Last week, Students Consulting for Non-profit Organizations hosted a university-wide case competition that more than 50 students participated in.

The competition was sponsored by six prominent business firms, such as Citi Hedge Fund Services and Career Max.

Each quarter, SCNO members are divided into teams of four to five students and partnered with a local non-profit organization to assist the company with any problems they might have, free of charge.

These services range from accounting, finance and marketing consulting to helping them implement new business models and plans, said Ryan Daulton, president of SCNO and a second-year in finance and accounting.

A week before the competition, the participants were divided into 10 teams and given a real-world problem for which they were to prepare a 15-minute presentation on how the problem should be solved. In this particular case, the problem they were given was how Under Armour should expand to be more competitive with Nike. The teams were competing for a $1,000 cash prize.

“They not only mimic complicated problems that we will soon face in the real world, but also teach you how to approach diverse problems with educated assumptions, all while working within a team environment and with limited time,” said Catalina Lizarralde, member of the winning team and fourth-year in operations and logistics management.

Case competitions give students opportunities to network with big businesses and improve their communication and public speaking skills, but not without hours of hard work prior to presentation day.

“Our four meetings lasted around two hours each, but we did a lot of individual research and preparation,” Lizarralde said. “I could estimate that on average we each allocated around 20 hours of work for this case.”

For the winning team, the work paid off.

“Heck yes it was rewarding,” said Adam Windnagel, a member of the winning team and a first-year in finance and German. “It was my first case competition, so I was nervous. I didn’t know what to expect, so I worked my butt off, and it paid off.”

Windnagel said he had no plans for his prize money but did treat himself to some Cane’s later that night.

SCNO is a recently-formed undergraduate student group that strives to better the business opportunities of its members while helping non-profit organizations improve their companies’ well-being.

The group was formed in spring 2009 and now has more than 45
undergraduate members from the Fisher College of Business.

SCNO recruits its members through a series of interviews at the beginning of Fall and Winter quarters. It is looking to expand the range of majors within the organization to majors such as computer science and engineering so it can help non-profits with a wider range of problems, said Shane Ross, a project manager for SCNO and first-year in accounting.

For example, when the Children’s Hunger Alliance was cut out of the Ohio budget, SCNO studied its finances and advised them on how to make its annual fundraisers more profitable to make up for the lost money.

“It’s good for the students because we get experience working with an actual company with a real-world problem and actually working with a real executive board, and it’s good for non-profits because they get the service they would regularly have to pay for, but we do it for free,” Ross said.

The goal of SCNO is to ultimately give back to the Columbus community in a way that utilizes the students’ knowledge and expertise.

“Instead of going to a soup kitchen and monotonously serving food to people, you’re actually using your skill set to benefit non-profits,” Ross said. “We’re helping the non-profits to help people.”

For more information on SCNO, visit scnoosu.org or contact Nicole Kuhlman at [email protected].