GSM Students Share Expertise with Nonprofits
Alan Park (GSM’09) helped an organization that fights domestic violence and sexual assault improve its infrastructure
Graduate School of Management students may have not earned their M.B.A’s, but they have a lot of knowledge to share, which they did last month at the annual MBA Link Day. Students teamed up with small- to medium-size nonprofit organizations and provided free managerial advice that the groups could not have afforded otherwise. BU Today is highlighting a few of the more than 50 students who participated.
Alan Park (GSM’09) and three teammates worked with New Hope, Inc., an organization that aims to end domestic violence and sexual assault in Massachusetts.
New Hope, which runs a 24-hour crisis hotline, emergency shelters, support groups, and counseling services, lacked the necessary infrastructure to become a better-run organization, Park says.
“They were looking for a strategy for how to market themselves better to potential donors in an area of central Massachusetts where they had programs, but didn’t have funding coming in,” Park says. “It was a day of brainstorming and coming up with a strategy essentially for finding and building a donor base.”
Most of New Hope’s funding comes from the state and must go directly to programs, so the Link Day team worked to improve the group’s unrestricted funding, which can be used to purchase computers or hire new employees.
“The work they do is very admirable,” Park says. “Yet they don’t have the funds to even have enough infrastructure to be able to hire people.” He has kept in touch with the organization and plans to continuing sharing ideas with them and to write some of their marketing materials.
Rebecca McNamara can be reached at ramc@bu.edu.
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