1. What is Backpack Plus?
Backpack Plus is sponsored by many organizations from the corporate, non-profit, and public sectors. The initiative was created in 2013 to help support Community Healthcare Workers (CHW). Backpack Plus is joint venture among UNICEF, Save the Children, the MDG Health Alliance, and frog design.
There are several corporate sponsors that support this effort including Nike which manufactures the backpack; DHL which supports the transportation of medicine and other supplies and frog design which has created the logo, the brand and launched a blog to raise awareness about this effort.
2. Describe how Backpack Plus is performing financially?
Backpack Plus is a non-profit healthcare organization. Non-profit organizations are not required to share their financial information publicly. For reporting purposes, they are treated as a private, not public corporate entity. This initiative was launched in 2013 and as such, there has not been enough time to get one year of recording of financial data yet. Even if one year had elapsed, Backpack’s income and revenue information does not need to be shared.
3. How will I know if this is a sound investment if I can’t get income or revenue information about Backpack Plus?
There is no way to quantify the financial gains associated with an investment in Backpack Plus. Over 400 organizations have provided funding for this effort. These organizations have provided funding for the initiative to more broadly support their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts. It is difficult to quantify their monetary Return on Investment (ROI) with these investments, and this type of CSR effort is typically philanthropic with no expectations about ROI.
4. What type of investment would I be able to make if I won’t get a quantifiable ROI?
You should weigh carefully how much cash you want to invest in this worthwhile initiative. It is a much needed and growing effort, but understand that your return will be in the form of great Public Relations (PR); recognition as a generous and caring citizen of the world; and you can use the ROI to contribute to your CSR needs.
5. Backpack Plus sounds like a wonderful effort, but it is not a traditional investment. Do I understand this correctly? Am I better off investing in something else?
You are correct. If you choose to invest in Backpack Plus, you are choosing to, in effect, make a contribution to a non-profit UNICEF sponsored initiative. It is not a traditional in the sense that the ROI is not cash, it is CSR.
Since you are looking to invest with the intention of a profit gain, I would recommend that you seek public companies to invest in. Public companies are obligated to report their earnings data in an annual report and this transparency of their financial performance makes choosing to invest a matter of examining their income statement and balance sheet.
References
(n.d.). Retrieved from
http://unicefstories.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/chw-backpack-plus-phase-1-report2.pdf
(n.d.). Retrieved from
http://designmind.frogdesign.com/blog/backpack-plus-will-empower-community-health- workers.html
(n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.frogdesign.com/work/backpack-plus-toolkit.html
(n.d.). Retrieved from
http://1millionhealthworkers.org/2013/06/25/backpack-plus-project/
