Baby Boosters

Sponsored by Kimberly Clark Group 1 Christina Sbong Jessica Santibanez Quyen Tran Emilie Selwyn Rimsha Khan Cassandra Williams

Introduction: A single mother just realizes she is pregnant. She is so excited until she starts wondering how much money she makes to support the two of them. How much do you think she will need yearly? $30,000? $20,000? What about $15,000? She works a minimum wage job full time making her take home pay around $14,000 a year. This places her right under the poverty line for Texas. Kimberly Clark wants to assist these mothers by providing supplies which will create a small financial cushion. While our products may evolve, our VALUES remain timeless. About Us: For more than 140 years, Kimberly Clark has been dedicated to supplying customers with everyday household products such as Cottonelle, Scott, Huggies, and Kleenex. Kimberly Clark has been proactive in ensuring that the company gives back to its communities. By supporting programs such as Boys and Girls Clubs of America, MedShare International, and United Way; our company has helped thousands of families and children (Programs and Partnerships, 1). In 2011, our company contributed $32.1 million in cash and product donations to charitable causes around the world (Strengthening, 3). The Proposal (known as Baby Boosters for here on) is a mirror image of Kimberly Clarks value statement of Authentic, Accountable, Innovative, and Caring (Values, 2). Not only as a company does Kimberly Clark do our part to enrich the communities around us, but our employees and their spouses volunteered more than 84,000 hours of their time to causes that they valued (Strengthening, 3). This valuable network is the key reason why Kimberly Clark is able to support Baby Boosters. With the help of our Kimberly Clark family, Baby Boosters will be able to provide in-house help without extra cost. Background After much research on the greater Dallas area, Kimberly Clark has deducted that one of the major issues that Dallas Metroplex faces is low income families without the proper resources to care for their children. Though there are many programs in place that help assist these families, we at Kimberly Clark believe that we can lighten the weight of financial responsibility specifically focusing on single low income mothers with newborns. The following information based off the 2010 Census that formed our conclusion. Though Texas has survived this past recession, the Census has confirmed that many Texas families are still in financial instability. Around 4.4 million people across Texas live below the poverty line (State Poverty, 2012). Below is a chart of the 2011 poverty threshold. U.S. Census Bureau Poverty Thresholds, 2011 Size of Family Unit One person (unrelated individual) Under age 65 Age 65 or older Two people Householder under age 65 Poverty Threshold (annual income) $11,484 11,702 10,788 14,657 15,139

Householder age 65 or older Three people Four people Five people Six people Seven people Eight people Nine people or more in September 2012.

13,609 17,916 23,021 27,251 30,847 35,085 39,064 46,572

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Weighted Average Poverty Thresholds, 2011, released *Chart found on the Institute for Research on Poverty website With the exclusion of homes and automobiles, 50 percent of Texans have no assets to survive on if they were to lose their source of income (State Poverty, 2012). This would endanger many children from getting the proper necessities. In Dallas alone, over 500,000 households have children under the age of 18 (Dallas Census, 2010). Below shows a chart stating that not only are children in Dallas poorer than most in Texas, but also in America. Kimberly Clark understands that Dallas is the perfect major city to test the program. With the corporate headquarters located near Dallas, this will allow upper management to study the effectiveness of the program to see if it can go national.

Poverty rate (%) of children ages 5-17 per year

*Based upon the US Census data (Pearson,2012)

Further studies show that since 2000, the cost of raising a child from birth to age 18 is an additional $60,000 (Dickler, 2011), with the cost of disposable diapers averaging nearly $3,000 for just two years (Crowe, 2011). With the average pay increase of only 3% (Kavoussi, 2012); low income families are having a harder time keeping up with the cost of raising a child. How the program will help resolve these problems: Baby Boosters allows low income parents to allocate the cost used for diapers to different aspects of raising a child especially in the beginning years. An example is taking the money they save and using it instead of the money they would have not received while on maternity leave. Since some of the items are able to be used multiple times, they can be later used if participating parent has another child. As you can see, Kimberly Clark has looked into multiple problems that the Dallas Metroplex faces. By concentrating our efforts at the early ages of life, Kimberly Clark feels that we can help reduce the number of children in poverty by giving these low income families a boost and a program targeted to supplying them with necessities that are not offered by government assistance.

Proposal: Our plan at Baby Boosters is to assist low income families with newborns in receiving items that are essential to having a newborn. Some items we plan on distributing would include: Bottles and a bottle brush

Diapers and wipes Toiletries, including baby wash, lotion, ointment and so forth.

We plan on receiving these items through donations from Kimberly Clark, and contributions from annual events. (Please see budget for more details.) We are planning to start this program with 50-60 families in the first year, and incorporate more every consecutive year. Marketing: Since the program targets low income parents with newborns, there has been a variety of options that have been expressed for marketing the application, which will be available online and in paper form. (Refer to Appendix II for application.) Paper Form Unemployment agencies and government assistance offices Low income hospitals (such as Parkland) Online Form Advertisement on Dart system Childrens retail stores

Program Candidates All program candidate applications will be reviewed by a board and decided upon following the fundraising event. Each selected member will receive diapers for a year, along with the set of perpetual items depending on the said familys individual needs. Distribution Kimberly Clark will use their volunteering network to distribute to the selected families. (Refer to Introduction on Kimberly Clark volunteering network.) Staffing for Volunteers In order to succeed, Baby Boosters and the ENIGMA event will need many volunteers working in committees with specialized functions. The program and fundraising event will share a staff of volunteers who make up the legal, accounting, logistics, and marketing teams (See page X for the organizational chart). Here are the essential roles and responsibilities for our central team: 1. Project Manager a. Oversees Baby Boosters and the ENIGMA event. b. Procures a convention center like the Irving Convention Center for 2014. c. Manages the logistics and volunteer departments and creating a schedule to do a test run/setup day before the event. 2. Executive Assistant

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5.

6.

a. Arranges official meetings so that all committee members can meet and be on the same page. b. Writes up progress report of all committees and send it out so that everyone is kept up to date Logistics department a. Works with Kimberly-Clarks warehousing management to obtain storage and set up space for stockpiling and packaging the baby supplies b. Helps the volunteer coordinator and game master successfully execute their plans within the allotted budget and with legal considerations c. Works with the Baby Boosters transportation committee to find an effective and efficient method of delivering the baby supplies to each family. Marketing Department a. Informs the public of the Baby Boosters program and ENIGMA fundraising event i. Stirs up interest in the fundraising event b. Create and distribute flyers and other misc. advertisements. Legal Department a. Ensures the games are played fairly b. Keeps program and fundraising event compliant with any state or city laws c. Aids the project manager in obtaining the necessary permits Treasurer/Accounting Department a. Keeps up with the organizations funding b. Ensures the spending is appropriate and well within the budget c. Manages and reconciles the funds with the appropriate and sufficient documents

Baby Boosters: The Staff and Execution Baby Boosters program itself will need a review board and a volunteer coordinator. The review board will ensure the right families in need are chosen by the established criteria and use professional judgment on unique circumstances (Please see Appendix X for criteria and application). The volunteer committee will manage all volunteer information and synchronization between the procurement, package & delivery, and transportation departments. Once the funds have been secured and the families have been chosen, the procurement team will acquire the needed baby supplies. Members will work in conjunction with the logistics team to make sure the supplies are stored in the secure and proper facility. Also, the volunteer coordinator will assign volunteers to sort, package, and deliver the goods. Additionally, the transportation team will acquire (if necessary) any needed forms of transportation in order to deliver the baby supplies to the designated families. Its members will likewise work with the logistics team to orchestrate an efficient and effective manner in which volunteers will pick up and deliver baby supplies from Kimberly-Clarks storage facilities to the disadvantaged families. The E.N.I.G.M.A. Event: The Staff and Execution The ENIGMA fundraising event needs one year of preparation. With Kimberly-Clarks and the Chamber of Commerces contribution, the project managers first order of business is to find the volunteer and game master coordinators. Each coordinator will be in charge of finding team members from within Kimberly-Clarks Irving office. In an effort to encourage volunteer work among its employees, Kimberly-Clark takes into consideration during their annual performance review how much an employee volunteers for companys projects. The company also throws a party for the department with the most volunteer hours and recognizes those employees during the annual company party. As a family company, management also encourages employees family members to volunteer as well. With the project manager overseeing the program and event, there will be a convention center liaison to iron out the details with the convention centers event services representative. The food and beverage committee would work to make sure there are vendors for the concession stands or coordinate with the Irving convention center with its own food service. Our goal is to also find food and beverage sponsors who could provide free meals for the volunteers. Once a theme is set, the game master and staff writers will need work with the marketing department and webmaster. The staff writers will work out the plot for the overall mystery and script for each of the costumed, clue-giving characters. They will also work the puzzle makers to make sure each clue ties into the story. Throughout the story and puzzle creation, there will be an approval process to make sure the content is appropriate and in line with the programs mission. The game master will then make sure the maps and physical clues are printed and shipped on time. The game troubleshooters will actually test out the game to make sure the text messaging services works as stated, and they will be there to work out issues on the day. Prior to the event, the troubleshooter also will have a backup plan in place should the system crash for any reason.

The volunteer coordinator will need to round up approximately 250 event volunteers and schedule information sessions on their responsibilities and customer service. This includes the costume supervisor who is responsible for renting the right costume and sizes for the volunteer actors and making sure the rentals go back to rental shop intact and on time. The A/V media team will help create the videos and set up the videos to work seamlessly into the mystery event. As stated earlier, there will be volunteers roaming the convention center to assist with any problems. Additionally, they will help decorate the center before the day of the event. There will only be one webmaster in charge of registration, but there will be one group of volunteers for people to confirm their arrival and team members and another group to help with any issues with registration. The registration team will also be putting individuals without teams into a newly formed group. BUDGET PRINTOUTS GO HERE Authorization: Kimberly Clark started our company with $30,000. With the mere $30,000, Kimberly Clark has turned into a global company and one of the worlds top personal care provider (please think of another phrase for this). With the start-up amount of $30,000, Kimberly Clark once again plans on helping thousands of families not only financially, but allowing them to create closer bonds through stimulating events such as E.N.I.G.M.A.

Appendix: Contains Org Chart, staffing descriptions, and event flyer

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