MBA students in the Park fellows program at Johnson School support community projects

By Linda Myers

Picture these successful projects: A miniature golf course in which young golfers get to whack balls through an oversize DNA double helix; volunteers who devote time and cash to help needy local families renovate their homes; a plan that attracts larger audiences to performances at a historic local nonprofit theater.

Those are some of the projects for nonprofits and small businesses in the Ithaca area initiated or helped over the past two years by MBA students in the Roy H. Park Leadership Fellows Program at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management.

The Ithaca-based Triad Foundation underwrites the Park fellows program at the Johnson School, which covers tuition and fees for 60 exemplary MBA students a year who demonstrate a commitment to service through projects such as those described above. A $5.9 million gift from the foundation helped inaugurate the program in 1997.

"The Park projects serve as a capstone to two years of leadership training at the Johnson School," said Clint Sidle, who manages the Park program. "They offer the students an opportunity to integrate the lessons learned, gain an enduring sense of the importance of helping others and leave behind something of lasting value in the community." The work entailed must be equivalent to taking a three-credit graduate-level course at the school, he said.

A group of graduating MBA Park fellows at the Johnson School shared the results of their projects at a May 4 presentation styled like a science fair in Sage Hall's Dyson Atrium on campus. Here are summaries of the projects under way or completed this year, with the agencies and project sponsors and the business student teams who undertook them:

Alternatives Federal Credit Union (AFCU): Internet Incubator
Sponsors: Bill Myers, Deirdre Silverman, Patrick Woods
Team: Sven Grasshoff, Michael Perlman
The student team assisted AFCU, a nonprofit community development financial institution, in exploring an Internet incubator space for locally based entrepreneurial businesses. They analyzed the various Web options, including creating an "Alternative Web Mall" versus using the most attractive existing options, Yahoo Stores and eBay, and made recommendations.

Challenge Industries: Strategic Real Property Options
Sponsor: Patrick McKee, executive director
Team: David Maier
Maier evaluated the real estate needs of Challenge Industries, a local vocational services institution helping people with disabilities gain employment. He assessed the usage and location options of Challenge's current property, a large building in downtown Ithaca, and weighed various long-term options, including selling and building or renting elsewhere.

Challenge Industries: Strategic Marketing Assessment
Sponsor: Patrick McKee, executive director
Team: Brett Blumenthal, Caroline Co, Kara Kownacki, Yael Weilgus
The student team conducted a comprehensive survey of current and potential community users of Challenge Industries' services that assessed community outsourcing needs, measured the perceptions of customers, and evaluated strengths and weaknesses of current services. They made recommendations for improvement.

Historic Ithaca: State Theatre Business Plan
Sponsors: State Theatre Board; George Holets, general manager, State Theatre; and Scott Whitham, executive director, Historic Ithaca
Team: Renee Clark, Jason Jones, Justin Stone, Jon Vervoort
Team members conducted two large-scale audience surveys across 10 different events for the State Theatre, a historic regional nonprofit theater. They developed an audience profile and marketing strategies for each customer segment; conducted interviews with comparative historic theaters and performing arts venues in the Northeast; analyzed the theater's financial plan; and recommended budget adjustments based on short- and long-term goals.

Home Regenerations: Non-Profit Launch
Sponsors: Home Regenerations
Team: Jessica Berg, Sven Grasshoff, Michael Perlman, Nathaniel Russell, Amy Stepanian, Jason Tauber
The student team launched Home Regenerations, a nonprofit agency that helps low-income households with children refurbish their homes using volunteer labor and community donations. The team raised $2,500 through a charity auction at the Johnson School and provided labor for home renovation of the group's first client. The concept will be carried forward next year by another team of Park fellows.

Ithaca Fine Chocolates: Business Launch
Sponsors: Erika Fowler-Decatur, founder and CEO
Team: Jessica Crolick, Michael Ford
Crolick and Ford helped launch Ithaca Fine Chocolates, a socially responsible, fair-trade-certified organic chocolate company based in Ithaca that makes and markets Art Bars. Each chocolate bar features a card with a reproduction of work by local artists or international children's art. The students developed a business plan, including a financial accounting system and pricing model for the chocolate bars; helped source their manufacture; created a distribution plan using multiple channel; and developed a relationship with Whole Foods as a key sales partner.

Ithaca Youth Bureau: Fund-raising Plan
Sponsors: Alan Green, executive director
Team: Renee Brown, Scott Christensen, Mark O'Hara, Elizabeth Schrader
The student team helped the Ithaca Youth Bureau, a publicly supported local organization serving youth and families, develop a marketing plan and brand identity, to raise awareness about the organization and attract more private support. They conducted a survey, developed an action plans for fund-raising events and created "Friends of the Ithaca Youth Bureau," a private foundation.

Longview: Expansion Plan
Sponsors: Mark Macera, executive director
Team: John Lundquist, John Murphy
Lundquist and Murphy helped develop expansion plans for Ithacare's Longview, a community-operated assisted-living facility for seniors, that include more skilled nursing care options. The project focused on examining the Ithaca senior care housing market, quantifying the local nursing care demand and supply and calculating the overall financial feasibility of the proposed plan.

Roy H. Park Leadership Fellows Program: Program Documentary
Sponsors: Clint Sidle, Park Fellows Program director, Johnson School
Team: Katherine Butler, Natalie Heidelberg, Chris Vansant
The student team developed a professional, 60-minute documentary on the Roy H. Park Leadership Fellows Program featuring the service leadership projects. The purpose: to generate awareness of the program, which is unique among elite business schools, make potential applicants and the Cornell and local communities aware of it, and show the transforming impact of service projects on the lives of the Park fellows.

Sciencenter: Mini-Golf
Sponsors: Charles Trautmann, executive director
Team: Aaron Todd, Charles Hamilton, Melissa Kollitides
Team members worked with the Sciencenter, a local museum that inspires interest in science, to develop a business plan for a science-themed outdoor miniature golf course. Each hole is to be based on a scientific principle to entertain and educate the museum's patrons, which include area schoolchildren as well as adults. The plan, which will produce needed revenues for the nonprofit group, was completed in December 2003, and the first prototype golf holes are being constructed this spring.

Village at Ithaca: Strategic Reorganization
Sponsors: Cal Walker, founder
Team: Samuel Buchanan II
Buchanan strategically reorganized the Village at Ithaca, a volunteer organization that works to ensure African-American and Latino students in Ithaca schools consistently meet or exceed local and state standards of academic achievement. He helped distribute the agency's work more evenly, formalized and better documented its activities and developed it into an organization eligible for grant funding.

For information on the projects, visit this Web site: http://www.Johnson.Cornell.edu/Park.