Marketing, communications students help nonprofits
By Amy Geiszler-Jones
 As part of a class project, marketing students, from left to right, Molly O'Donnell, Bryan Pumphrey, Brendon Lipton and Jason Roberts present an advertising and promotion plan for the Kansas School for Effective Learning, a local nonprofit agency. |
"Look what they've done," said Carolyn Bunch, director of the Kansas School for Effective Learning. "It's so professional."
She was thumbing through an advertising and promotions campaign that marketing students at WSU had prepared for her nonprofit agency, pointing out the news release and invitation for an open house event and the brochures the students had designed and written about KANSEL's computer skills and English courses.
"For a small organization like ours that currently doesn't have someone to do this, this is an incredibly valuable service," she said.
In January, a KANSEL board member approached Kim Sovell, adjunct instructor of marketing, and Philip Gaunt, a communications professor, about having WSU students prepare some campaigns to raise public awareness and develop ads and promotional activities for their group.
Although KANSEL has been around for 11 years, Bunch said, it needs to do more to publicize itself and its classes on computer skills and English as a second language.
During the first week of May, Bunch, her staff and board members listened to four different presentations made by Sovell's students and another in Gaunt's campaigns class. "It's like getting presentations done by five different marketing agencies," said Bunch.
Indeed, in the Elliott School of Communication class, which has been alternately taught by Gaunt and Cliff Bieberly, the students form what are call "student agencies" and are assigned a client, primarily nonprofits such as KANSEL, the Kansas Humane Society, the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, the Salvation Army and the county's health department.
The clients either come to the Elliott School looking for such help on their own, are repeat clients or Gaunt and Bieberly contact local professional ad agencies, asking if they have any pro bono clients needing work on such projects.
The clients' objectives vary. For example, the American Heart Association wanted to hold a luncheon to raise the level of awareness of the incidence of heart disease and stroke in women ages 25-50.
The Kansas Humane Society wanted students to design, carry out and analyze a survey of its customers. A few years ago, it had used an Elliott School class for a similar survey.
"It helps us to know that we're on the right track," said executive director Sheri Canfield. "It's so much better than guessing, and we have used some of the suggestions from the survey in the past."
While the organizations usually get a much-needed service by working with the students, the projects are just as beneficial to the students. They get a taste of the successes and frustrations of working in teams and with clients.
"Understanding group dynamics is important," said Bieberly, an instructor.
Classes that involved real-life projects "were the ones I remembered at (Oklahoma University), and I felt I garnered the most from them," said Sovell about why she had her marketing students work on the KANSEL project.
This was the first time Sovell taught the ads and promotions marketing class; she said she definitely plans to again incorporate a project with a nonprofit for the summer and fall sessions of the class.
