How to fundraise for operational expenditures in international humanitarian aid?

The case of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)

Past event — 25 March 2015
12:3013:30 

Kühne Logistics University
Grosser Grasbrook 17, 20457 Hamburg

English
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Dr. Laura Turrini

Junior Professor of Operations Management

EBS Universität für Wirtschaft und Recht

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Abstract

International humanitarian organizations (IHOs) frequently implement both development and disaster response programs. Based on the operational needs of the programs, IHOs estimate the operational expenditures and then they appeal for donations. Their operations and their actual operational expenditures depend on the donations that they receive. They face budget constraints; some programs get overfunded while others get underfunded. In this paper, using multiple regression analysis, we estimate the responsiveness of donations to a number of variables including fundraising cost, budget appeal and area/country where the program takes place, and then we link donations with actual operational expenditures. We also study whether some operational expenditures require higher fundraising efforts than others. We use data of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), one of the largest IHOs. Data on development programs come from the 243 development programs that IFRC implemented in the period 2010–2012. Data on disaster response cover the 80 disasters that IFRC responded to in the time period from January 2010 to April 2014.

About the presenter

Laura Turrini is a PhD candidate in the field of Logistics at Kühne Logistics University. In 2009 she graduated in Mathematics in Milan (Italy), with a master thesis regarding voting systems and PageRank, the Google ranking algorithm. She won and held the INdAM (National Institute for High Mathematics, Italy) scholarship for the whole master period. After graduation she gained two years of industry experience, first as IT consultant and from June 2010 to September 2011 as Revenue Management Support in an Italian all cargo airline.

She is now interested in applying mathematics in logistic environment, to reconcile her passion for theory and abstraction with her interest in this field and its applications. At KLU, her research interests include Inventory Control for Spare Parts, Forecasting and Humanitarian Logistics.

More info about Laura Turrini

About the Seminar

The KLU research seminar series is a regular meeting of PhD students, Post-Docs and professors who conduct research in the field of logistics and supply chain management. The research seminar is open to the public and we happily welcome guests.