorary Treasurer & external member
→ meets 3 times a year & considers reports from external and internal auditors

Finance Committee: 3 board members & Honorary Treasurer → meets 3 times a year & cosiders the annual budget and advise board for finance matters

Investments and Pensions Committee: advisory sub-committee of the Finance Committee
2 board members & 5 external members → meets 3 times a year & reviews investment,pension and treasury matters

Organizational Structure:

→ Trustees delegate the day to day running of the organisation to the executive directors
→ Executive directors report to the Chief Execute who reports to the Chair of Board


Management of Risk → supported by Risk Manager → ensures that they have robust methods to identify emerging risks and that directors and senior managers have appropriate procedures




Thursday, May 8, 2014

A Survey Intended to Analyze the Effectivity of the Organization

Here, we decided to make a survey to get the reaction of people to NGO's and Save the Children in particular, therefore we could see the popularity of the attempts made by the organization to attract people's attention.

Since this is a movement that you participate with your own will and choose to donate, we thought it could be best to make a survey and get a numeric result of the opinion towards the issue.

The survey had 5 questions and was conducted online. It is mostly targeting the IE Students but people outside of the university participated as well.

Below, you can see the questions and analysis of every question.










Tuesday, May 6, 2014

WHY CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IS FAILING CHILDREN?

In collaboration with the Corporate Responsibility Coalition, Save the Children UK conducted a research on Corporate Social Responsibility and why it is actually not working with the companies.
The report is prepared by Deborah Doane from The Corporate Responsibility Coalition and Alison Holder from Save the Children UK.
They looked into 3 voluntary codes. First one is the International Marketing Code for Breastmilk Substitutes, the second one is the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and the last one is the Ethical Trading Initiative.
In their report they state that, all three of these codes are violated by many company leaders even if they have said to be caring and hold policies to support the aims of these codes. They also found a catch-22 situation, where the market drivers contradict the principles of voluntary codes. They also put that there are no sanctions for the violations of the codes in the schemes of governments there governments are unable to support the codes and the codes cannot be implemented and enforced.
In short, government involvement is needed regarding corporate social responsibility as well as companies.
Since companies have priorities(government regulations are among them) they tend to think about their benefits before contributing to the society voluntarily. However, if there would be government rules regulating these actions companies could become more socially responsible.
In their report, they also come up with some recommendations on initiating CSR activities.
1. Voluntary activities should be seen as a way of encouraging dialogue. There has to be accompanying government policies.
2. Company leaders should include CSR in their lobbying activities.
3. There has to be penalties for the companies who signed up to voluntary codes of conduct but who do not meet their stated goals.
4. There should be national laws that are promoted by governments, such as labour laws or transparency laws in order to establish the codes of conduct.
5. Justice to the victims of corporate abuse should be provided.
6. Governments and companies should support and implement international measures that can encourage codes of conduct. This could be at the UN Human Rights Norms for Business and at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Guidelines on Multinational Enterprise.

Monday, May 5, 2014

Social Media Analysis

Save the Children social media network on Facebook is updated nearly every 24 hours keeping their followers updated with current events.



For example 

The Mississippi natural disaster a tornado hitting many households with children who are currently homeless and in need of care. 

"Thank you to our friends at Carter's for sorting and loading up clothes for kids in Mississippi, USA who were affected by the tornadoes." 
Helping with any first aid kit or clothing provisions is what this campaign is all about. They recruit volunteers around the nation to help them with the campaign. 
"In a shelter in Mississippi, we’re helping kids like 2-year-old Brandily deal with the aftermath of the tornadoes that devastated their communities.



Below, Deborah surveys the damage the tornadoes caused to her daycare. 

We will be helping to rebuild daycare centers so children and families can get back to normal. Help support our efforts to rebuild:"

Illustrating every aftermath and focusing on specific children as well is another strategy that sets emotions and feelings into action. 





The tornado has hit many citizens living in the country and which has effected a lot of individuals in general. This tornado may have alerted a short term problem that save the children could help with first aid volunteering as it is subject of urgency in general. 



In terms of Social Networking Save the Children hasn't been quite collaborative in terms of communications.

  • No response on PM Facebook

  • No response on the Twitter  






Sunday, May 4, 2014

Save the Children Campaign

Save the Children has become very well known NGO around the United Kingdom because of the video "If London were Syria". This video encapsulates the every day life of children's living in Syria. The focus of the video is on a little girl who is living a normal casual life starting with her birthday and ending with her birthday a year after. However throughout the video there is a radical impact and shift in the little girls life as she is experiencing war and the loss of her father.

This video is very good terms of a campaign as it leave the spectators bewildered. It allows the audience to connect with the video and to impersonate themselves within these circumstance, as well as on an emotional scale.  The video hit over 24 million views in a week through youtube medium.

The marketing director Sue Allchurch, marketing director at Save the Children says the global outlook began this year and follows the launch of save the children international two year ago. They have decided to market in Brazil as it is a country that became more interested within this NGO. With the more global outlook they have set on through most of there media channels they have grown.
"We managed to cut through the statistics and facts and show that these are children like yours or mine. It made people relies that, forgetting about geography, politics the arguments, what would it be like if this happened here," says Sue Allchurch.