Week 9: Corporate Responsibility and Vienna
This week I started a new project that will carry me through the rest of my time here at CEELI. During the Board Meeting held during the Annual Meeting, the board members talked about the need to expand funding for CEELI to include more corporate donations. Currently, CEELI operates in the red, but doesn’t have reserve funds or an endowment that might help the organization expand and grow. About 80% of funding comes from grants, which is great for funding programs that CEELI provides. However, grant funding comes with a lot of restrictions on what it may be used for. A small portion of their funding comes from renting out the facilities to outside groups, but the Villa is used heavily by CEELI for its own programming efforts, making rental possibilities limited. More flexible sources of income are needed to grow the organization, which is where corporations come in.
The board came up with a list of potential corporate donors that they would like to approach about contributing financially to CEELI. Members of the board have some connection or believe that the corporation would be particularly supportive of the work CEELI does. I’m working on find ways that CEELI’s mission and program initiatives may fit into the work or needs of these corporations. CEELI needs to maintain a balance of not compromising their mission, but still finding ways that they might benefit a corporation.
Through the research I’ve done so far, there looks to be a lot of ways that CEELI can offer value to some global corporations. A lot of businesses operate in countries that CEELI has ties to and have worked with in the past. These are also areas that struggle with a lot of corruption and bribery issues, which in turn impacts ethical business operations. In particular, a lot of corporations struggle to monitor the business practices of third-parties that they contract with. Unethical business practices have led to high fines from the DOJ and SEC, as well as the international counterpart in countries operated in. These challenges area very familiar to CEELI in their current work, through judicial trainings on adjudicating issues of corruption and bribery. The insight into what the corporations are emphasizing through their Annual Reports, Corporate Sustainability, and Corporate Social Responsibility reports as areas of needed improvement will allow the board members to better approach businesses for donations to CEELI.
This weekend I also took my last weekend excursion to Vienna, Austria. Vienna is certainty the most upscale city I’ve visited while in Europe, with places like the Baroque-style Schonbrunn Palace and Hofburg Palace. I spent hours just wondering around the gardens of the Schonbrunn Palace, with its impressive fountains, flower beds, and statutes. It was a great way to spend my last weekend in Europe.
