BADM 4001: Business Leader Launch is an experiential learning course by Prof. Wendy Wagner, which provides opportunities for students to leverage their business skills with local nonprofit and public service organizations. Students use marketing and communication skills, data analysis, project management and other business skills to help community partners build capacity and impact.
Students complete projects designed by the staff of local community-serving organizations like the Foggy Bottom Association, the Foggy Bottom West End Village, Little Friends for Peace, Raising a Village Foundation, Centronia, Age-Friendly DC, and the GW Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Clinic.
Spring 2024
Professor: Wendy Wagner
Students Reporting: 23
Time Reported: 1,556 hours
Examples of student projects:
Age-Friendly DC: Students conducted research and collected surveys about exercise, community engagement, and lifestyle habits of different age groups in DC, supporting the goal of making DC a more accessible "blue zone" community for all ages.
C3 Community Concierge Care: Students assisted with communications projects, including organizational research, demographics research, outreach, and blog writing.
Foggy Bottom Association: A student managed social media and assisted with the membership system, attending community and board meetings to stay engaged with the organization's impact.
GW VITA Tax Clinic: Students volunteered to prepare tax returns for community members, providing free tax services after completing required training and certifications.
Jumpstart: A student assisted with various projects including creating video content to streamline the hiring and orientation of new students in this program.
Latino Student Fund: Students supported communication efforts, scholarship research, and program support for initiatives like the Te Guio college preparation program.
Little Friends for Peace: Students assisted with social media coordination, served directly in schools teaching the organization's peace-building curriculum, and working on the organization's annual report.
Raising A Village Foundation: A student worked on data management and evaluation, including data entry and conducting outreach calls.
Save a Child's Heart (SACH): A student worked on communications projects, including media analysis, content creation, and outreach strategies.
Student Comments
"My time at the Latino Student Fund was full of learning experiences as well as personal growth opportunities. I will take my skills learned at LSF and apply them at whatever career and personal endeavor I end up choosing. I developed my patience, compassion, and creativity skills, and took my marketing knowledge to a whole other level."
"The main thing I learned from this experience was taking initiative and asking how I could help with a particular task. My community organizer gave me options and a lot of freedom on how I wanted to contribute which was great because I was able to learn how to manage my own time and learn how to pace my tasks in a way that would allow me to be successful in my contributions."
"This experience has been very educative. I really liked being able to work with a client and I am glad to be able to be working for this particular organization."
Fall 2023
Professor: Wendy Wagner
Students Reporting: 8
Time Reported: 409.50
Examples of student projects:
Capitol Hill Village - Sahas Srinivasan conducted data analysis and reported findings to help the organization advocate for quicker attention from the city to broken sidewalks, which can lead to serious injury to older adults. The student's work is available here. This research succeeded in generating city-wide attention to this issue, and his work was featured in local newsletters as well as the GW Today.
Foggy Bottom West End Village - Student worked to improve the Village’s traditional communications and updated the organization’s social media platforms in order to increase public visibility of the organization and increase their membership.
Latino Student Fund - Student engaged in outreach to multiple organizations and local schools that LSF partners with in order to promote flyers and information from LSF. The student also learned how to effectively communicate details and goals of an event in a compelling way through their outreach.
Foggy Bottom Association: This student researched and targeted key stakeholders and potential new members for distribution of Foggy Bottom Association promotional content and information. He contributed to the organization’s social media accounts in an effort to boost membership within the organization. The student also communicated and engaged with multiple staff members in weekly meetings to generate ideas to increase membership.
Horton’s Kids: The student used Salesforce to help the organization manage their volunteer database and created a volunteer shift schedule to streamline volunteer organization. The student also tracked and updated volunteer attendance.
Little Friends for Peace: The student designed a social media content creation strategy, and produced posts for LFFP’s various social media platforms, in collaboration with staff at the organization to ensure that posts were creative and accurately represented the organization’s events.
Student Comments:
“I was able to experience LFFP's unique talent to connect with others and connect others with peace through the retreat at Archbishop Carroll High School and my continual to work to create creative posts for the LFFP social media page.”
"I had an amazing time with the kids and seeing them really open up and begin to respect one another. I also loved seeing how into the Dr. game they got, and seeing how it really changed their perspective on the whole event."
"I've had a wonderful time getting to know all the kids, staff, and other volunteers and I am incredibly privileged and excited to continue working with this organization in the Spring!"
Spring 2023
Professor: Wendy Wagner
Students Reporting: 23
Time Reported: 168
Examples of Student Projects
Rooted: Business skills mentoring for Young Female Leaders Program
Students assisted in facilitating the Young Female Leaders Business Skills program. This program is for girls ages 10-14 in the DC area, who are interested in creating, developing, and exploring entrepreneur and leadership skills.
During the semester, students worked to develop activities for youth sessions, created materials for sessions, and aided with capacity building and communications to inspire youth to learn basic business skills.
Centronia: Market Research and Nutrition Program Assessment
Students worked with GW nutrition researcher Dr. Karina Lora (School of Public Health) in an on-going action research project with community partner CentroNía. Dr. Lora operates a public education program on nutrition, combining lessons for children in the CentroNía pre-school programs with written materials shared weekly with their parents. The aim of this project is to gather information from parents about their needs related to providing healthy meals, as well as the efficacy of the weekly information shared with them through this program.
Students assisted by interviewing/surveying parents as they picked up their children from pre-school. Students then worked to compile the data from this information gathering to create a report for Dr. Lora to inform and improve her nutrition program.
Little Friends for Peace: Volunteer Coordination
Little Friends For Peace (LFFP) welcomes adults and youth to experience, learn and practice peace through our various peace education programs. We believe that all people can create homes, classrooms, teams and workplaces where everyone gives, everyone gains, and everyone wins.
The student handled communications with volunteers, recruitment of new volunteers, and help create more efficient and effective management of volunteer data, including scheduling of volunteer service and training/orientation. During the semester, the student worked to keep track of volunteering inquiries, kept volunteers updated on opportunities, and kept the volunteer sign up sheet updated as new programs started.
Student Quotes:
"Rooted OT (entrepreneurship mentoring program for girls) has impacted me greatly, I have learned so much in my time here. My final takeaway from our last session with one of the girls was that fear is okay, and it's important to feel confident in yourself. One of the girls was afraid of being told "No" and I realized that even today I myself still have this fear. If someone says no, it does not mean you failed, it just means you have the opportunity to grow and be better."
"This week was a great experience as I was able to see the community that C3 serves. It was interesting to see all the community organizations that are located in the Greenleaf residential area and how they provide to the community. I got to see the direct impact and the close-knit community that has been created."
"The impact on me was that I gained valuable skills in market research, data collection, analysis, and communication. I also learned about the importance of good nutrition and the role it plays in promoting health and well-being. Working with Dr. Lora and CentroNía gave me the opportunity to apply my skills in a real-world setting and to make a positive impact on the community."
Fall 2022
Professor: Wendy Wagner
Students Reporting: 18
Time Reported: 893
Examples of Student Projects
Age-Friendly DC
Age-Friendly DC is an agency in the Mayor's office that focuses on factors that contribute to Washington, DC being a great city to grow older in. For this project, several students focused on an "Age-Friendly Business" project, communicating to local businesses across the city the existing research on practices that help make businesses easier for an aging population to work with.
Horton's Kids
Horton's Kids provides tutoring and mentoring programs to children in Ward 8. One student assisted with Volunteer Management processes, including the development of a new Volunteer Handbook aimed at helping to bring volunteer on-boarding to scale. Another student conducted data analysis on the children's learning outcome indicators, helping the organization make the case for the effectiveness of their approach.
