Smith Students Participate in Social Venture Consulting Program

The Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship's Social Venture Consulting Program wrapped up a semester’s worth of consulting projects  as eight teams of Smith School students presented their consulting work to an audience of students and faculty on Dec. 3, 2008. Projects ranged from product development work, to outreach and social networking strategy. Each team presented a background on their client, their project findings, as well as the lessons they learned going forward.

One such client was Aumazo, a nonprofit organization that is planning to build a girl’s school in Bankondji, Cameroon. The client wanted to increase outreach, and the student team built a Web strategy, including social networking and multimedia. Another team worked with a small nonprofit organization called The Woman’s Heart, a women’s center that is based out of Casper, Wyoming. The team worked on strategic marketing, enhancing resource utilization and sustaining revenues.  Other clients were closer to home. A student team worked with the University of Maryland’s Office of Sustainability’s Climate Action Plan, building a plan to decrease energy usage.

Each team was tasked with communicating lessons learned. Many teams noted a lack of knowledge in a specific background, for example, a marketing background for a marketing case. This prompted a steeper learning curve. To move quickly along the curve, team-members drew knowledge from first-year core courses, for example, the “4 Ps of marketing” in the first year marketing course, as well as other data analysis techniques learned in core courses. Coaching provided by second-year MBAs who had previously completed the consulting program also helped navigate student teams through their projects.

With a solid foundation of core courses and coaching, client projects were successful. Many teams were able to point to new skills and perspectives developed, a greater sense of teamwork, and perhaps most importantly, a deeper appreciation for the role that business skills can play in solving the problems and challenges facing non-profit and community organizations.