good works ENCORE
Eventful Experience
College students help nonprofits through new center Jarett Coy
Junfu Han
by
At times, the best way to learn how to do
something is just to do it. That’s the idea behind experiential learning, a teaching method that engages students in hands-on, real-world activities to learn the skills needed to succeed in their fields. It is also the driving force of the Kalamazoo Experiential Learning Center (KELC), a new nonprofit organization that provides college students with paid community-engagement and event-planning experience in Kalamazoo. “My vision is to have students use what they learn in the classroom to serve as an eventconsulting street team to local nonprofits,” says Deb Droppers, the center’s coordinator, owner of The Event Company and co-founder of the event management minor in Western Michigan University’s College of Education and Human Development. The KELC is funded by grants (including a start-up grant from the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation), donations and client fees and was started in 2014 by Droppers, who is 12 | Encore MAY 2015
known in the greater Kalamazoo community as the event-planning maven behind the DoDah and Holiday parades, June Jubilee and several festivals. The KELC currently employs six student interns who advise nonprofits on the creation and planning of fundraising events, marketing campaigns and festivals, and organizational growth. Droppers’ own Event Company, which she started in 1995, is very similar to the KELC; it’s also an experiential learning company specializing in public relations, marketing and event management. The difference between the two is that the KELC is a nonprofit, which allows it to receive grant funding so the students can work with smaller or start-up nonprofits that wouldn’t be able to afford the type of event coordination The Event Company provides. The KELC does charge clients a fee to provide event management services, and 60 percent of the center’s funding comes from
From left, Deb Droppers and college students Evelyn Gordon and Kelly Moss listen as downtown retailers Amy Zane and Joan Van Sickler discuss a project the students are working on.
client fees. The KELC’s clients include DKA Charities Inc., the Open Roads bicycle repair program, The Community Healing Center and New Year’s Fest. Since its inception, KELC has steadily grown and acquired new clients, but Droppers says she can’t take all the credit. “Start to finish, this has all been designed by interns,” she says. One of those interns is Evelyn Gordon, an organizational communication major at WMU. Gordon is helping to organize Tips for Kids, a part of Roof Sit, the annual fundraising event for the Community Healing Center’s programs to treat and prevent child abuse. Tips for Kids will take place May 14-16 and have volunteer teams at local Shell service stations washing windshields and pumping gas for tips, which will then be donated to the Community Healing Center. Last year’s