campusCATALYST comes to QCDC

Nonprofits are notoriously short on resources. Universities are long on idealistic students.

Ms. Kindle

Seems a good match — and indeed, college students are volunteering for community service in growing numbers.

But it took the ingenuity and initiative of two recent Northwestern University graduates, Molly Day and Kunal Modi, to go beyond volunteerism and create a program without a model on any American campus.

Both had volunteered extensively and were “increasingly frustrated with the staffing, funding and resource shortages at nonprofits,” says Day, who majored in social policy, international studies and Spanish and earned her degree last year. “Regardless of our best intentions or dedication, we were always putting out fires instead of attacking our long-term missions.”

“We felt that campus-led volunteer activities offer a great learning experience but that innovative student minds could be used in a more powerful way to drive social change,” adds Modi, a 2006 graduate in economics and political science. “So, the challenge was to create campus-driven pro-bono projects that capitalize on the strengths of students as energetic, collaborative, tech-savvy, resourceful researchers and thinkers.”

The program Day and Modi founded in 2007, campusCATALYST, matches community nonprofits with five-member teams of undergraduate “community analysts” supervised by a Kellogg School of Management MBA student and a professor. The teams act as pro-bono business consultants for a 10-week academic quarter to help the nonprofits develop partners in the community, strengthen infrastructure and improve marketing, communications and development. Team members receive academic credit.

This year, campusCATALYST expanded to the University of Chicago and QCDC was one of three organizations identified by the inaugural teams. QCDC’s team members include Tom Blaser, Elizabeth Stolarczuh, Hui Ying Char, and Brittani Baxter.

They will be supervised by two University of Chicago School of Business (GSB) students, Matt Kudla and Tashfeen Ahmed.

The QCDC team will spend the next ten weeks developing a “Needs Assessment” survey and meeting with eight small business owners to identify the strengths and challenges of each operation.

Students will submit recommendations and QCDC will identify sources to provide specific technical assistance to each business.

The students had the opportunity to meet seven of the eight business owners and were thrilled by the warm reception and enthusiasm of the owners. “The atmosphere of the businesses is great and the owners have such passion”, said Tom Blaser, a third year student from Iowa.

Please join me in welcoming our campusCATALYST team!