Increasing solidarity - but how?

MCI bachelor's students investigate various possibilities as part of the practical project

As part of the course "Digital Project Management & Practice Project", Business Administration Online students were given the opportunity to work with the Austrian Red Cross to find ways to increase donations in goods and food, as well as ways to generate more volunteers. The project partner gave the students the freedom to choose what they wanted to focus on in the project. The result was a total of 17 projects with different focuses: Survey of general attitudes towards non-monetary donations, influence of spatial distance on donation behavior, identification of appropriate marketing activities, attitudes towards volunteering among retirees, to name just a few.The goal of the course is, on the one hand, for the students to apply what they have learned so far in the context of an NPO project and to further develop their digital project management skills. In addition to their technical expertise, the students were also able to apply and expand their skills in the area of research methods.

In the various projects, the students were able to gain the following insights, among others: 

• Simplified donation options (e.g., in popular apps) are very important to respondents.
• The respondents can better identify with the purpose of the donation if the spatial distance is smaller, which in turn influences the donation amount.
• There is a great willingness among the retirees surveyed to do volunteer work.
• Transparency in the use of donations is important to the respondents. If one knows how exactly the donation is used, one is willing to donate more.
• Men show less willingness to donate than women. Older people are also more open to donations than people born after 1989.
• Flexibility in volunteering is not required - fixed dates are fine.
• Students see clothing donations less as a moral duty and more as a way to do something good for others without compensation.