Question

BOOKS FOR PROGRESS (B4P)

It was May 2019, and Maria Robinson, chief executive officer of Books for Progress (B4P), was evaluating the success of B4P's April textbook drive. In addition to B4P's textbook drives in Southern California, for the first time, Robinson’s team had run a textbook drive through a student group at San Francisco University, CA. This new drive had been successful, and Robinson was considering developing a more permanent presence at San Francisco University.

This new endeavor would involve establishing relationships with student groups, professors, and university administration so that textbook-collection boxes (drop boxes) could be permanently located in central areas on campus. The boxes would then be monitored so the textbooks could be picked up regularly and shipped to the B4P headquarters, where the books would then be donated to schools across South Africa, sold online to fund shipping and implementation costs, donated to student clubs at California universities, or recycled appropriately. While considering this eastward expansion, Robinson also wanted to investigate the viability of undergoing similar expansions to Victoria University, Victoria, CA and the University of Sacramento (U of Sacramento). She wanted to evaluate the financial feasibility of each of these proposed locations before making any final decisions.

History

B4P was Inspired by a trip Robinson took to South Africa in 2017. While teaching at the University of South Africa of Finance and Banking, Robinson noticed a deficit in the educational materials available at the institution. She knew there were thousands of textbooks in California that were no longer being used, which could be redistributed to students in need in South Africa. After graduating from Southern University with an honors degree in business from the Elite Business School (San Diego, CA) in 2017, Robinson partnered with an acquaintance William Hartness to found B4P at the Southern University, CA.

In the beginning, B4P collected textbooks from the Southern University campus and soon expanded to other schools in California. A list of campus locations with B4P drop boxes can be found in Exhibit l. To be more central to the textbook collections, Robinson and her team were in the process of moving B4P's headquarters from Southern University, California to San Francisco. The move would be complete by August 2019, before textbook collections

from the 2019-20 school year would begin. Textbook collections had grown by over 200%, so Robinson was optimistic about B4P's future.

Operations

Post-secondary textbooks were inserted by their owners into drop boxes or given to student representatives through student-club textbook-collection drives on behalf of B4P. California's academic school year ran primarily from September to April, so the majority of textbooks were collected in April. The textbooks were collected and transported to B4P headquarters at a cost of .20 cents 1 per mile and $ 14 per hour for the drivers' wages. Six hundred books could be shipped in a single shipment, although the average shipment consisted of only 250 books. Drivers were located in San Francisco and were compensated for the round trip from the collection school to headquarters, as well as for one hour of time at the collection school. After reaching B4P's warehouse, the books were sorted by warehouse workers. Warehouse workers were paid $ 11 per hour, and they scanned, sorted, shelved, and tracked 30 books in an hour.

25% of the textbooks collected were sorted for listing on Amazon; half of those books listed had been sold at an average price of $40. After a period of time, any listed unsold books were deemed unsalable and were then donated to schools in South Africa. 50% of the textbooks collected were immediately categorized for donation to South Africa. Donated textbooks were shipped to South Africa once 24,000 books (deemed appropriate for donation) had been collected. Shipping costs fluctuated widely due to a variety of factors (e.g. distance from the South African coast and the number of border crossings required) and averaged $ 16,000 per shipment. The remaining 25% of books collected were too out of date to sell online or to donate, so they were recycled. Since textbooks were difficult to recycle responsibly, all textbook recycling was done through an eco-reliable partner in the United States at a recycling cost of $ 15 (including transportation) for every 500 textbooks.

Management Team

B4P had five members on its management team, including Robinson and Hartness, who assumed corporate financial officer roles. These members were employed full time by B4P. All were recent graduates of Western University, McMillen University, or Mary & William University. All five management team members had travelled to Africa to witness B4P's impact on the post-secondary education system, and to learn how they could maximize their contributions on behalf of B4P.

Outcomes

As of May 2019, B4P had donated 24,000 books to South African universities, provided $69,300 in micro loans, donated $37,600 to California non-profits,' and reused or recycled

1 All currency amounts are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise specified.

  

37,000 textbooks. In the 2018-19 post-secondary academic year, 88,000 books had been collected. Robinson was proud of the contribution her team was making to their local and global communities, but she was eager to further that impact through more growth and expansion.

Expansion Opportunities

B4P had already executed successful expansions into the Los Angeles & Baja. Eventually, Robinson wanted to expand B4P textbook collections to other states, but she understood that achieving successful local expansion should be the first step. Expansions were executed by forming relationships with student clubs, school administration (staff), and faculty departments and members. Through these relationships, B4P obtained permission to place drop boxes in central locations and hired student ambassadors at each institution to monitor the drop boxes. The majority of student ambassadors were volunteers, but B4P paid one student ambassador at each school an annual salary of up to $ 1,750.

Any expansion to a new location would follow the same collection process, and textbook collections would be similarly shipped to B4P's warehouse. In order to manage additional student ambassadors and relationships with collection schools, Robinson planned to hire a campus community manager if the eastern expansion was pursued. The campus community manager would work full time and earn an annual salary of $ 40,000. 75% of the manager's time would be spent on managing the eastern expansion, and 25% would be spent on managing existing drop box locations where B4P presence was lacking. Robinson expected that historical proportions of textbooks sold, donated, and recycled would be the same for all new locations. An expansion would be considered successful if B4P could break even and increase its exposure and book donations; however, Robinson and Hartness would consider an expansion a financial success if B4P could earn a 5% profit.

B4P's new warehouse would have the capacity to sort and store textbooks from all three proposed universities. However, Hartness was concerned about potential roadblocks to transporting textbooks from the collection universities to B4P's warehouse. The textbooks would need to be stored at the collection universities until enough books had been collected to warrant the driver's pickup time. If pickups took longer than anticipated, the driver might need to stay overnight in the region due to regulatory requirements. Hartness was unsure how this constraint would affect the financial feasibility of the expansion, so she wanted to ensure that any expansion that B4P pursued would have a healthy margin of safety.

Victoria University

1
Victoria was located in Fresno, approximately 330 miles east of San Francisco . Victoria was

home to 17,400 full-time, undergraduate students and over 4,000 graduate and post-graduate students. These students studied at one of the university's six facilities, the largest of which was the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Victoria was known for its school spirit, its long history, and its attractive waterfront campus.

Victoria student government, the Alma Mater Society (AMS), included the Campus Activities Commission (CAC). CAC was responsible for running campus events and programs to promote school spirit and social awareness (including mental-health awareness initiatives) at Victoria. If B4P decided to start an on-campus textbook collection at Victoria, Robinson thought CAC would make a good partner. B4P had hosted a textbook-collection drive in April 2019 with AMS members and potential campus ambassadors. Based on this experience, Robinson was optimistic about Victoria students' support of on-campus drop boxes, so she estimated that 12,250 books could be collected in the 2019-20 school year at Victoria.

Brownstone University

2 Brownstone was located just south of Riverside, 520 miles east of San Francisco . The

university enrolled 24,100 undergraduate students and 3,700 graduate students. Brownstone was known for its interdisciplinary and flexible degree program options, a global focus, and its self-contained campus that fostered a sense of campus community. Brownstone offered more than 65 degree programs across a wide range of disciplines.

Brownstone's undergraduate students were represented by the Brownstone University Student's Association (CUSA). CUSA did not have a committee similar to CAC at Victoria, but CUSA regularly funded and supported over 250 student clubs. Since B4P had not yet performed any on-campus marketing at Brownstone, Robinson estimated that 5,500 books could be collected from Brownstone in B4P's first year.

The University of Sacramento

Located in California's capital city of Sacramento, U of Sacramento was the largest bilingual

(English-French) university in the world, and it was situated 540 miles east of San

3
Francisco . The campus was also within walking distance of California's government

buildings on Capitol Hill. The school was known for its co-operative education program, bilingualism, and research. Over 36,000 undergraduate, 4,500 masters and 1,900 doctorate and post-graduate students studied on U of Sacramento's campus. At U of Sacramento, the

1 Driving from Victoria to the B4P headquarters took approximately 3 hours and 15 minutes. 2 Driving from Brownstone to San Francisco took approximately 5 hours.
3 Driving from Univ. of Sacramento to San Francisco took approximately 5 hours.

  

largest faculty was social science, which registered almost 25% of the student population. The balance of the students studied at one of U of Sacramento's nine other facilities.

The Student Federation of the University of Sacramento (SFUO), the university's student council, managed over 250 clubs and organized awareness campaigns, philanthropic initiatives, and on-campus social events. The federation was committed to advocating for affordable post-secondary education in California; therefore, Robinson believed that B4P's mission to support education in developing regions would align with the interests of U of Sacramento's students. Since U of Sacramento was larger than Brownstone, Robinson estimated that 12,250 books could be collected from U of Sacramento in B4P's first year.

Decision

B4P had already established partnerships with students at Victoria while conducting its April textbook drive, so Robinson was confident that B4P would be able to do the same at Brownstone and U of Sacramento. It would, however, take time to gain permission to place the drop boxes around each campus. Robinson was open to expanding to all three schools eventually, but she wanted to select one school to expand to first, if at all. This approach would give Robinson and her team time to improve the textbook collection and transportation model without expanding too quickly. Since B4P management would not be able to visit campuses very often, it would be important to hire a dedicated team of volunteer campus ambassadors. Robinson was anxious to make a decision about her next steps so that B4P's team would have time to place drop boxes on the campuses during the first semester of the 2019-20 academic year.

EXHIBIT 1: CAMPUS LOCATIONS WITH B4P DROP BOXES

l. Western University

2. Shawe College

3. Mary & William University

4. Mary & William University — Brantford Campus

5. University of Waterford

6. University of Gulliver

7. Shenandoah College

8. McMillen University

9. Northeast College

10. Branford University

11. Humboldt College

12. University of Sacramento – St. George Campus

13. York University

Required:

1. Qualitatively, what are the pros and cons of expansion?

2. Qualitatively, what are the pros and cons of partnering with Victoria University, Brownstone University, and the University of Sacramento?

3. Identify the fixed and variable costs relevant to an expansion.

4. Calculate how many textbooks B4P would need to collect to break even at each of the three universities: Victoria, Brownstone, and U of Sacramento.

5. As Maria Robinson, what would you do? Defend your decision using your analysis.

Responses should be typed in paragraph format and use proper grammar and punctuation. Recommendations must be thorough and fully supported by evidence from the case study. Responses to questions 1 -5 above require at least one page of content or more. Therefore, the case study paper should be, at a minimum, five pages of content, excluding calculations and tables. Please be sure to include all tables, calculations, and analysis in an Appendix to the report.

Answer 1

1.Pros and Cons of Expansion

Pros :

• Engagement of more number os students and universities in the B4U textbook drive initiative thus leading an increase in the overall donations and the success of the programme.
• An increased donation would lead to increased revenue for B4U thus enabling the company to expand further, maybe even think about a global expansion to construe a global network of universities who are a part of the programme.
• This entire initiative is mostly handled by student-driven support, an expansion would provide recognition to the company and would result in more support for the community who is engaged to the cause of B4U.

Cons :

• The expansion could create a bottleneck problem for the company as they do not possess the operational and supply chain expertise to handle large scale logistics.
• It would possibly also lead to a rise in complexities in the form of Administrative and Bureaucratic issues at the university administrative level.
• Though expansion would create more support for the company, it would also lead to a rise in the total overall costs in the form of student ambassador stipend the operational costs and the tradeoff costs
• The revenue model of the company is heavily depended on the quality of the books which are being donated, a specific number of books need to be of the sufficient quality so that a certain percentage of revenue may be generated from its online sales to support the costs of the organisation.

2. What are the pros and cons of partnering with Victoria University, Brownstone University, and the University of Sacramento?

The Pros and Cons for each University are given below :

a. Victoria University

Pros :

• A good overall student population provides a favourable advantage for expansion and presents an opportunity for the success of the campaign in the university
• The presence of a social society which supports social awareness campaigns, they would clearly empathise with the causes of B4U and provides a strategic advantage by helping promote B4U's cause in the university.
• The past successful donation drive results signify a good probability of t success of the on-campus drop boxes as the firm B4U and its initiative were already known in the university.

Cons :

• The only con is the operation's, as the size of eh university will make it difficult to take care of the operational cost, operational efficiency etc . However clearly the pros outweigh the cons in this case.

Brownstone University

Pros :

• The size of the student population and the presence of the various multidisciplinary courses will provide a good probability of success of the initiative.
• The presence of various courses related to various disciplines will ensure a diverse collection of books and materials which can allow the company to expand its portfolio.
• The presence of the several student-driven clubs can provide a good probability of the success of the campaign as they can help with the cause-driven book collection efforts.

Cons :

• The university located relatively far from the company head office and hence will lead to an increase in transportation costs.
• The company B4U is new to the campus and there might be a possibility that the company n=may not even be heard of by the students thus raising doubts about the success of the campaign.

The University of Sacramento

Pros:

• The large student population raises the probability of a good amount of collection in the form of books that can be received.
• The bilingual nature of the medium of study can prove more diverse to the collection of books that can be collected through the donation boxes thus increasing the collection diversity portfolio for the company.

Cons:

• The location of the university, this university is also located relatively far tot eh head office leading to a rise in the logistics cost.
• Also, the university has not been a part the B4U's previous effort thus raising doubt over the success of the on-campus donation drive campaign.
• The university does not seem to have student-driven clubs and committees who can provide strategic success for the campaign thus raising doubt over the success.

3.

Fixed Costs: Costs to setup and install various donation boxes at the university campus area, administrative costs if any, Student Stipend's(Campus Ambassador)

Variable Costs: Salary of the drivers and other logistic partners,Transportation costs ( As it depedns on the size of the tranposrted lot like fuel costs ) , advertising costs in the form of campus awareness programmes .