The Social Venture Competition can lead to great things!

Reed Probus, a Junior Business Administrative major at SPU.

Team CarbonCart (2008) and will have a new team .

Awards: SVPC award winner 2008

The SVPC is a rare opportunity to work on a project you believe in and pitch it to leaders in the local business community. For me the best aspect of the competition was working on a team, where I experienced for the first time how a good team is more than the sum of tis parts. Our four team members brought unique and complimentary skills--our designer created a website that impressed the judges, our programmer gave it capabilities that matched established competitors, our business maven answered the tough questions about our strategy, and our communications extraordinaire presented our idea with enthusiasm. Our brainstorming sessions were invaluable and even our arguments were constructive. This kind of team experience is something you don't get from coursework. And being part of programs like the SVPC is part of the reason I cam to SPU

A month after the showcase, our team was flying to Los Angeles for the Microsoft Imagine Cup student technology competition. Thanks to the SVPC, we had revised our business plan based on feedback from instr

uctors and judges, which I think gave us a stronger presentation. Later, Microsoft invited us to talk about the Imagine Cup for the following video about the competition.

to see Reed's first project in action please follow the below link:

http://www.carboncart.com/

United We Can's social business gets set for Winter Olympics

"In the heart of Vancouver's poorest neighborhood, a thriving business is helping homeless and low-income peole earn money by cleaning up the environment."

This quote was taken from an article written by Kristi Helm and Published by the Seattle Times

This is a great example of Social Venture in action!

To see the original article follow the below link.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/thebusinessofgiving/2010832869_united_we_can.html

serve others through business

Written by Allen Klein, a Junior majoring in Business Administration at SPU

TEAM: Evanblade

WON: Grand Prize 2009

When I initially went into the Social Venture Plan Competition I knew I was in for a good time, but I didn’t know how much I would actually learn along the way. Here at SPU we learn a lot in our business and exploratory classes, but this was finally a chance to really apply my knowledge in a form other than a test. Scott, Stephen and I originally started out with a much different plan, we were aiming to do a fair-trade electronics company. But after much thought, market research, and lots of late nights in fall quarter, it was becoming clear that we needed something a bit more scalable. That is what we believed to be our key to success; we were able to scale our business to a manageable size. Also, Evenblade was to be based in Seattle which made it easier to understand our market and to make “competition contracts” with companies and service organizations in the area. What I mean by a competition contract is as follows: our team would call organizations and see if they would agree to partner with us, unofficially, for our competition. What this did was create a greater sense of thoroughness in our business plan. We would also use this relationship to get feedback on our ideas to beef-up our plan. A very common remark made by the judges was that we had ‘done the necessary footwork’ to really understand what we were getting into. Those are all the tips I’m going to give on that subject… I need to keep a couple for this year.

All said and done, The SVPC was one of the highlights to my college experience thus far. It has given me a great chance to really understand how to serve others with business, and to understand how God can work in different ways. The group work was a blessing, and all of my team members were great to work with. In life, we’re all going to have to work with differing personalities, so why not start learning how to do so now? Additionally, it was great application of what I’ve been learning in classes here at SPU. And let us be honest, knowledge without application is useless.

What is Social Venture? And why should students be interested?

Written by Dr Don Summers

Don’t sit on the sidelines while the world spins out of control. Each of us can make a difference, a big difference, but only if we finetune our good intentions into specific action. Seattle Pacific U’s Social Venture Plan Competition helps students take their ideas for positive change and build sustainable enterprises that focus on social problems. And winners walk away with prize money that can be used to get these social ventures off the ground.