TSiBA Education Trust Oxford Brookes Research Assignment (Essay Sample)

Instructions:

This project
The trustees of the TSiBA Education Trust UK have asked Oxford Brookes for help in starting to develop a fund raising and financing plan for the next few years. The Trust has raised funds for TSiBA through activities sponsored via the fundraising platform Justgiving. It now would like to explore further fundraising activities as well as other ways of raising finance, particularly with a view to developing a sustainable model for funding TSiBA.
The trustees recognise that their financing options probably fall into three main categories – donations and sponsorship, loan finance (including microfinance and peer to peer lending) and earned income which may be possible through some of TSiBA's projects.
You are Required:
You are asked to research and write a report on three or four options for the Trust and for TSiBA directly. There are many more than four possible options but in order to allow sufficient depth for the research you are asked to concentrate on three or four.
The report should recognise the current position and recent history of TSiBA and the variety of projects it undertakes. It should draw on theories of microfinance and financing and the nature and funding of social enterprise, as covered in the module, in order to set a context for TSiBA's activities and its relationship with the TSIBA Education Trust UK.
The research should cover possible fundraising mechanisms and financing structures. Some general examples, not at all an exhaustive list and not taken from what TSiBA does at the moment, are given below:-
a) Crowdfunding for donations – e.g. justgiving https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=UK-Generic-Crowdfunding-NonVertical-NA-Broad-Desktop-AlwaysOn&utm_term=%2Bdonation%20%2Bcrowdfunding
b) Commercial sponsorship/partnerships as part of CSR undertakings e.g. http://www.petrosa.co.za/driving_change/Pages/Apply-for-Funding.aspx
c) Crowdfunding for earned income on certain TSiBA projects e.g. Indiegogo
https://www.indiegogo.com/#/picks_for_you and Kick Starter https://www.kickstarter.com/
d) Microfinance for TSiBA projects – e.g. Kiva https://www.kiva.org/ or LendwithCare https://www.lendwithcare.org/
e) An ethical investment co-operative e.g. http://www.shared-interest.com/
There may well be other options which the trustees have not yet thought about but which may be worth considering. The trustees are particularly interested in original ideas. However, any further options you identify must be clearly evidenced as already functioning, like all the items in the above list. You can however suggest changes to a model that is already proven.
This is preliminary research. You do not need to develop a strategy but should set out clearly within the report: (IMPORTANT)
a) The context in which these options are being considered – broader landscape for e.g. philanthropy, microfinance, crowd funding, social enterprise;
b) some indication of the methods employed to undertake the research;
c) what each option is – e.g. explanation of social enterprise or of microfinance or impact investing plus types of donor/partner/participant to be expected;
d) how each option fits with what TSiBA is currently doing;
e) the advantages and disadvantages of each option for TSiBA and TSiBA Education Trust UK in both financial and non-financial terms;
f) the possible risks (both financial and non-financial) and potential methods of mitigating them for each option;
g) the short, medium and long-term implications of developing each option;
h) How the options might interact.
The conclusions should give the trustees of TSiBA Education Trust UK and the board of TSiBA recommendations for avenues to pursue over the short-term, i.e. one or two years, and the next five to ten years. The conclusions should, if appropriate, also include recommendations for further research which could not be developed within the time, word and resource constraints in this report.
As well as practical references (to websites and professional/sector reports), the report should include at least four good quality academic references (e.g. to research on social enterprise or microfinance, crowdfunding, the development of the “sharing economy”, impact investing or assessment).

source..

Content:

TSiBA EDUCATION TRUST
Name
Course
Professor
University
City
Date
Executive Summary
Education in most African countries is challenging due to the high levels of poverty. Various scholars have joined hand in an attempt to provide affordable education that will permit all skilled youths to attain adequate knowledge. TSiBA is one of the tertiary schools started in South Africa to support the youths to gain skills that will help them attain knowledge to alleviate poverty. Donors such as the UK Trust Fund assist other well-wishers to provide resources that help improve provision of education. Various options of raising funds can be applied to provide funds for the school. The options include crowd funding through donations and projects as well as through microfinance. Each of the method has its risks which the college should plan how to mitigate to ensure success.
TSIBA EDUCATION TRUST
The Tertiary School in Business Administration (TSiBA) was founded in 2004. TSiBA Education is a foundation started to support youths from financially unstable families to develop their education. It is a non-profit organization which focuses mainly on business studies. The aim of this foundation is to ensure quality education to the youths who use the skills gained for the development of the country. It is located in South Africa and registered by the department of teaching. The reason behind the setting is that the poverty levels as per 2009 were as high as 58% and thus requires intervention from donors (van der Bank and Nkadimeng 2014). Its registration shows that it is a private higher education institution. It has two campuses in South Africa which serve approximately five hundred students. The campuses are the urban school in Pinelands and the TSiBA Eden in Karatara. As a non-profit organization, the Foundation depends on donations such as crowd funding for donations and oprojects or microfinance for its projects.
History of TSiBA
The school was first founded in 2004 and registered under the company laws. The first four founders, Adri Marais, Graham Lashbrooke, Gia Whitehead and Leigh Meinert, spent the largest part of 2004 planning on how the school would be started to support the less privileged in advancing their education. The first students were admitted in 2005, and the school was located in Mowbray Cape Town. TSiBA Education Trust begun in 2006 as a way of receiving donations that would help sustain the school. It would, also, help build long-term goals for the school. Another campus in Karatara was known as the Eden Campus (Tsiba.ac.za n.d.). One of the first students to graduate from the school won the Mandela Rhodes Scholarship to further his studies.
The Ignition Centre started in 2007 when one of the founders, Peter Kraan, started to mentor entrepreneurs. Further, as the school grew, more students achieved scholarship positions. For instance, in 2009, two graduates were awarded the Mandela Rhodes Scholarship. In 2010, the school started to offer a bachelor of business administration after their higher certificate business administration (HCBA) certificate was accredited. More students enrolled for the course as donors increased following accreditation. Besides, the school offered more classes in 2011 such as the certificate in practical business administration (Stokes, Wilson and Mador 2010). In particular, it was offered under further education and training level program. In 2012, the students launched their first book, and on the same year, the number of students to receive the Mandela Rhodes Scholarship rose to five. As the college developed, it partnered with other schools such as Ekasi Entrepreneurship Academy that offered township entrepreneur training (Tsiba.ac.za n.d.). The college celebrated ten successful years with additional Mandela Rhodes Scholarship winners and Kofi Annan Scholarships for its graduate students to further their studies.
The college developed further as the years progressed. Enden Campus won the Gold Impumelelo Award due to its impact on rural development. Further, TSiBa won the Mail and Guardian award of investing in the Future Youth Development. The awards increased in 2015 after the Eden campus won the Bronze Ministerial Youth Excellence Award. The school became global in 2015 by registering as a charity in the USA (Tsiba.ac.za n.d.). The creation of the UK Trust and Swiss Verein were the accelerators of the attaining global class. Through the UK Trust, the college receives adequate donations to ease its working. Some of the options to achieving the financial status include the crowd funding for donation and project, commercial sponsorship as part of corporate social responsibility undertakings, microfinance for TSiBA, and ethical investment co-operative.
Crowd Funding for Donations
As a non-profit making organization, TSiBA requires means to look for the financing through global partners and its supporters. One of the primary methods of collecting funds is through crowd funding where the organizers look for several funders to contribute a large amount of money in small bits. Mollick (2014) writes that crowd funding allows the founders to seek money from several people who in return benefit from future products or services. TSiBA students do not pay any money to the school but provide their services to the community. Similarly, the community is asked to contribute towards the funding of the college so that the youths can gain skills such as entrepreneurship which could further assist them in setting businesses. Thus, benefiting the society as a whole through readily available products.
One of the projects used for crowd funding will be assessed to determine the reliability of crowd funding as a means of funding TSiBA Education. The Just Giving project through the UK Trust Fund allows many donors to give an unlimited amount of money to support education. Other projects backed by Just Giving are successful. The projects include supporting medical services for the sick who require a significant sum of money. Most of them have been successful, and it gives hope that the site can be used for crowd funding TSiBA Education through...

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TSiBA Education Trust Oxford Brookes Research Assignment (Essay Sample)

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