AKTUELLT
Volunteer Consulting for an NGO learning by doing!
This spring I’ve had the opportunity to try something completely new - consulting! Specifically, a student-driven volunteering consulting project for a non-profit. What does it mean? I called two of the board members of the Helsinki branch of 180 Degrees Consulting, branch president Stijn Boon and marketing director Darlene Tran, to talk about student volunteering and consulting. 180 Degrees Consulting works like this: the board members - they, too, are volunteers - reach out to charities, NGOs and nonprofits that have a problem to solve. There’s a big variety among the clients, from the biggest NGOs in Finland to smaller organisations, and the board aims to find interesting cases that attract students. Once they’ve found suitable cases, they recruit student consultants that receive basic training from professional consultants and then have 10 weeks to finish the consulting project. This spring, the Helsinki branch has three cases, each with a team of four volunteers. I am in a team together with students from Aalto University, working on a case for Physicians for Social Responsibility with mentoring from Bain & Company, and as of writing of this article, we’re running the final weeks of the project. Darlene and Stijn started out in 180 Degrees Consulting as student consultants as well. They were in the same team, working on a case for Monaliiku, developing a corporate funding strategy. Neither of them had any previous consulting experience and were curious about the consultant role.
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HANKEITEN 02/2020
Before starting the work, it’s important to get a good picture of the issue the NGO is facing and narrowing it down to a problem the team can solve, and once the project is finished, to communicate your solution in a way that the NGO can apply. Effective communication is key - which is something both Stijn and Darlene has learned from working their case. How can an inexperienced student help an NGO? “The reason why the client is looking for outsiders’ opinion, is that they want to have fresh eyes and viewpoints,” explains Darlene. The client has been facing their problem for a long time and haven’t been able to solve it by themselves. Stijn Boon, branch president
“That sounds very sophisticated,” tells Stijn about his expectations on consulting. “But since the onboarding was so good - we had training from the partner companies - it was quite easy to roll into the role of being a consultant.” His favourite part about working on that case was the teamwork and friendships that were formed during the project, and mentions that Darlene always brought snacks to the meetings. It was energizing to meet the team members and work together towards a common goal.
“In general, students at any university in Finland are smart people and have a lot of skills and knowledge,” adds Stijn. It is fairly easy to adapt them to practical problem solving, and a lot of learning is done by doing. He believes that students possess skills that they’re not aware of themselves, and any expertise is useful. Every year, a new board is formed. Stijn emphasises the importance of friendship: especially in volunteering, teamwork and commitment is important, and having reliable board members is vital.
