4th year student-consultants work with your organization to address an important strategic issue, opportunity or problem. Students meet (virtually) with the client company to gain an understanding of the organization and its external environment. Based on these meetings, the students present a written Client Proposal describing what they plan to do, why they plan to do it, when they will do it and what it will cost (out-of-pocket expenses). Client proposals will be presented in the autumn, and the work will be primarily undertaken in January-March 2021.

The benefits are twofold. Students learn by being exposed to a real business/organizational experience. Client organizations benefit by having access to in-depth, supervised consulting expertise. Feedback from past clients indicates that they most appreciate the in-depth analysis and objective assessment of their operations and the new insights and perspectives introduced by the students. It’s truly a win-win situation.

While there is variation based on the project, final deliverables typically include:

• A business-style report summarizing the assessment and presenting strategy and action recommendations backed up by specific research appendices with summaries of the purpose, the methodology, and the major findings of the research.
• A presentation summarizing the research findings and arguing the value of the recommended strategy and action plans.

Previous project deliverable examples included:

1. Brick and mortar retail marketplace: market research.
2. Arts-based nonprofit: requirements analysis for dashboard reporting.
3. Professional sports organization: market research.