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Non-profit Organisations (NPO), differ from forprofit businesses in two important ways. First, the NPO status does not permit distribution of surplus cash flows as dividends or pay-outs to the shareholders (or units) that establish control and finance the NPO. Second, most NPOs raise funds for operations through donations from various entities and use these funds to achieve social goals, where the social goals typically involve the provision of a public good that simultaneously benefits many individuals. In spite of these differences, the non-profit sector contributes significantly to the global economic activity. A recent study based on financial data available from 40 countries, estimates the operating expenditure of the non-profi t sector to be approximately $2.2 trillion and the sector employs almost six percent of the economically active populations in these countries [Salamon, 2010]. Typically, donors who contribute to the NPO's cause include government agencies, philanthropic institutions, and individual donors. It is noteworthy that voluntary contributions, via individual donors, constitute about 14 percent of the total funds raised by the NPOs and represent a significant amount in absolute terms [Vesterlund, 2006]. A common reason cited for such voluntary contributions is that individual donors derive personal "utility" from the mere act of contributing for a good cause. While it may be true that donors make voluntary contributions because of this "warm glow" effect [Andreoni, 1990], it is also well understood that many donors also care about the "impact" of their donation [Duncan, 2004]. That is, despite the lack of a profi t motive, and not being consumers of the public good provided, donors care about the total benefit provided by the NPO to the end beneficiary population. In other words, such impact donors worry about the NPO's ability to use their contributions to provide maximum possible benefit (the amount of public good created) that is, they care about the NPO's operational efficiency.

Abstract The reservation of goods to be produced in the micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSME) sector, in the early years after India's independence, addressed the dual needs of development of the industrial sector and production of goods. However, these industrial policies created an incentive for firms to remain small so that they can continue to avail of the benefits provided by the Government. On the positive side, the MSMEs typically employ more labor intensive production processes and consequently contribute significantly to the provision of employment opportunities, generation of income, and poverty reduction. But, on the negative side, the policies have also partly facilitated the creation of a divide in terms of productivity between the MSMEs and large sized firms. In particular the policy raises important questions for a firm auctioning supply contracts among suppliers with a significant cost differential. In this paper we propose an idea to allocate supply contracts wherein a manufacturing firm partitions the stochastic demand into mutually exclusive portions and awards each portion to a different supplier. We characterize such an optimal procurement mechanism when there are two types of suppliers and an arbitrary number of demand portions. We show that the optimal procurement may require the manufacturer to intentionally withhold some demand portion, and this arises when one type of supplier is considerably inefficient in serving a demand portion. We extend our analysis to the cases with multiple types with two suppliers and two types with multiple suppliers. The optimal partition is composed of at most six contiguous demand portions, and it may include a detrimental demand portion that only generates a negative expected payoff to both supplier types. Our demand partitioning mechanism leads to a strictly higher manufacturer's expected payoff than the conventional winner-take-all case unless one supplier type completely dominates the other. We present numerical experiments that indicate when such a mechanism holds the greatest advantage for the buyer.

Democratic governance at multiple scales and articulation between institutions across scales are critical components of successful adaptation by communities to climate change. It is through self-organised adaptation by means of ongoing, multi-directional, and organic processes of engagement that broader strategies emerge to address climate change.