Consult Your Community is a nationwide nonprofit that provides pro-bono consulting services for minority-owned and local businesses. Who We Are:
Consult Your Community is a nationwide, student-run nonprofit organization that empowers America’s top undergraduate students to leverage their knowledge of business with their passion for service. Students engage with low-income and minority-owned small
businesses over the course of a semester through an innovative program in which they are trained to provide business owners with comprehensive, pro bono consulting services (teams are advised by business school faculty, graduate student mentors, and experienced professionals from top-tier consulting firms like McKinsey, Bain, Accenture, and Deloitte). Through this process, students gain hands-on business experience and develop skills that prepare them for their future careers, while business owners become empowered to foster their own economic independence and secure their future prosperity, both of which contribute directly to our nation’s economic development and long-term sustainability. Consult Your Community was founded in February 2013 by a group of undergraduates from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. Since our organization’s founding we have rapidly grown into a national organization: hundreds of students are working to launch chapters at America’s top universities, including Texas, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, UVA, UNC, Notre Dame, Tulane, and Michigan; we were recently featured in The New York Times; and we are being supported by partners and executives from the America’s most prestigious financial services firms; business school faculty; and well-known government and civic leaders. To sustain our nation’s competitive advantage in the coming economic era, we need to adopt innovative programs that effectively deliver support to the people and businesses that need it the most. By mobilizing America’s best and brightest students to provide personalized solutions to the fundamental challenges that affect low-income and minority-owned small businesses, we can do just that. We believe that the Consult Your Community experience will spark a lifelong commitment to supporting social responsibility, corporate citizenship, and impact entrepreneurship in every student who joins our program. Whether these incredibly sharp individuals remain in consulting or enter other areas of business or government or law, their experience in our organization will shape their values and ensure a better future for our communities, for our country, and for our world. What We Do:
C*C selects only the most highly qualified undergraduates from America’s best universities. Students that pass through our rigorous interview process are invited to join our intensive, semester-long training program, which focuses on developing consultant’s problem solving, interpersonal and communication, and entrepreneurial skills. To ensure that our consultants are able to deliver value to our clients from day one, each training session is taught by either experienced faculty or professionals from top-tier firms. Students are grouped into teams and are led over the course of the semester by a more experienced undergraduate (Engagement Manager), and supported by a dedicated group of faculty advisors, graduate students, and experienced professionals. To guarantee impact, C*C focuses on actively working with business owners to implement changes, not just to craft strategic recommendations. For example, last semester one team lobbied the City of Berkeley to award its client a grant to renovate the store’s front façade, which was driving away customers. To give business owners the tools to succeed after the engagement is over, teams work with local SBDCs & SCORE centers. In addition, as a young nonprofit occupying a unique niche, C*C recognizes the importance of evaluating results & proving impact. C*C collects post-engagement metrics from both participating students & businesses to ensure that the organization is identifying areas of improvement and effectively working towards its mission. We expect modest development over the first year, but as gains compound, increased impact over time.
