Written by: Family Business and Entrepreneurship Club
The Family Business and Entrepreneurship Club is kicking off their second annual semester-long competition.
We are excited to welcome the new members, and to anyone interested, our first meeting will be Thursday, Sept. 12, at 8:30 p.m.
The purpose of the club is to function as a social and educational extension of the members’ academic studies. Its activities are designed to nurture an entrepreneurial mindset across campus through student opportunities and experiential learning. It will stimulate interest, scholarly attainment and career development. We use this competition so people can get an idea of what it takes to be an entrepreneur.
The project is to design a fundraising idea that can be any product or service and to create the business plan for their idea. The groups can be composed of one to three people. The project is separated into three parts. The first part is creating the group and coming up with the idea.
The second is creating a pitch for the idea that will be presented in front of the club, and the officers will give feedback on the idea and give advice for anything that needs to be done. The last part will be the shark tank meeting where each group presents in front of the club, the officers and a panel of professors. At the last meeting the groups need to include a breakeven analysis, contact information for where we will buy their product from, how it fits into Elizabethtown College’s regulations and restrictions, market trends and why they think their idea is the best.
After all the groups have presented, the professors and officers decide on the winner of the competition and the prize money is awarded.
This year, we are able to increase the prize money to $500. We believe the competition will be intense this year with a lot of new members joining the club. We hope that all members are able to use this as a learning experience to enhance what they have learned in the classroom.
Last year, the winning team had three members: juniors AJ Calabrese, Kealey Shyk and Danielle Hudicka. They came up with the idea of a fanny pack for our fundraiser. We were able to sell the fanny packs on campus for T.G.I.S. weekend and were able to make a profit from our sales. The club worked closely with the three members to come up with creative marketing ideas to get the word out about the fanny packs around campus. We plan to sell the fanny packs again this year for homecoming and use the winner of this year’s competition for T.G.I.S. next semester as our fundraising idea. We cannot wait to see what these young entrepreneurs have in store for this event!
