Contribution By
Daniela Papi

When running a start-up organization, you are always looking for volunteers, people who are willing to share their time and their knowledge with you to get your work off the ground. At first you are hanging on every word that people share with you as you learn about accounting, business plans, marketing, and all of the pieces that come with starting a new venture. You are willing to take any volunteer who is willing to give their time and you charge full-speed ahead into your work using their ideas. Then there comes a day when you start getting have to start saying no to volunteers.

This has been our same story as we developed our hybrid organization, PEPY: an education non-profit organization working in literacy and leadership, as well as an edu-venture tour company which helps to fund the programs. There came a point where we started to be more discerning about the help we were able to take. Many people contacted us saying that they were willing to volunteer. We have taken some of those who were not able to come to Cambodia but instead offered their services virtually, but usually there are problems with:

•Finding the exact right match of skills and needs. When volunteers are far away from the problem, it takes a long time to get to understand how their skills can fit with your organization.

•Time. It takes a lot of time to construct that match, to follow up with virtual volunteers, and to share the work that they do with the rest of the team.

•Conflicting ideas. When people are outside of the company, it becomes difficult for them to keep up to date on the daily developments of the organization, so sometimes it can result in the repetition of work of a work product or work which misses the mark.

At PEPY, we have worked with groups of volunteers in the past who have taken more time than the value they have added. I commend the IBC and the process used to support PEPY Tours this year, as it is a good example of what can be possible using virtual volunteers to assist an organization.
First, I want to comment on past IBC support initiatives. I was involved in the first IBC delegation to go abroad to “help”. There were three of us who went down to visit projects, McKinsey professional Maggie Durant, a current State Senator of New Mexico, and myself. We were probably a smart enough group to work on a feasibility study of the IBC’s impact, but there was one big flaw: we weren’t prepared to help in a way that would make sense for the program. We had not understood how to do the proper research before we left, which would have all pointed to the signs saying: you can’t help if you are only committed to the short term. The issues we were looking to “advise” on were extensive: business development in a multi-culture environment, agricultural cooperatives looking for market analysis. . . in GUATEMALA and HONDURAS, places we knew little about. During our week-long visit, we took a lot of people’s time and set expectations that we quickly realized we were not able to fill. Tim, Maggie and I all agreed – this was a learning experience, and we needed to find a different way for the IBC to promote its social mission.

The next group I came in contact with through the IBC was a delegation that was sent to Cambodia, the country I have been working in since 2005. This group did extensive research before coming out to Cambodia to work with a microcredit organization. There are many costs associated with traveling abroad, as in both of these projects, and issues related to translation and cultural understanding can often add further set-backs.
So what can we do to move forward? Work hard to find the right match. I was grateful that the IBC reached out to us at PEPY last year and offered virtual support, and I was been even more delighted when we saw the match was a good one. A group of IBC volunteers including Ryan Jochum, Kate McDermott, Matthew O’Connor, and Steve Wierema, helped PEPY virtually for nearly three months. Weekly conference calls kept everyone on track, and the team was led by Evan Lintz, who kept everyone on track and organized, and Tim Rann, a former PEPY intern. With the system they set up of managing the volunteer team, there was very little time taken away from full-time PEPY staff while also ensuring a strong understanding of the work PEPY does which made their final work product very valuable.

The group analyzed PEPY’s tour offerings when compared with competitors, gave advice on the marketing and branding strategies of the organization, and analyzed industry trends. Their final project will continue to be very useful for our organization for many years to come, and we thank the team for giving us their time and their knowledge.

If any of you is looking to volunteer your time virtually for an organization, you can learn a lot by following in their footsteps:

•Spend the time to find a good match between your skills and the organization’s needs.

•Be willing to do the “boring” stuff.

•Be organized and give your feedback in a well documented fashion so that the partner not only knows what you did, but how you did it. This builds up the organization’s capacity by helping the staff to continue the process in the future on their own.

•Provide connections to new ideas and new people to gather other interest and support for the work you are now a part of.

The IBC team working with PEPY did all of these things, and for that we are very grateful. Hopefully the fruits of their labor will show as we continue to develop our product offerings at PEPY Tours and now have a well outlined path for further improvements.
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Note: After this process, Tim Rann decided to come back on to the PEPY Team and will become CEO of PEPY Tours from April, 2010. Congratulations, Tim!

PEPY is a hybrid organization with two parts: PEPY Cambodia, an educational development organization and PEPY Tours, a travel company focusing on educational adventures.

Daniela Papi studied economics at Notre Dame and graduated in the class of 2000. She was a member of the SIBC (then the NDCIBD) and worked in London through the SIBC internship program. She has lived in Asia for nearly 8 years, the first three in Japan and since 2005 in Cambodia. She welcomes any IBC members to visit her at the PEPY office in Siem Reap, Cambodia. You can read more about her thoughts on development and tourism on her blog: www.lessonsilearned.org

The International Business Council (IBC) dates back to the formation of the Student IBC (SIBC) at the University of Notre Dame in 1990. That is, it was our brain child then. From the very beginning, we realized that to sustain itself and maintain the integrity of the SIBC, the IBC had to provide the essential support needed. The IBC must have as a primary goal the policing of the SIBC in a manner that will keep the organization and its endowment on track. It was also expected that the IBC would be the greatest source of internships, speakers, and general information. This would occur over a considerable time period, as the first members of the IBC had to graduate and become established and influential IBC members.

The Peace through Commerce theme had been used prior to World War I. Still, it did not produce the full meaning of the phrase until recent years.  Honest, good products must be sold at all times. The integrity of the contracts with each other in the corporate world must be an essential element of the product and the products link with the consumer. The phrase therefore expresses action not theory.

To be a person who promotes peace through commerce starts with the integrity of each person in the chain of commerce. If there is a breach in that chain, peaceful resolution becomes a question. What better place than Notre Dame to promote and share this concept with the world at large. This was the philosophy that led to the SIBC’s, and thus, the IBC’s, creation.

Over the years, I have noticed that each SIBC board contributes in a unique way.  Each board is an improvement on the last. The same is true of the IBC. There is always progress, but I would rather see fewer numbers in the IBC of people who “build” than a large number that does little. The same is true of the SIBCs.

Frank Potenziani

14 January 2010

Mike Mellace, the CEO & founder of Mellace Family Brands, a manufacturer & marketer of a diverse product line that includes nuts, snack mixes, and chocolate items, was the IBC’s guest speaker at the 2010 Annual Summit. Mellace’s earmarks 2% of their revenue for corporate social responsibility causes, not because that’s the current fad but because it is integral to Mike’s personal philosophy & the company’s corporate mission. Mike introduced us to his company & some of their projects during his talk held on the campus of the University of San Diego.

Most interesting to me was the company’s partnership with their farmer suppliers in Africa. Mike recognized that one of the reasons these farmers are stuck in a cycle of poverty and desperation was that they were an inactive participant in their own supply chain, even though without them, there would be no supply chain. Because of a lack of information & knowledge as well as the inability to perform some of the higher margin food processing work that occurs with all agricultural products, farmers are at the mercy of ‘coyotes’ from whom they must take the price offered for their crops.

The rich world’s ’solution’ to this problem has been Fair Trade–the artificial raising of the price paid to the farmers for their crops, what advocates of the movement call a “fair” price. Unfortunately, this artificially high floor price is unsustainable in the long term and usually results in negative externalities that offset the benefits provided by the higher prices. Specifically, what often happens when the free market is circumvented in this manner is that farmers begin to grow crops, coffee for example, that they otherwise would not have grown because at the free market price it was not profitable to grow on their particular plot of land or they did not have skills to get the yield required. This crowding of the market creates a supply that exceeds the demand, but because of the “fair price” floor, prices are not allowed to naturally fall to lower supply. In addition, crops that otherwise would been grown, corn for example, are not planted, even though they likely would have yielded more crops for those farmers who converted their fields to coffee. None of this is sustainable.

Mike & his company understand this and thus do not participate in Free Trade buying. Instead, they’ve partnered with mobile phone companies in Africa and with the farmers to increase the transparency of the supply chain & transparency of information. Farmers are supplied with mobile phones as well as information on crop pricing, supply, and demand so that they can then be an active participant in their supply chain. In return, they provide Mellace’s with information on their crops, location, yield, etc as well as personal information on their family and community that can be used to put a personal face on the products that Mellace’s sells. Ultimately, you’ll be able to buy a bag of Mellace’s delicious organic cashews and enter a code from the package online & find out where your cashews came from, who grew them, and a little about the farmer’s life.

This is a true example of fostering peace through commerce. Rather than giving the farmer the unsustainable handout that is Free Trade, Mellace’s is improving their access to information which allows them to become a much more active participant in their business & to ultimately realize greater profits by producing more at times of low supply & less at times of high supply.

Mike’s talk was followed by a lively question & answer session from the group in attendance. Many thanks to Mike for spending his beautifully sunny San Diego Saturday with the IBC.

Intrododuction:

The International Business Council (IBC) was founded in 1990 by a group of globally-minded students and faculty of the University of Notre Dame with the vision of promoting Peace through Commerce. Today, the members of the IBC continue to believe in that vision and include some of the world’s next generation of leaders in their respective fields of finance, accounting, education, government, philanthropy and the arts.

What We Do:

The International Business Council was founded by Notre Dame alumnus, Frank Potenziani, of M&T Trust. It was through his superb guidance and funding that the organization has grown to incorporate leaders in the business and professional world who truly rally around the mission of promoting Peace through Commerce.

The IBC builds teams of its members to advise entrepreneurial organizations and individuals, via partnerships with NGO’s, universities, and civil society organizations, on business, economic, and social development issues in emerging markets worldwide. The IBC applies private sector business models to tackle some of the world’s most daunting development challenges in these developing nations.

To go along with their mission of developing ethical and socially responsible leaders, the IBC has specifically partnered with 3 university organizations come to be known as the Student International Business Council (SIBC) at the University of San Diego, Notre Dame and Benedictine College. These organizations, along with the IBC, hope to utilize the profesional skill sets of its members to employ an interdisciplinary approach to bring about Peace through Commerce.