Arts for Anyone, develops arts-infused initiatives that use the arts to educate and needed a marketing plan for their website and publication materials. From this experience, Laura Bennett MBA ’08 commented that, “I was able to actually help an arts organization and develop my marketing skills, which added to the educational benefit of my MBA and gave me something good to discuss in interviews for internships.” In addition, Tekisha Harvey MBA ‘08, added that getting client-face time was a great experience that I will take along with me in my future endeavors, whether they be consulting or not. It was also a great way to put our academic learning into practice. Learning to balance client needs with practical solutions was an invaluable takeaway.”

Byte Back is a community computer training center in Northeast Washington, DC. It provides low-cost, hands-on computer training to underserved, low-skilled, and underemployed residents of the metropolitan Washington, DC area. To grow its relationship with the surrounding technology community, Sharon Bollers MBA/MPP ’08 and Rukhe Aghomo MBA ’08 ran a stakeholders survey, from soup to nuts, to identify best practices for Byte Back for building the essential relationships that would help launch Byte Back’s students into the professional world.

Road of Life’s mission is to eradicate preventable cancers and other prevalent diseases by educating children about the dangers of tobacco use, the importance of regular physical activity, and good nutrition. Laura Gonzalez MBA ’08 and Don Wood MBA ’08 created a business plan for how Road of Life could sell its curriculum to create an income stream to benefit its non-profit activities. As Rob Emrich, Road of Life Founder, described, “Our whole business model is geared around openness and we needed someone to define parameters and create a long-term, sustainable method of funding ourselves.” Rob felt this experience was useful for non-profits because “having those type of discussions and critical analysis about your operations is always important. How we can do things better and differently, understanding the social and the economic value of our work — going through these discussions with the help of the MBA students was really, very valuable.”

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