MBA Student Association launches Philanthropy Initiative

In the past year, the MBA Student Association (MBA SA) at the NC State Poole College of Management offered a diversity of events and community service options for students in college's Jenkins MBA program, said Erin Burns, second year MBA candidate and incoming MBA SA president.

“We participated in events led by the Young Professionals Network in the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce and University Graduate Student Association (UGSA). We even won the UGSA trivia cup,” Burns said.

Social events – including an End of the Semester Party, a Hurricanes Hockey Night and a kickball game with the Jenkins Master of Accounting students – supported informal networking among the students and provided valuable downtime.

Creating a Service Corps

“We also did a lot of hard work, putting plans in place for the coming year,” Burns said. In addition to a packed fall semester that aims to engage new students in all the MBA cohorts, the organization established a new Philanthropy Initiative and selected its first project – creating the MBA Service Corps.

Leah Haile, a second year MBA student in the marketing concentration, is the Philanthropy Initiative’s chairperson.

“I’ve been an active volunteer since high school,” she said. “As a Park Scholar at NC State, I further developed my passion for service. When I was appointed to this position, I began creating a platform for our MBA students to get involved in community service in the Raleigh area, to reinforce the importance of giving back. The Service Corps is designed as a way for our students to identify non-profits in the community that support causes they are passionate about.

A survey of the MBA students conducted in January identified four service themes: Animal Welfare, Youth, Homes and Homelessness, and Hunger, Haile said. Each of these themes has a service leader who will be encouraging student participation and tracking volunteer hours throughout the semester.

“We will be holding Service Saturdays every month to highlight one of our service themes,” Haile said. These organized days of service at a particular non-profit will be open to all students in the MBA program, she said, with a little friendly competition between the four themes going on throughout the year. “We then will showcase the work done by our students at a Service Corps celebration at the end of the semester,” Haile said.