Hmm can anyone match the cost of the "donation" to typical monetary donations for similar causes?
Because deploying engineers is not cheap too. Toyota provided more bang for the buck that is for sure, but were they in the red or black compared to just writing a check?
I don't think this is a viable question. The value that the given good (money, expertise) has to the donating entity is of no concern for the people receiving it. For them, the value they can extract is of importance. So the interesting question is "if Toyota had cut a check of the same monetary value as their own costs, would that be of higher value to the charity?" and I'm pretty sure the answer is no. Even if the current savings may be lower than the cost of the engineers, the process changes will hopefully propagate and still bear fruit in a decade. Money would be gone by then.
I once worked at a company that liked to do charitable team building. They'd take about 40 engineers and IT people out and do things like serve food or unpackage toys for little kids (remove matchbox cars from the package for example). While I enjoyed the day out of the office I think it was a waste of money (our salaries). If 40 people make $80k/yr on average with 240 working days per year that's $333 per person * 40 = $13,333. You could've hired a minimum wage worker full time for the whole year for that kind of money. All for the novelty of "my department did charity work."
Well, I guess the gain for your team was not the donation - as you admit by saying "I enjoyed the time". The case here is quite different though: The engineers did not package toys or serve food. They brought in expertise to make the whole process of packaging boxes and serving food faster - and with quite impressive results: Cutting down the packaging to ~ 1/20th of the original time is an efficiency gain, even if you hire minimum wage workers to do the job. Cutting the waiting time to 1/5th is a gain for everyone involved, the person waiting and the servers.
One of the benefits to the charity is that by receiving a donation in expertise, they have a lower operating overhead then receiving money directly and spending it on the same expertise.
Comments
Hmm can anyone match the cost of the "donation" to typical monetary donations for similar causes?
Because deploying engineers is not cheap too. Toyota provided more bang for the buck that is for sure, but were they in the red or black compared to just writing a check?
I don't think this is a viable question. The value that the given good (money, expertise) has to the donating entity is of no concern for the people receiving it. For them, the value they can extract is of importance. So the interesting question is "if Toyota had cut a check of the same monetary value as their own costs, would that be of higher value to the charity?" and I'm pretty sure the answer is no. Even if the current savings may be lower than the cost of the engineers, the process changes will hopefully propagate and still bear fruit in a decade. Money would be gone by then.
I once worked at a company that liked to do charitable team building. They'd take about 40 engineers and IT people out and do things like serve food or unpackage toys for little kids (remove matchbox cars from the package for example). While I enjoyed the day out of the office I think it was a waste of money (our salaries). If 40 people make $80k/yr on average with 240 working days per year that's $333 per person * 40 = $13,333. You could've hired a minimum wage worker full time for the whole year for that kind of money. All for the novelty of "my department did charity work."
Well, I guess the gain for your team was not the donation - as you admit by saying "I enjoyed the time". The case here is quite different though: The engineers did not package toys or serve food. They brought in expertise to make the whole process of packaging boxes and serving food faster - and with quite impressive results: Cutting down the packaging to ~ 1/20th of the original time is an efficiency gain, even if you hire minimum wage workers to do the job. Cutting the waiting time to 1/5th is a gain for everyone involved, the person waiting and the servers.
One of the benefits to the charity is that by receiving a donation in expertise, they have a lower operating overhead then receiving money directly and spending it on the same expertise.
*at least as far as I understand.