The purpose of my fellowship was to help grassroots organizations across the world solve small business challenges they would not ordinarily be able to solve. Projects I worked on included working with grassroots organizations in Western Africa to create fundraising strategies, create deal flow boards of impact investors, advise on pitch decks, and advise on communications with current impact investors. Projects also included working with clients to develop sponsorship programs for children’s education needs, design education programs for children, and create educational materials on climate change and biodiversity conservation. I also worked with small businesses in Western Africa to develop crowdfunding models, create digital campaigns and attract partnerships for children’s initiatives. This fellowship was to complete social impact projects sourced by the United Nations. The project aligned very well with MENSA’s goals, as the organization has a passion for social impact, and the partnership with the United Nations was a perfect fit. The United Nations demonstrates multiple elements of social impact through its relationships with small businesses, volunteer efforts, and projects, and this project exemplified those qualities of their brand.

I definitely applied many of the skillsets I learned during my MBA. From working in venture capital, I learned the effective (and ineffective) tactics of raising money for an organization in need of cash flow, which helped me understand the needs of the organizations we were working with. From my entrepreneurship classes, I learned about the day-to-day operations of a small grassroots organizations, which helped me connect with my United Nations clients. From my Corporate Finance and Business Analytics classes, I was able to learn to gather large amounts of data and synthesize information into a digestible format, a skillset that was very handy when communicating with MENSA, the United Nations executives, the grassroots organization in Africa, and the donors involved. From my Leader’s Voice class, I learned to effectively communicate with each of these stakeholders and clearly highlight key performance metrics our team needed to achieve. Lastly, I was able to utilize the power of the Columbia network to speak with subject matter experts of the different projects we needed to accomplish.

I found that when working virtually during a pandemic, many of an organization’s goals are centered around maintaining cash flow. Although we were working with organizations focused on fintech, health care, and education, all the organizations found their top priority was increasing donations to enable their day-to-day activities. Therefore, although we were working on marketing, advertising, fundraising, digital campaigns, and pitch decks, all of those activities were focused on raising money. Secondarily, our work was to develop education and training materials for these organizations — but they could not distribute them without donations. We found it difficult at first to raise money during a pandemic, as there were so many causes during this time that folks can donate to — and often times, folks were trying to maintain their own cash flow and save money. However, we found that if we were able to clearly demonstrate through visualization dashboards and data points how dollars would be allocated to do good in the world, donors were more willing to support our cause.

Firstly, I learned about both the short- and long-term benefits of doing even a summer internship for an organization that needs help. The short-term benefits to the organizations I worked with included improved children’s initiatives and technological aspects of the business (websites, digital campaigns, social media). Longer term benefits included increased partnerships with donors and improved methods of fundraising to become sustainable. I have always been passionate about utilizing my technology and finance skillset to help small businesses, but I did not expect to be able to make an impact over 10 weeks at an organization. I found that in regions with limited educational access, a skillset of a Columbia MBA was invaluable.

This fellowship was an amazing opportunity to hone my financial analysis skillset, my web development skillset, and my communication with executives across the world. I will be working in venture capital full-time, so working with small organizations with limited funding is a critical skillset I will utilize in my job. This experience rounded out my Columbia experience nicely and was a wonderful way to showcase that I can still use my Columbia education to make a difference virtually.