SOM’s Meet the Clients Night Forges Partnerships with New Haven Organizations
PSEII brought together over 80 students and representatives from local organizations at its annual Meet the Clients event on October 29.
Yale’s Program on Social Enterprise, Innovation, and Impact (PSEII) brought together over 80 students and representatives from local organizations at its annual Meet the Clients event on October 29. Leaders representing 14 nonprofits and social enterprises from around New Haven and Connecticut shared their organizations’ priorities and challenges with Yale students from the Schools of Management, Public Health, and Medicine.
The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven’s Jackie Downing shared: “Being part of the Meet the Clients Night was an enlightening experience. It allowed me to truly refine my project and laser focus on four minutes to tell my story. It also provided an opportunity for me, as a Community Foundation representative, to learn so much more about the organizations we serve and the projects they were highlighting. When nonprofits are allowed to dream, they dream big.”
This event deepens an important and longstanding partnership between the New Haven community and SOM. For more than ten years, teams of students have worked with local nonprofits and social enterprises to tackle challenges as part of the Social Impact Consulting Club (SICC). Each year, students with a passion for social impact and inclusive economic development join SICC and participate in a series of trainings on social impact strategy with the end goal of completing a project deliverable for their partners. Previous engagements have included data analysis on programs, financial models of proposed projects, and recommendations for technology solutions to increase efficiency.
As leaders from organizations such as the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, Capital for Change, Read to Grow, and the Black Business Alliance shared their priorities, it became clear that many organizations shared common challenges around identifying opportunities for growth, building donor and revenue pipelines, and measuring their impact on communities. By engaging in this work as a network, students and local organizations will not only learn from one another through their direct engagements but also access a larger cohort from which to draw and share learnings.
“This initiative represents just one of many ways the Program on Social Enterprise, Innovation, and Impact hopes to engage students in real, on-the-ground problem-solving, putting into action the skills and toolkits they learn in the classroom,” noted PSEII Associate Director Sooah Rho. “Students and the nonprofit and social enterprise leaders are brought together with the shared goal of supporting the growth and development of both the organizations and the students.”
In pursuit of this goal, the Program on Social Enterprise, Innovation, and Impact has increased its engagement with local organizations and is dedicating additional support through more trainings, tools, and mentorship structures. In particular, SOM lecturer Paige MacLean is working with SICC as a faculty advisor, serving the twin goals of enhancing student learning and helping students improve their service to area organizations.
"I enjoyed attending Meet the Clients Night where all the enterprises presented their problems that we would be working on. In addition to giving me an idea of what's most interesting to me, I loved getting to know all the social enterprises in New Haven and the opportunity to interact with all the leaders. It was lovely to see how all the firms knew and worked with each other— it highlighted the nature of community and co-existence in New Haven!" shared SOM first-year student Ramya Srinivasan.
As SICC teams gear up for this next season of projects, they will start by digging into data, refining and investigating root causes of issues, and ideating on possible approaches for improvement. This work will culminate in a final gathering in the spring, where teams will present their learnings to both their peers and the client social impact organizations and then assist their partners in planning to embark on next steps.
