Northwestern Student Holdings on Monday launched Impact Week, the first-ever program to raise awareness and funding for five campus organizations.
Supplies for Dreams, Applause for a Cause, Camp Kesem, Lending for Evanston and Northwestern Development and Campus Kitchens each partnered with NSH businesses for the week-long event.
Executive officer Oskar Melking said Impact Week is a competition in which each of the student groups involved creates a video that explains what the organization does and what it would do if it won a monetary award.
Throughout the week, students have viewed these videos at www.nshimpact.com and voted for their favorite causes.
“It’s exciting to see so many people on campus come and vote for this,” Melking said. “The involvement has been beyond expectation so far.”
The Communication sophomore said NSH’s goal is to get 1,500 total votes for the entire week but reached that less than 12 hours after the website launched. The website now has almost 5,000 total votes.
Impact Week will end Saturday, with NSH awarding $2,000 of funding to the student groups. All five service groups will earn part of the money, but the organization that wins the most votes will receive the largest award.
“It’s not just about the money,” Melking added. “It’s a great way to spread awareness about the amazing service groups we have at these schools that are all run by students.”
NSH is a student-run holdings company that funds new businesses and ideas catered to the Northwestern and Evanston community, Melking added. It allows students the chance to get involved directly with business rather than simply theorizing about it.
“NSH has a strong connection with the Northwestern community,” he added.
The established NSH businesses partnered with the five student groups for the competition. Supplies for Dreams development director Ed Roberge said his organization is working with packing-and-storage company BoxCo. for the week.
“BoxCo. has been very supportive, and we’ve been very happy,” the SESP sophomore said. “The main part of the collaboration is for the marketing aspect.”
Campus Kitchens leader Sarah Suh said the event has become more intense throughout the week. She said her team started blasting email lists and posting information on Facebook.
Each team seems to be developing its own secret strategy to get more clicks, the Weinberg junior added.
“We were losing at first, but we did some brainstorming yesterday,” Suh said. “Now we are back in the game.”
But regardless of the outcomes, Suh said the video competition has been extremely helpful in raising awareness of Campus Kitchens. She said a lot of students were relatively unaware of their mission to fight hunger in Evanston.
“Just by their click they will be contributing to fight hunger. That’s what’s really cool about this event,” Suh said. “By all these students watching these videos and being more aware of what they do, just that act is helping our cause.”
