Published: March 08, 2009 04:28 am      

An ‘eye opener’

Corporate Citizenship Project a success

FAIRMONT — The Corporate Citizenship Project at West Virginia University is “eye-opening” for students.

The Corporate Citizenship Project is the biggest component of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), or Community-Based Learning, course in the WVU College of Business and Economics. Management professor Gerald Blakely started the program at WVU, and the College of B&E and its alumni have funded the project, now in its eighth year.

This upper level management elective is offered every year during the spring semester and is limited to 20 students. Thirteen individuals, all graduating seniors in either marketing or management, are currently enrolled in the course. Dr. Joyce Heames, assistant professor of management and human resources, is teaching the class for the second year.

“I intend to hang onto it,” she said of the program. “I love it.”

“Corporate social responsibility is something we need to be teaching our students.”

For this project, students organize themselves much like a philanthropic organization would and award $20,000 to nonprofits in the greater Morgantown community. The class participants create a specific set of questions and interview nonprofits about how they obtain, use and allocate funds. They also ask companies what guiding principals they use to give away money.

“Having participated in that questioning, they get a sense of what nonprofits need and what organizations give,” Heames said.

As part of the program, the young adults go to Cleveland, Ohio, for a CSR seminar organized by Robert Reitman. Reitman, a 1955 graduate of the College of B&E who contributed funds to develop the project, brings in philanthropists to speak and the students have the opportunity to ask questions. The group also visits the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Ideastream, both nonprofit organizations in Cleveland.

“It’s really a well designed overview of the entire process,” Heames said.

She said the students use the information gathered during the trip and from their class work to manage the community-based project. The class members have already designed and sent out the request for proposal (RFP). When the proposals come in from nonprofit organizations, the students have to decide which companies get a portion of the $20,000.

In 2008, students received 34 proposal packets and requests for more than $200,000. The class gave its largest gift, which was around $7,500, to Paws for People, and its smallest gift — $300 — went to Milan Puskar Health Right Clinic, Heames said.

“It’s getting remembered in the nonprofit community, and I think that is good,” she said.

The mission statement of the project is to give gifts that have a long-lasting impact and help a diverse group of people, and the students use that premise to guide their decisions.

“We want to be able to fund projects that meet the criteria of our organization,” Heames said.

She anticipates that the students will receive even more requests this year.

Grant applications are due by March 20, and any nonprofit may apply. The guidelines are listed at www.be.wvu.edu. Grants will be awarded to the selected organizations during a press conference at the end of April.

Heames said the class provides students with an introduction to the nonprofit sector, and it’s the only course that spends time on that part of the market spectrum. A wide variety of agencies and entities are classified as nonprofits, including animal shelters, homeless shelters, educational efforts, fine arts, museums and more. These entities work to give back to their communities and do some good, she said.

“They will tell you it can be life-changing for them,” Heames said of the students.“Their eyes are opened to the nonprofit. Many of them have never done community service before, so they learn the need to give back, whether it be personal time or monetary. They get a sense of the vastness of the need out there.”

Because of the class, some students have even changed their career paths to work in nonprofits, Heames said. She said she believes this is a phenomenal course, and she’s delighted to be associated with it.

“It’s unique,” Heames said. “It gives them experience in an area of business that they don’t typically get. Personally, it develops them as a human being.”

E-mail Jessica Legge at jlegge@timeswv.com.