Dunkin' Donuts Founder Family Donates $40,000 to UNH Franchising Center

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January 30, 2009 // Franchising.com // Durham, N.H. - The William Rosenberg Family Foundation, which honors the founder of Dunkin' Donuts, has given a $40,000 grant to the University of New Hampshire Rosenberg International Center of Franchising.

The gift was made by Ann Rosenberg, the widow of William Rosenberg. The Rosenberg family has been a strong supporter of the UNH Rosenberg International Center of Franchising since its inception in 2002. The Rosenberg International Center of Franchising was created according to the vision of the franchising pioneer and founder of Dunkin' Donuts. Rosenberg saw the need for a specialized center that would advance the field of franchising through relevant research and innovative teaching.

"It is with deep appreciation that we accept this generous gift of $40,000 from the William Rosenberg Family Foundation. The Rosenberg Center is recognized internationally as one of the top centers for teaching and research in the field of franchising. Without the support of the Rosenberg family, none of this would have been possible," said Udo Schlentrich, director of the UNH Rosenberg International Center of Franchising.

The grant will support the center's research in the area of risk and opportunity assessment in international franchising for U.S.-based franchisors. The Rosenberg Center undertook this research in direct response from business leaders engaged in franchising who identified it as a topic of key concern in their ability to formulate viable expansion strategies beyond the borders of the United States.

The grant also will support the center's franchise financial database, which is now recognized as the most comprehensive database of its kind in the world. The database is the foundation for much of the center's research and for the Franchise 50 Index, a quarterly index that tracks a representative set of 50 U.S. publicly traded companies engaged in business format franchising.

Finally, the funding will support the center's online franchise bibliography and database, which is the first of its kind in the world, and the William Rosenberg Collection, an archive that contains clippings, correspondence, photographs, documents, ephemera, and various Dunkin' Donuts publications such as their annual reports ranging from the 1940s to 2002. The highlight of the collection is the original 1960 by-laws for the International Franchise Association which includes Rosenberg's handwritten notes in the margins.

According to the International Franchise Association, there are nearly 1 million franchised business establishments in the United States, which directly and indirectly are responsible for nearly 21 million jobs, or 15.3 percent of all U.S. private-sector jobs.

The William Rosenberg International Center of Franchising (franchising.unh.edu) aims to explore and advance the understanding of franchising, which represents more than $1 trillion of the business conducted in the world annually. The center offers a franchising class for business students at the Whittemore School of Business and Economics and is actively involved in the communities of franchising, both to gain information about current trends and challenges and to share insights and solutions. The center interacts with industry experts and the International Franchise Association (IFA) to produce timely and meaningful research reports and forecasts. The center maintains the Franchise 50 Index, an extensive financial database of publicly listed franchising corporations, and hosts the world's most comprehensive research bibliography on franchising.

The University of New Hampshire, founded in 1866, is a world-class public research university with the feel of a New England liberal arts college. A land, sea and space-grant university, UNH is the state's flagship public institution, enrolling 11,800 undergraduate and 2,400 graduate students.