Daycare in Pubilc Housing

DAY CARE IN PUBLIC HOUSING

Assignment:

Dan Schaefer, executive director of the Petersburg, Va., office of the Volunteers of America (VOA), is eager for the board of directors to approve his plan to open a day-care center in the Alta Vista housing community. Mr. Schaefer believes this proposal is an ideal way to begin to rebuild Alta Vista. The Petersburg VOA helped to establish this community in 1971; unfortunately, the residents have seen a rise in criminal activity and a decrease in their quality of life.

Although the board approves Mr. Schaefer’s proposal at the end of the case, assume instead that he has hired you to analyze the proposal in preparation for the board meeting. Specifically, Mr. Schaefer wants you to do the following:

• Prepare a cost-volume-profit (CVP) analysis of the proposal’s financial implications. Specifically, prepare an analysis that includes the projected revenue, variable costs, and fixed costs for enrollment levels of 20, 25, 30 and 37 students using the monthly projections in Attachment A of the case. Then, compute the weighted average contribution margin (CM) per student (computed as the total CM divided by the number of students enrolled) and the number of students that need to enroll at each of the four levels of enrollment for the center to break even. For this analysis, the course web page provides an Excel template in which I have already sorted variable and fixed costs; I have not included the raw data and formulas.

• Prepare a memorandum for Mr. Schaefer that includes:

o your view of the mission(s) of the national VOA and the Petersburg office, along with the day-care center’s goals

o the advantages and disadvantages/ risks of the Alta Vista day-care center project

o an interpretation of the results of your CVP analysis and the sensitivity of those results to any change in numbers

o recommendations for Mr. Schaefer about what he should consider and/or do before the board meeting

NOTE: Attachment A in the case...