InKind Consulting Team Presentations: Making an Impact in Chicago’s Communities

Thank you to Catherine Jefcoat, MBA/MPH 2014 Candidate and In-Kind Organizer, for contributing this post.

This past February, two teams of UIC’s Liautaud Graduate School of Business students presented their findings and recommendations to two area non-profit organizations. The presentations were a culmination of a semester’s worth of extra-curricular consulting the students did as part of the student-led InKIND non-profit consulting pilot sponsored by the MBA Association  and UIC Net Impact student organizations.

One team presented to Community Media Workshop on the possible different business models that could be used to create a social venture media source. This presentation included a brief layout of how the current journalism business models are changing based on how we currently seek information, what types of success we can see from other journalism social ventures around the country, and a break-even analysis for a future media social venture that can be augmented to reflect changing funding streams and fixed and variable costs.

The other team presented to The Night Ministry. They sought to solve the problem of remote and mobile access to Night Ministry’s servers and applications.  This presentation included an overview of what the current problems with the system are and how the proposed solution would solve those problems and allow the Night Ministry to continue to scale up as its users, servers, and applications increase.

Both teams appreciated the opportunity to make a difference with a local non-profit, answering vital questions and providing innovative solutions that allow the non-profits to make smarter decisions that better serve all of Chicago.

For a blog post on the InKIND Bootcamp Training that occurred in last fall, click here.