Chapters have the opportunity each month to compete to win a $50 prize for their Chapter that they may use for start-up capital, project finance, or something fun or special for their Chapter.  The challenges feature Ventures, Projects, Awareness, Marketing and more!

For March, chapters were invited to submit a short blog post on a venture implemented by their Chapter that improved significantly over the course of the 11-12 school year. Chapters included information on any changes in profitability, alterations to planning and implementing the Venture, and how they think their Venture improved.

The winner for the April Chapter Challenge was The University of Georgia! They submitted the following:

Over the course of this the 2011-2012 academic year, UGA’s Sidewalk Symphonies venture has developed significantly. Sidewalk was created when a Nourish member linked their involvement to the school radio program, WOUG, with their participation in Nourish. Every Thursday night two local bands are lined up to play at a local restaurant in Athens, giving the artists exposure, more costumers to the restaurants, and more funding for our project from a percentage of sales. This semester we have made monumental strides in developing this venture. We now have a marketing chair who designs our posters weekly, a poster coordinator who organizes the man power to flyer around campus, a social media chair who advertises on Facebook and updates our calendar with weekly band and location information, and a person who informs the audience about Nourish and our project mid-way through the performance.  Our success has even inspired the University of South Florida to start a Sidewalk Symphony of their own. Our newest plans involve hosting Live Remote through WOUG at the restaurants. This means that the WUOG will have live broadcasts on the radio and the online in real time to reach an even greater, more diverse population on and off campus. We anticipate our promising future with this venture!

The Wake Forest Chapter recently ran a new and exciting venture that was dreamed up at the 2011 Summer Institute.  The Wake Forest and Vanderbilt Chapters won the Venture Competition with their idea for refurbishing coolers used by fraternities on their “Beach Weekends” and selling them on campus. The fraternity members invite girls to accompany them to “Beach Weekend” and, following tradition, the girls paint coolers for the boys.

Wake Forest collected used coolers donated by the fraternity members, refurbished them, and sold them to girls who were invited to this spring’s weekend. The chapter sold 23 coolers at an average price of $30. In total, they believe that they will profit approximately $600.

The money raised will be used to support their project in Nicaragua this summer. They will be partnering with the Penn chapter to work with a local organization, Atraves. The students from Penn and Wake Forest will be working on a project to furnish a computer lab and teach children about health and nutrition with Atraves.

The Wake Forest Chapter Leader, Ellie Meyer, had this to say on the Cooler venture:

It was a great achievement for our chapter to successfully accomplish this venture! It’s been a long process, starting with brainstorming the specific idea at last year’s Summer Institute, and leading up to delivering the completed coolers in the last two weeks. This venture was relevant to the culture of Wake Forest, and it spread our name and mission throughout campus. We are so excited because we are still such a new chapter that this venture will definitely help us grow, in terms of membership and also success, in the future.

The University of Florida Chapter recently launched a new and exciting venture in which they partnered with another club on campus to raise money for their summer project in Guatemala.  The UF Chapter partnered with the HOT Clay Club on campus, which facilitates a pottery sale for their artists once a semester. The HOT Clay Club donated all of the proceeds from their pottery sale to the UF Nourish Chapter.

The venture also worked to raise awareness about UF’s summer project.  UF and NC State will be working with is Casa de Alfarero, which translates to ‘the Potters House’. Students from UF will be helping the women artisans at Casa de Alfarero develop their jewelry making business. As part of the HOT Clay Club pottery sale, the UF Nourish chapter made pieces of jewelry to go in each pot to tell people more about their summer project.

“We’re hoping to continue this relationship with the HOT Clay club, and maybe be able to participate in their sales more often. This venture was easy and fun!” said Co-Chapter Leader Katie Connor.

One of the core skills of an entrepreneur is drawing from his or her unique surroundings to create a marketable opportunity.  Some of our chapters have taken full advantage of this concept by participating in school traditions and using them as a platform to execute ventures and spread awareness about Nourish.

Krispy Kreme Tailgate
Taking advantage not only of the tailgating tradition at Wake Forest, but also the appetite for the delicious glazed doughnuts, the Wake Forest Chapter sold Krispy Kreme Doughnuts to tailgaters before football games this semester. This venture further tapped into the local culture as Wake Forest is located in Winston-Salem, the birthplace of Krispy Kreme.

Naked for Nourish
In it’s first year, the Rice University Nourish chapter tapped into an old school tradition in which students cover their naked bodies with shaving cream and run around campus.  This new Nourish Chapter harnessed this eccentric and amusing tradition into their first fundraiser.  The Chapter created a donation competition within the colleges of Rice in which the colleges nominated people to do the naked run and competed to raise the most money.

The Last Dinner
The University of Texas and Texas A&M have a legendary rivalry for which the University of Texas hosts annual pep rallies before games.  On the day of their last conference football game against Texas A&M this semester, the University of Texas Chapter sold food at a booth at the pep rally. In addition, the Chapter amusingly dressed someone up as an Aggie, and pep rally attendees paid money to throw pies at the “Texas A&M Aggie”.

Nourish thrives on expressions of entrepreneurial spirit such as these. We encourage all of our chapters to take advantage of the local cultures of their universities and integrate Nourish’s work into their timeless college traditions.

Chapters have the opportunity each month to compete to win a $50 prize for their Chapter that they may use for venture start-up capital, project finance, or something fun or special for their Chapter.  The challenges feature Ventures, Projects, awareness, marketing and more!

For October’s Chapter Challenge, students were invited to submit a short paragraph on how they brought awareness about Nourish’s work to a venture they have run during the 2011-2012 school year.

October’s Chapter Challenge Winner was Cornell University!

At Cornell University, Nourish International brought awareness to the Pancakes for Poverty venture: a late-night specialty pancake and hot chocolate sale. To spread awareness, we offered poverty trivia for candy. We had an extensive list of poverty trivia questions and while a customer’s pancake cooked, we asked him or her a multiple-choice question. We offered four answers for the customer to choose from. If the customer answered correctly, he or she received a goody bag. The questions ranged from guessing the percentage of people worldwide who lack electricity to estimating the number of children who die per year from complications of malnourishment. The trivia allowed the customers both to reflect on world poverty and relate our venture to our cause. The trivia also kept customers occupied while we cooked their pancakes, contributing to higher customer satisfaction. In addition to poverty trivia, we brought awareness to the venture by putting up a large Nourish poster board, displaying a Nourish banner, and handing out brochures explaining Nourish’s mission.

October’s Chapter Challenge Runner-Up was The University of Texas!

This was our third time doing casino night and I’d always felt the event would go really well, but people were leaving not having thought much about poverty or where their money was going.  In the past we had an awareness table set up and did powerpoint presentations about our projects, but people would usually ignore them.   This time, I wanted to make it more interactive and personal.  When everyone (even nourish members) walked in the door, they received a little dot sticker either a red or a green one.  About half-way through the night, I asked everyone with a red sticker on their hand to stand up- about  40% of the room.  I told them to look around at what represented the 40% of the world that lives on less than $2 a day and then explained purchasing power parity and gave some examples of common costs like a cup of coffee or how much UT tuition is per day ($64). I ended thanking them via the communities we have worked with.  Also, throughout the night, the dealers had 10 poverty trivia questions that they could ask and let the players bet on the answer- this worked really well at getting them to interact and discuss poverty.