The case study:
HOHO (Help Our Homeless Offspring) is a charity that works at reuniting homeless children with their families. It also operates numerous halfway homes for their care, counselling and shelter.
In funding its efforts, HOHO relies on a number of individual and corporate donors. It relies on their continued support at high funding levels to expand and sustain its initiatives. Many of the larger donors appreciate the profile that their donations bring, in particular from bi-annual charity drives.
HOHO is currently seeking to qualify for its biggest donation drive. This drive is responsible for a large proportion of its annual donations. The fundraising legislation and permit conditions mean that expenditure at the charity must be classified as either directly related to administrative/fundraising or charitable dollars. To qualify for the drive, the expenditure-to-funding ratio must be kept under 25%. These rules are very strict and the penalties are high in order to ensure non-charitable organisations do not take advantage of willing donors.
To succeed in their current environment, expensive TV advertising must be used. This will mean that costs exceed the 25% limit. The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is hopeful that the need for TV advertising will be a short-term cost, i.e., the 25% ratio will be easy to meet in the near future.
The newly hired accountant for HOHO feels that there has been a misallocation of administrative costs so that they are classified as program costs (i.e. upper management is pressuring for costs to be misallocated). The CFO justifies this by saying that:
- all the other charities do it, and HOHO?s costs are actually better than those of other charities;
- it is necessary to make companies donate funds; and
- the charity will be back under the 25% ratio in the short term.
Scenario:
Imagine you are the financial controller of a corporation that is a very large donor to HOHO. You have recently become aware that its TV advertising has resulted in the charity violating the 25% expenditure ratio for its charity drive. You know your organisationfavours the profile it receives from this charity and though other charities request donations, your organisation supports only HOHO. Spring 2012 200101 Accounting Information for Managers School Business Page 3
Required:
Based on the Case Study and Scenario as presented above on page 2 prepare a 500 - 750 word report which includes the following sections:
Introduction:
• Identifies and summarises the relevant facts of the above case study and scenario
Key Ethical Issues:
• Lists six stakeholders from the above case study and scenario
• Identifies the relevant ethical issues and relates them back to the major principles, rules and values (See item 3 in the Resources list below: APES 110 Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants)
Alternative Courses of Action:
• Explains the consequences of each of the following actions:
o Doing nothing
o Telling your corporation about the situation
o Telling your corporation about the situation, but explaining the consequences
o Encouraging your corporation to work with HOHO
Recommendation
• Recommends a course of action and explains the reasons for the recommended course of action.
Reference List
• Includes any references you have used and cited in your report. You must use the Harvard referencing system as per the guide available from the UWS library website. (Note: the reference list is not included in the word count).