中国妇人会与北京女界赈灾

1906年,美国旧金山发生特大地震,唐人街化为一片废墟,数万受灾华侨流离失所,北京女界遂展开赈济我受灾侨民的活动,并由此产生了北京历史上最早的妇女社团——中国妇人会和中国妇女会。     

Determining the Optimal Donation Acceptance Policy for Nonprofit Stores

Many nonprofits derive a considerable amount of their financial support from the resale of donated items. Given the razor‐thin margins at which many of these organizations operate, it is critical that they maximize the proceeds that come from the sale of these items. To do so, nonprofits require policies that guide their donation acceptance decisions so as to optimize revenue generation. This article presents research about how to determine the optimal donation acceptance policy for Habitat for Humanity. Habitat affiliates sell donated material at their ReStores, or discount home improvement centers, and the revenue from the ReStores directly supports the building of new homes. Several constraints limit the revenue that the ReStores derive from the donated items, including the supply rate of items from donors, the demand rate of items from customers, and the space limitations of the ReStores. We developed a two‐step method to determine the optimal acceptance policy—the daily amount of donations to accept to maximize revenue. This approach increases revenue by up to 20 percent and additionally provides insights into pricing options, marketing strategy, and optimal store size.     

Humanitarian Funding in a Multi‐Donor Market with Donation Uncertainty

This study analyzes the trade‐off between funding strategies and operational performance in humanitarian operations. If a Humanitarian Organization (HO) offers donors the option of earmarking their donations, HO should expect an increase in total donations. However, earmarking creates constraints in resource allocation that negatively affect HO's operational performance. We study this trade‐off from the perspective of a single HO that maximizes its expected utility as a function of total donations and operational performance. HO implements disaster response and development programs and it operates in a multi‐donor market with donation uncertainty. Using a model inspired by Scarf's minimax approach and the newsvendor framework, we analyze the strategic interaction between HO and its donors. The numerical section is based on real data from 15 disasters during the period 2012–2013. We find that poor operational performance has a larger effect on HO's utility function when donors are more uncertain about HO's expected needs for disaster response. Interestingly, increasing the public awareness of development programs helps HO to get more non‐earmarked donations for disaster response. Increasing non‐earmarked donations improves HO's operational efficiency, which mitigates the impact of donation uncertainty on HO's utility function.