Community Project

Community Project

Organizational Behavior

Benefit Dinner for Girls Softball Dug-outs

The Wisdom Seekers

May 12, 2005

Introduction

The MBA Class at Averett University has been tasked with creating and implementing a community project for our Oganizational Behavior class. Community projects refers to a service that a person performs for the benefit of his or her local community, or to solve particular problems related to the needs of their community.

The team decided to sponsor a Mother's Day spaghetti dinner for the athletic department at the United Christian Academy (UCA). The funds would be used exclusively to build dug-outs for the girls softball team. The United Christian Academy is a small private Christian school located in Stanardsville, Virginia. UCA serves the community through a preschool program for children 3 and 4. It also conducts school for K-5 through 12th grade.

The spaghetti dinner seemed perfect for our purpose of collecting money to build the girls softball team some dugouts. We wanted to engage in a community project that included certain characteristics such as an activity that would produce long-lasting benefits for the community. The team also wanted an uplifting and positive experience for all involved and a process that included a variety of challenges which would demostrate our individual talents. As a team we all participated in the decision making for the entire project. Each participant showed leadership and demostrated motivation to get the project underway and completed with a successful turnout.

We are the Wisdom Seekers and our team member are made up of 4 people.

The team began the decision making process by first exploring the paramenters involved in a community project and the possibilities to work towards a worthy cause, while applying organizational behavior principles.

Once the team came up with a general consensus for the project, the decision making was shared at all levels. Sometimes, the team had to rethink certain approaches quickly, for example by becoming more persistent

and persuasive with merchants. As the dead line for the dinner approached we needed to take into consideration all factors surrounding the cause and try and get as much as possible from each merchant. In most cases, there was reluctance about donating something to a group that was not very well known and in other cases there was resistance in general to donating at all. Many merchants wouldn't donate without first receiving a request in writing, so we created a letter designed to overcome this obsticle. We have included a copy of this letter at the end of this paper for your review.

The team had multiple different personality types and traits that would allow us to pull on multiple strengths from different team members. B has a very creative side so in creating posters and bulletins this came in extremely vital. We used these bulletins to send home to the students and to post throughout local businesses to advertise the event. Her creative side allowed us to advertise in a way that caught the customer's eye and allowed us to have a higher profile. G has a very defined sense of purpose, he has the ability to remove himself from the emotions of the situation and make decisions. When quick decisions had to be made we relied heavily on Gene's opinion to forcast a positive outcome. P was the constant driving force that kept us all together, our peace maker. P's personality is one that allows her to make light of the situation and bring us all back into the circle without creating any further conflict but helping to resolve all the issues outstanding. T's personality is one of a driving force and this came in the handiest in getting donations from merchants. An A+ personality doesn't give up easy and would continue to request donations even after being told no repeatedly.

These personalities of the team made it possible for us to make quick decisions based on outcomes that we as a group thought would occur with each decision. Due to the time constraints many activities had to take place at the same time. One example of this would be when the dinner event had to be advertised while donations were still being solicited from merchants. Not knowing the number of people who would attend the event put added stress and pressure on the team because once the event had been advertised we were committed to having the dinner. We had to have the dinner regardless of the food or cash donations to support this function, we just had to find a way to make it happen. This put a great deal of stress on our team to ensure that we continued to visit and solicite donations from our merchants to have enough stock on hand to feed everyone who showed up for dinner.

The stress led the team to experience conflict and the team found ourselves working down the path of the conflict process. At first we had some communiction errors and then we had to realize what was the perceived conflict and outline a plan for resolution. Once we realized we had some real tough conflict we had to take action so we could handle the conflict. We all collaborated and compremised and in some cases avoided the problem until we couldn't bear it any longer. At this point we changed our behavior in order to increase the group's performance.

Once the team reorganized we realized we needed to get back to work, we also needed door prizes and silent auction items as this was also part of our advertising. The team found it most successful when we visited colleagues and co-workers for donations, networking seem to really work in this area. People who know you trust you more and therefore are more willing to give a donation when they firmly believe it is going to a good cause.

The team believed that an announcement for live music entertainment was also a great selling point, but we had no musician. We either had to take a chance in advertising it before we had a firm commitment from the musician or leave it out of the advertising. In this case, there had to be a level of trust in the person who was called upon to be a leader at this task. Gene had said that he could get the music and the team had made the decision to back Gene in getting music and laid the task in his hands. Gene knew that he had the total support from the rest of the team and we believed in him this trust was a