There are many different charitable organizations around the world. The Phillips Charitable Organization is one of them. It is a foundation that is really interesting and that did manage to help many people in the past few years. Karen, the wife of Charles Phillips, Infor’s CEO, talk to us a little about the work that is done and about the Phillips Charitable Organization. Here is what we found out.
The Phillips Organization (full name Karen And Charles Phillips Charitable Organization) is basically a 501(c) non-profit business created in order to offer as much financial aid as possible for the disadvantaged students and the single parents interested in the world of engineering. At the same time, because of the fact that Charles Phillips served in the Marine Corps in the past, the organization does offer help to the wounded veterans. The PCO board includes Karen and Charles Phillips and 2 of their closest friends: Young Huh and Eric Garvin.
Most of the programs that are developed by the organization are based on grants. There are grants that are offered to the students that are in dire need of financial aid and that present a really high potential talent. In the past 2 years alone we saw this organization offer over one hundred grants. They were highly successful and did help the students to reach great results, with most of them being considered as being the wave of the future in US engineering.
The work that is done through this foundation is not something new for the PCO board members. All four are friends and did offer a lot of money to traditional charities in the past years. The traditional organizations were all really helpful when they were the donor. The effort that was put in donating was definitely not much but these 4 friends felt that they can get more involved. Large organizations are unfortunately filled with bureaucracy. Karen and Charles Phillips did not want to go through that bureaucracy.
What is interesting with the charity is that it was created in basically the same way that Charles does business. The focus was put on the working environment and on efficiency while minimizing running costs. This means that the finances necessary to run the charity are much lower than with other companies. Obviously, Infor based cloud apps are actually used in order to improve charity success.
The charity that was created by the friends does not have administrative overhead. All the decisions can be done really fast. The interest groups that appear are really easy to analyze. To put it as simple as possible, all the board members can be involved at a personal level. Why not take advantage of such a situation? It is so much easier to offer grants to those that are in dire need when the number of people that are responsible for making the choice is lower.
The work of the organization is going to continue in the future. It will definitely be something that we have to look at.