The Robin Hood Foundation has the mission to be a more efficient charity. They believe that the limited pool of charitable donations can work more efficiently, and thereby bring more benefit to the recipients. The main mechanism of change is professional assistance - Robin Hood brings more than money to the table, they corral the skills of corporate partners to donate professional assistance to projects that would without it be less effective. In doing this, Robin Hood seeks to fight poverty by pulling people out of it. Their corporate partners donate time and skills in order to provide the management assistance that many charitable projects lack. Robin Hood also acts as a fundraising arm, securing donations from corporate backers.
Robin Hood's books are balanced. The company takes in substantially more than it spends, and 92.4% of donations are used in its programs. Primarily a fund-raising and resource-marshalling...
The major challenges going forward will be to maintain donation levels as corporate backers suffer the economic downturn. Robin Hood has a financial cushion to deal with some downturn in donations, but will likely also need to lean more heavily on securing management assistance in lieu of financial donations in order to maintain its effectiveness. Robin Hood still has a sound managerial approach as its main assets. This appeals to corporate backers and allows them to be more efficient than other organizations. It can leverage this to win more corporate backers, who will relate better to the Robin Hood approach than the approach of other similar fundraising organizations. Robin Hood is not a social enterprise. They are a fundraising and resource provider for social enterprises, but they themselves are not one. They are a facilitator of social enterprise.
