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In McIntire’s Integrated Core Experience, Nonprofits Get Down to Business
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| Left to right: Omar
Garriott, Trey Maxham, and Greg Cork. |
“I don’t think it’s a career I’ll necessarily pursue,” says rising fourth-year McIntire student Raheem Choudhry (McIntire ’06), “but I’m definitely glad I got the exposure to it.” He pauses, reflecting. “Frankly, I don’t really think we could call ourselves business students without examining such a huge part of our economy.”
Choudhry isn’t talking about real estate or e-commerce. He’s talking about the nonprofit sector, which, he points out, employs one in every fourteen Americans and contributes 7 percent of U.S. gross domestic product annually. Choudhry’s knowledge of this dynamic economic sector is the result of a major enhancement to the Integrated Core Experience (ICE), McIntire’s third-year curriculum.
ICE Expands
Two years ago, McIntire’s formal coursework on nonprofits consisted of a sole elective in which students helped local nonprofits improve their marketing materials. In the spring of 2004, though, thanks to the vision of McIntire Dean Carl Zeithaml and the efforts of Professor of Business Communication Lynn Hamilton, who taught the seedling elective, the study of nonprofit organizations earned a spot in the School’s ICE program. “Students loved seeing that they could someday use their business skills to make a difference,” Hamilton says.
Now students devote three weeks to learning how to make nonprofits run more efficiently, studying finance, strategy, organizational behavior, quantitative analysis, and communication. They also have the opportunity to learn about the unique marketing, fundraising, and personnel challenges that nonprofit organizations face.
“We want to create a mindset in our students that their success should be a vehicle for creating a better society, and a world in which we all want to live,” says Zeithaml.
“Our goal—as it has always been—is to have our graduates become leaders not only in the business world, but also in the community and society.”
ICE Solidifies
McIntire graduates will now leave school more prepared than ever to achieve that goal. The spring 2005 module returned with “an even more clearly defined sense of purpose,” says Professor of Business Communication Marcia Pentz-Harris. This year’s module incorporates a new accounting component as well as interactive classroom sessions with representatives from locally and nationally based nonprofits, including the Jefferson Area Board on Aging, the United Way, and the Salvation Army. Students had a chance to hear firsthand about such issues as marketing nonprofits in a way that will differentiate them from their numerous worthy peers, the constant struggle to raise money, and the difficulty of developing reliable performance metrics.
Student Ryan Gurney (McIntire ’06) was impressed by what he learned. “Many of the world’s largest corporations could take note of what some nonprofits have done and make improvements to their own businesses,” he says.
Students also had the opportunity to learn about the obstacles faced by an alumni-run nonprofit, when Omar Garriott (McIntire ’02) and Greg Cork (A&S ’87, Law ’92) joined Professors Trey Maxham and Lynn Hamilton to talk to students about the nonprofit they work for,
College Summit.
Garriott, who serves as the organization’s Senior Coordinator of Marketing Strategy and Public Policy, spoke to the students about College Summit’s business model and branding strategy, then asked for ideas on how the organization might successfully build its brand, boost popular awareness, and align itself in favorable corporate relationships. “It was a truly interactive workshop,” Maxham says. “College Summit really wanted the students’ ideas—I think they got as much out of it as the students did.”
Maxham points out another benefit of the two alums’ visit. “Students tend to get very focused on just a few career options,” he says. “Then they see someone like Omar, who could have done anything, but stayed true to his heart. It really opens up their eyes to other career opportunities.”
ICE in the Sunshine
Perhaps the most immediately gratifying aspect of this year’s nonprofits module involved
The Sunshine Lady
Foundation, the philanthropic organization headed by Doris Buffett, sister of investment sage Warren Buffett. The foundation gave a $10,000 grant to the students, who in turn were charged with distributing the money among worthy local charities. “Ms. Buffett’s involvement gave students not only a dose of realism, but also a real dose of excitement,” says Professor Bill Kehoe.
Working in groups of four or five, students spent the duration of the module visiting and researching charitable organizations, assessing their missions, figuring out how well they were organized, learning how they solicited support, determining who their constituents were, and devising ways to measure how well those constituents were served. Each student group then created a presentation in which they pitched their charity of choice to classmates, who voted on which organizations were worthy of receiving the Sunshine Lady grants.
Student Gurney praised the competitive nature of the grant-gifting process, saying that it “pushed our group to create a completely new and unique pitch.” His group’s charity of choice, the I Have a Dream Foundation, earned the approval of his peers, and his group earned the pleasure of giving the foundation a $1,250 donation. “Seeing that we actually contributed to making a difference in these children’s lives was my favorite part of
the Sunshine Lady project—and the module as a whole,” he says.
Doris Buffett, along with three other philanthropists, also participated in
a McIntire panel on charitable giving, and her foundation provided generous financial support for the teaching and research efforts associated with the nonprofits module. The Sunshine Lady Foundation will likely continue to fund the charitable grant program next year.
An ICEy Forecast
If all goes according to plan, more people will soon have the chance to use what they’re learning to make a difference in people’s lives. “We have a proposal in place to expand our treatment of nonprofits to involve the rest of the University,” says Zeithaml. “We’d love to be able to offer some basic nonprofit management and leadership courses that would be open to students who’ll go on to work in such nonprofit arenas as museums, libraries, and education administration. We’d also love to be able to offer executive education courses to people involved in leading and managing nonprofit organizations.”
In the meantime, McIntire’s nonprofits coursework will continue to inform, enlighten, and inspire its own students. “We are incorporating a sense of the impulse to contribute,” Pentz-Harris says. “When you get that corporate job, that impulse doesn’t need to go away. You can still contribute.” Gurney is already planning on it. “I hope to serve on the board of a nonprofit in the future,” he says, “and apply the lessons learned in this module to improve the efficiency of the organization.”
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