How to Start a College Entrepreneurship Club
Entrepreneurship clubs help students turn their ideas and passions into businesses and develop future business leaders.
By Lilah Raptopoulos | Jul 20, 2010
Ryan Allis and Aaron Houghton met at an entrepreneurship club while attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Within three days of meeting, the two had the idea for their company iContact that helps small businesses manage their e-mail marketing. iContact now has 63,000 customers and generated $26.5 million in revenue last year. With the creation of entrepreneurship clubs, colleges and universities across the country are becoming small business development incubators.
According to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, over 2100 colleges and universities were offering entrepreneurship education programs by 2006. These programs and centers vary in their execution, but often help students cultivate a startup business idea, teach them basic strategies like estimating costs and writing a business plan, and help them network their ideas toward sources of funding.
"There's been an explosion of interest in entrepreneurship," said Gerald Hills, the Turner Chair of Entrepreneurship at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. He attributes this interest to its cross-disciplinary nature, which is relevant to members of an increasingly global generation. "Today, a cutting edge entrepreneurship program has to go beyond the Business College," he says. "Successful entrepreneurs are not only out of business school; they're students of biology, education, and English. All students should have the opportunity to decide if entrepreneurship is something they might want to have in their future."
Today's college students are part of a critical generation that will further our economic recovery. The foundational role of startups in our economy makes an entrepreneurship club an asset to any college campus, large or small, state or private, over- or under-endowed. Small businesses have generated 64 percent of new jobs according to a survey by the Kauffman Foundation. As Hills explains, "Entrepreneurship is inherently intuitive; as human beings, we're always engaging in selling. It doesn't require substantial resources as much as it requires is one or more passionate leaders."
This guide will teach you how to start your own entrepreneurship club, because remember: if you can't find a job, you can always make one.
Starting a College Entrepreneurship Club: Selecting a Program Structure
From student-run to curriculum based, from business-minded to creatively focused, every college entrepreneurship venture takes a distinctive approach. Some colleges have fully formed centers, some have certificate programs, and some are simply actively meeting clubs. The one thing they have in common? They all reflect the tone of their colleges.
Creativity & Leadership, the entrepreneurship project at Oberlin College, purposely defines itself on its website as a "multi-disciplinary initiative," instead of an Entrepreneurship center or club. Oberlin is both a liberal arts college and a music conservatory, well known for combining creativity with structure.
"We deliberately didn't create an identifiable center because we thought it would best fit the culture as an endeavor infused into the campus," says Andrea Kalyn, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for the Conservatory. "We want it to be a tool through which you can apply your education, that serves as the core of your academic work." C&L primarily distributes a series of application-based monetary grants, called creativity funds, but also offers supporting curriculum courses and symposia.
"We tapped into something utterly Oberlinian," Kalyn says, explaining that this applies to any college. "Tapping into a culture of a place and playing to its strengths is essential. Why would you want to create a program that is counter to the ethos of your school?"
Johns Hopkins University is the home to Hopkins Student Enterprises, a student-run organization that helps their fellow students' business ventures off the ground. Hopkins undergraduates developed the group in 2008 as an expansion of their profitable first business, Hopkins Student Storage, which collects and stores student items over the summer. They have since launched three more student-run businesses - a graphic design company, a consulting agency, and a care package delivery service – that serve the students and the Baltimore community.
Luke Kelly-Clyne, the president of Hopkins Student Enterprises, suggests that no matter what method you choose, your program must be backed up by active initiatives. "You just want to be able to put your skills into practice," he says. "The point of this service is not to learn how to network and find a job; that's what the career center is for. It's also not just to talk for hours about finance or business. The point of this service is experiential learning."
Kelly-Cline explains that choosing also involves research. "Reach out to the schools that have done this and ask them for their operating materials," he says. Once you have all of this in place, you can write your mission statement.
Dig Deeper: Entrepreneurship Education for All
Starting a College Entrepreneurship Club: Gauge Interest and Generate SupportAny successful on-campus initiative needs support from the inside out. Internally, find a network of faculty with entrepreneurial experience that can be your advisers. You don't need to have a business department to find this faculty support, says Kelly-Cline. Look closely in your course catalog for courses in economics, finance, and accounting, and keep an ear out for professors that have come from other career paths. "Email all of the professors that teach in those areas, send them a prospectus of what you want to do, and then see if you can try to recruit advisors," he says. Bringing the faculty and administration into the equation is important, because "the faculty can act as liaisons." Additionally, these courses and professors can provide a foundation for eventually implementing entrepreneurship into your curriculum.
"The thing about faculty is that they're extremely busy," says Kalyn. "But they'll do anything that supports the work of their students. If students can really take control and facilitate a program like this, and hold it to a high academic standard, you get momentum. That leads to consistent support."
7/20/2010
How to Start a College Entrepreneurship Club
via inc.com
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