"Harvest Hope Food Bank Optimizes Its Promotional Strategy to Raise Donations Using Integer Programming"

Introduction

The problem of raising donations has been a problem for the organizations that have specialized in this area. Many activities take place to meet the objectives and needs. In reference to this, the business activities that takes placed should be done in such a way that the output is optimized. Operations always are in demand for resources are scarce. To have an appropriate response to the problem, it is essential for the managers of the organizations to embrace a business model that will be capable of dealing with the issue of optimizing the strategies of promotion. The aim is making sure the donations are available and availed to the needy groups or individuals at the right and appropriate time.

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Harvest Hope Food Bank (HHFB) serves 20 countries by donating food to people. After analysis conducted, it was found out that there is a need for HHFB to make its operating budget effective as well as optimizing the technical and the human resources to increase the amount of food as well as dollar donations. The main problem whose solution is needed determining the number of events of each of the initiative to maximize the total annual meals yield.

Modeling Methodology

To determine the solution for the problem at hand at HHFB, an integer programming is the optimization model that can be applied. The main aim is to maximize the total annual yield, and the integer programming can be used in the aggregate resource allocation problem for donations as linear IP model. The model should have implemented with close collaboration with HHFB. The approach is crucial as it will ensure the objective of optimization framework will be easy to understand even for an individual who does not have a background of the operations research. In addition to this, there will be a need to model results as well as analysis of the parametric.

Model Draft

The integer programming technique that will be employed in getting the solution of optimizing the strategies of promotion to increase donations will put into considerations many concepts. One of the ideas includes investigating the effect of altering the resource capacities as well as resource requirements for every event. The other plan that the model will consist of is on the impact of diminishing of donations raised by the additional event. More importantly, the concept of uncertainty will also be included in the model. This will be approached in trying to determine the level of risk that can be realized on the donations of the raised event. In addition to this, the application of the model to the problem of optimization will also be used in determining the maximum and the minimum allowable number of events suitable for developing the promotional strategies. It is worth noting that every approach has its yield in terms of the food quantities as well as the donor donations. The model needs to be developed such that all the comprehensive resources are well balanced. If this is the case, it will be much of importance to make some assumptions such as the number of events that can be handled per year.

Bibliography

Ahire, Sanjay L., and Pelin Pekgun. "Harvest Hope Food Bank Optimizes Its Promotional Strategy to Raise Donations Using Integer Programming." Interfaces 48, no. 4 (2018): 291-306.