Final Group Project

WeLoveWeCare

Background

The DPRK says missiles are "ready to fire". The warning was announced by a television newsreader a few days ago. The DPRK has stationed as many as five medium-range missiles on its east coast, according to Washington and Seoul. They speculate this may be preparations for a test launch that would demonstrate the DPRK’s ability to hit U.S. bases on Guam. Tension has been rising on the Korean peninsula since the United Nations imposed new sanctions against the DPRK in response to its third test of a nuclear weapon in February. Pyongyang has been further angered by joint military exercises by South Korean and U.S. forces and threatened both counties with nuclear attack. But people in the word all want peace, not war. So we have established a virtual website-WeLoveWeCare.com- that gathers more people and social groups to pay attention or contribute to the world peace.

At beginning, we want to introduce the two parts that contribute to this website. Freedom and peace are the eternal theme for all of peaceful world organizations. It aims to help people in many aspects, such as human rights, animal rights, technology, education, engineering, medicine and diplomats. For different religions, they have different belief systems, culture, world views and moral values. There are about 4200 religions in the world, and it is really a huge group. The reasons we choose these two groups are that they share a common view. It is also a good opportunity to publicize the message of world peace and to spread out “we love, we care” in the world.

Actually, the website we build is a virtual community. It is a social network of individuals who interact through specific social media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals. One of the most pervasive types of virtual community operates under social networking services consisting of various online communities. And the difference between virtual community and web portal is interaction. Web portal, is a site that functions as a point of access to information on the Internet. It lacks kind of interactive activities. 

As you can see, in our website you can get message about the latest news through reading or watching videos. You can even participate in discussion to share your ideas or experience. Moreover, you can register as the membership and join the volunteer activities.

How＆Why this virtual community results from drawing the talents from both these two organizations?

Talents of World Peace Organization:

As a well-know international organization, World Peace Organization possesses lots of precious talents. There talents could be divided into four parts, including social influence, comprehensive communities, activities, and resources.

Focus on social influence

As we know, world peace organization devoted to world peace career and spread out ideas of love, peace, care, green, and equality. Compared with other non-profit organizations, world peace has better reputations. These reputations make the public believe and support world peace organization. The ideas are publicized by world peace organization also could strike a chord in the public. There is another key point about social influence of world peace organization. World peace organization has no boundaries. In other words, everyone who loves the peace in the world could take part in world peace organization and in spite of your race, country, gender, belief, and political identity. To sum up, world peace organization could expand its social influence around the world.

Focus on comprehensive communities

Compared with other professional organizations that just focus on one professional field, world peace organization has lots of comprehensive communities that are devoted to world peace together. For example, environment community aims to protect our environment in the earth. Human rights community aims to spread out ideas of freedom, equality, democracy, and legality. Animal rights community prefer to fight against cruelty to animals and hunting animals. Technology community is devoted to prohibit nuclear threat and make sure people have a healthy living environment. Medicine community focuses on abuse of medicine, especially hard drug. All of there communities play important roles in the world peace organization.

Focus on activities

In world peace organization, there are diverse activities to help you positively take part in the organization and be a member of them. Different activities focus on different people in order to attract more people join in the organization. There are parades to spread out ideas of world peace organization and appeal the public pay more attention to world peace. Charity parties and fund for peace could supply platform for people to donate money for world peace. Volunteer activities are a opportunity to make you experience the atmosphere of the world peace organization. There are many other activities to support world peace organization.

Focus on resources

As a reputable international non-profit organization, world peace organization possesses capabilities to attract enough human capital, technology, and finance to support its operation. 

Virtual organizing:

About how to organize our virtual website WeLoveWeCare.com, we in accordance with Real Strategies for Virtual Organizing by N. Venkatraman and John C. Henderson. They reject a virtual organization as a distinct structure (like functional, divisional, or matrix). Instead, they treat verticalness as a strategic characteristic applicable to every organization; they discussion then is applicable to century-old companies that manufacture cement, chemicals, and autos as well as to new entrants in the fast-changing high-technology marketplace. They view verticalness as a strategy that reflects three distinct yet interdependent vectors: The customer interaction vector (virtual encounter) deals with the new challenges and opportunities for company-to-customer interactions. IT now allows customers to remotely experience products and services, actively participate in dynamic customization, and create mutually reinforcing customer communities. The asset configuration vector (virtual sourcing) focuses on firms' requirements to be virtually integrated in a business network, in sharp contrast to the vertically integrated model of the industrial economy. Firms using the Internet for business-to-business transactions can structure and manage a dynamic portfolio of relationships to assemble and coordinate the required assets for delivering value to customers. The knowledge leverage vector (virtual expertise) is concerned with the opportunities for leveraging diverse sources of expertise within and across organizational boundaries. IT now enables knowledge and expertise to become drivers of value creation and organizational effectiveness. Each vector of their model has three distinct stages. Stage one focuses on the task units (such as customer services, purchasing, or new product development). Stage two focuses at the organizational level on how to coordinate activities to create superior economic value. The third stage focuses on the inter-organizational network to design and leverage multiple interdependent communities for innovation and growth. These three vectors have traditionally been independent: they focused on isolated functions — marketing, purchasing, and human resources, respectively, with their idiosyncratic processes and information systems. Their view of virtual organizing integrates these three hitherto separate threads into an interoperable IT platform that supports and shapes the new business model. The challenge is to ensure internal consistency across the three vectors and benchmark a profile of virtucalness relative to competitors and referent companies in the marketplace. External benchmarking becomes critical as companies experiment with different approaches to design. 

According to their ideas, we design our website WeLoveWeCare.com’s virtual organizing system.

Economic value in WeLoveWeCare.com:

WeLoveWeCare.com has two channels to create economic value, including enterprise sponsor and individual sponsor. Specifically, we could invite enterprises participate in our activities and make them realize the importance of spread out “love” and “care” around the society. We could post donation list that recording the name of donation companies in the website and let net citizen understand these companies take care of their social responsibilities. Our website also could cooperate with enterprises to create public service advertising to spread out the idea of “we love we care”. About individual sponsor, the public could make a contribution for us through become membership, volunteers, and donators.

Operational skills in WeLoveWeCare.com:

Making WeLoveWeCare.com successfully operate should have technology and innovation. Technologies are bases skills to support website operate, such as technology for communication and coordination. WeLoveWeCare.com established by two different organizations. So it is necessary for both organizations to have a better communication and coordination skills in order to keep pace with each other. As a website, network technology cannot be ignored. Innovation is something to make WeLoveWeCare.com different from other websites. In our opinions, events creativity and innovational publicities are much more important for WeLoveWeCare.com.

How＆Why this virtual community would meet both organizations' needs?

Let’s see why and how this virtual community can meets both companies’ needs. We choose this virtual community—we love we care—to cooperate because it can help us to combine advantages of both organizations. Each party of us will share our resources on that website. It’s a public platform for religious people and non-profit organization to communicate and cooperate. Every organization has its own core competence. The virtual website as an low cost way to realize cooperation, each side of us can benefit from it. After we understand the reason for build this virtual community. Next part we will illustrate how this can satisfy the needs of both organizations.

Human resource

Firstly, religious people can enlarge their community through join charity activity hold by world peace organization. This virtual website provide better platform for religious people to do charity work since they can acquire activity information. World peace organization will use their resources to hold various activities which focus on protecting human rights, environment, community service, and so on. Religious people can acquire that information and join them through that virtual community. Simultaneously，Through participate activities, they can promote religious ideas and benevolence to a larger population. So it’s a way to enlarge religious organization.

At the same time, world peace organization can gain volunteers to support their activities. Through post advertisement or video on that virtual website, virtual community raises religious people awareness of social issues. It’s also an easy way to grasp the hot topic problems in the world. The core value of most religions reflects they admire benevolence. Since most religious people seek ways to express their love, the number of volunteers will rise naturally. Therefore, it expands the source of manpower and fund.

 Information sharing and transparency

Different organizations have different concerns. The virtual community will prepare space for charity news, charity activity, knowledge of protecting world and religious ideas. Post news or activity process on same website, people can reach social issues and hot topics on world and notice the news they never interested before. They can also understand each other’s progress of activities. It’s way to supervise the other part’s activity. Member’s can know the donation since virtual website set up an enquiry system that tells donors the usage of their money. This high information sharing and transparency can build trust among them. It’s also an good way to improve the efficient of cooperation since it greatly save the time and cost of exchanging information.

 Productivity benefits

Virtual community have high adaptive to dynamic external environment. Unlike physical community, virtual community can change their form, manpower, channel easily. They are more feasible than other forms. Each side of this virtual community, use the e-mail, mobile, video talk to communicate with each other at anywhere. The time spent in communicating and collecting information has been greatly saved. They can increase the productivity. It’s also an flexibility way to work. It gives your staff enough autonomy. They have free to decide what to do and when to do. It can encourage their creativity. So they can develop very innovation product.  

Cost advantage

Since they can use external human resource, the HR costs of organization will decrease. For instance, religious organization can provide activity place for world peace organization. And world peace organization can acquire volunteers from religious organization. Compared with physical community, it can simplify organizational structure. They don’t have fixed position for employees in that virtual community. The administrative expenses also will be saved since they don’t need real office. So virtual community also contributes a lot to decrease the cost of collaboration.

From all the aspects we mentioned above, we can conclude that virtual community shares the resources of both sides. Meanwhile, the form of building this virtual community is also an very effective way to help improve the effectiveness and innovation of collaboration work.   

The key factor to attract and maintain registers is to figure out the needs of visitors and then satisfy their expectation. Even though different individuals have different needs. We define four common expectations for visitors of WeLoveWeCare.com. Based on those needs we will make some changes.

Expectation for accurate information

The information showed on this website will give visitors a first impression about this two organizations. It’s a significant part that we can never ignore. We should not only need to provide information for both two groups people but also need to guarantee the accuracy and truthful of the posted article.

We will build a team which is responsible for editor and revise the articles, news, videos posted on the website. So they can make sure that public won’t mislead by this website.  It’s a basic duty for two organizations. It also will affect the reputation and continuous development of this two community.  

Expectation for convenience

Even though high technology product is very common in our life. We should design our page more feeling with human-friendly advanced technology. Nowadays people have high pace of life. Efficiency and effectiveness is extremely important for most of us. So we have that convenience demand.

In order to solve that problem, we need to simplify the settings page and add site search function. What’s more, we can also add a on-line assistant to help visitors solve technical problem. Taking those measures can visitors easily handle that website and get what they want quickly. This is an critical factors to retain our visitors. Try to imagine that If I need to waster a lot of time to register or get the information which I need, I would never choose to become the members of this website. Let alone advertise this website to my friends. Actually if you haven’t done that part well, you are losing clients. This kind of mistake should never happen.

Expectation for interaction

The biggest function for this website is to build a two-way communication and advertise we love we care idea. It’s a good way to build organization image. In order to better understand the needs of your visitors the most important thing is to find ways understand them.  

We should set a space for registers to give advice or ask questions. Staff should give response to suggestions given by visitors in time. Giving feedback to register in a short time is important to retain them. They can feel whether the organization care bout their members from your service altitude. It’s also an good way to build word-of-mouth.

The next part is to build a members club. It likes fans club at some degree. Virtual community should properly use that club. Such as organize some off-line activities. It can enhance emotion for each other. It also can connect the members with this virtual community more tight.

The last measure is to combine client activity with website interests. Such as register members should pay membership fees. Those fees will all donate to charity organization or do charity work.

Expectation for continuous and up-to date information

Although you have done really good job on those aspects above, it’s not enough if you want to retain your members. Since you have just made some adjustments from the short-term development. All the behaviors can just meet their present demands. So virtual community needs always endeavor to improve our work since this collaboration is not for short-term benefits.

In order to meet their needs in the future, the website also need to up-date as time pass by. The continuous up-date work should seriously take into consideration. The first thing is to pick up the suitable person or team to take this responsibility. We need to choose employees from both companies to assemble a team. This team should have talents who have knowledge on all the aspect. They also have enthusiasm to learn new things and information. The mission of them is to pursuit of latest information or news and presents those materials continuously. That’s all the measures and adjustments we will take to attract and retain our visitors. 

Conclusion

WeLoveWeCare.com is a virtual organization to spread out the idea of LOVE around the world.

WeLoveWeCare.com supplies a virtual platform to build relationship between two non-profit organizations.

WeLoveWeCare.com is a good example to explain how Non-profit Organization operating in virtual world. 

Reference

[1]Real Strategies for Virtual Organizing, by N. Venkatraman and John C. Henderson

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[3]BARANOV A. BUILDING ONLINE CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP. Bulletin Of The Transilvania University Of Brasov. Series V: Economic Sciences [serial online]. January 2012;5(1):15-18. Available from: Business Source Complete, Ipswich, MA. Accessed May 4, 2013.

[4]Unnikrishnan A, Johnson B. Customer Retention Strategies : The Key to Success and Growth of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. Journal Of Institute Of Public Enterprise [serial online]. January 2012;35(1/2):33-44. Available from: Business Source Complete, Ipswich, MA. Accessed May 4, 2013.