The Morning Star Company is the world’s leading tomato ingredient processor, supplying approximately 40% of the U.S. industrial tomato paste and diced tomato markets.
They operate the Morning Star Scholarship Foundation, a charitable organisation that provides tuition grants to Morning Star colleagues (parents) to help fund their child’s switch from public to private or home school education.
The Foundation was looking for a way to increase the number of scholarships they could offer to parents within the $15,000 funding allowance that was periodically available. They decided to contact us to try a closed-market auction as a solution to this, by letting parents compete in a reverse auction to determine their willingness to secure a grant.
Since the parents who were bidding in the auction were essentially consumers and not e-Procurement professionals, it was essential that the software was extremely easy to use and consumer-friendly.
Absorbing all the feedback from the trials, two live auctions were conducted in late March over a 48 hour duration involving 16 competing parents in total. Each auction represented a pot of $15,000, which, when combined, would be able to provide 10 scholarships.
The result of the auction enabled an additional 4 children, bringing the total to 14 children, to benefit from the generosity of the Morning Star Scholarship Foundation.
Prior to the auction, we utilized the neat “Sandpit” feature within Sourcing Dojo for colleagues to practice and also held an informational webcast about the Foundation and auction process. This year we will be awarding $28,789 for a total of 14 scholarships. The Morning Star Foundation’s effort in implementing this program was made much easier by the folks at Market Dojo.
– Mike Sertic, Foundation for Harmony and Prosperity
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