Northwestern Student Holdings awards GlobeMed $1K

Rebecca Savransky, Campus Editor

Northwestern Student Holdings awarded GlobeMed, a student-run nonprofit, $1,000 on Saturday as part of its second Impact Week.

NSH, a student-run holdings company, held Impact Week in an effort to increase awareness about different philanthropic student-run organizations and to give back to the community.

The week, lasting from May 4 to 10, highlighted seven different student run nonprofits that were each partnered with an NSH company. During the week, members of the groups competed for the most votes on a video they produced explaining their organization, with rewards ranging from $100 to $1,000.

GlobeMed, an organization focused on improving the health of children orphaned by AIDS or civil unrest, was partnered with AdWorks, an NSH business that provides advertising solutions for NU student publications.

Brittany Zelch, co-president of the NU chapter of GlobeMed, said throughout the week, she and other members of the organization used social media and reached out to the group’s national network to gain more votes. The group also held a bake sale with a discount for students who liked their video.

Zelch said the money would help fund the startup costs for a health clinic on the premises of the group’s partner organization, the Adonai Child Development Centre in Uganda. The center will be a self-sustaining health clinic with the ability to provide affordable and reliable healthcare to the community at large, she said.

“We’re really proud not only to win the money, which is great, but also a big goal of ours has been to spread awareness not only of the name GlobeMed, but of what we’re doing and who we are, and so we thought that this week was really successful at doing that,” Zelch said.

Best Buddies placed second and Peer Health Exchange took third place in the competition.

Joy Liu, chief executive officer of NSH, said the group held its first Impact Week last year to increase awareness about other student-run organizations in addition to spreading the word about NSH and to benefit philanthropic groups on campus.

“Partly, we really wanted to engage the student body in order to promote NSH,” she said. “But more importantly for us, we wanted other students to be able to hear about some of the other cool things that were happening among their fellow students as well.”

Liu said because NSH is a revenue generating organization, they had both the means and support to be able to “reward and honor” the other student groups on campus.

The week started with a kickoff event, where members of the competing groups attended and clips of their videos were shown. Members of Camp Kesem, the winners of last year’s Impact Week, also attended and a speech was given at the launch about their work and how they used the grant they received last year.

“It was really rewarding and inspiring to see that what we did do, not only just to raise awareness on campus, but to be able to put a value amount to a charitable donation to them, so that was really great,” Liu said.

Throughout the week, students advertised for their businesses through social media, special promotions including buy one, get one free sales and reaching out to family and friends, said Connor Regan, co-chair of Impact Week and co-chief executive officer of Project Cookie, a business run under NSH.

NSH had a tent set up at The Arch every day during the week where students could buy tickets for the group’s raffle, which involved gift cards and prizes from several local businesses, and vote for the philanthropy of their choice.

The week’s closing speaker, Jeff Shuck, spoke about his career in consulting with for-profit groups that are trying to make a social impact, which Regan said is exactly what Impact Week does.

All seven student groups were awarded money, although the amount ranged depending on the group’s placement at the end of the week. Out of the seven groups, Applause for a Cause was the only organization participating for the second year in a row.

Liu said she could see each group involved in the competition using the funds for a “very tangible, very foreseeable impact within their organization.”

In contrast to last year’s event, this year’s week included seven different participants instead of five due to the addition of NSH businesses. The group also added the launch party to kick off the week and focused more on Evanston business relations, Regan said.

This year’s week also had greater student engagement, with an increase in the number of students voting for the different competitors, Regan said.

“I definitely saw growth from last year to this year, just in terms of people talking about NSH Impact Week, the visibility of everything, even the number of people stopping by The Arch,” Regan said.

Regan said the week was successful in fulfilling the group’s goals and he was excited about its expansion.

“We really like to take the time to highlight the great philanthropic work that some students are doing on campus,” he said. “I think in both of these two years we’ve definitely accomplished what we wanted to accomplish.”

Editor’s note: Connor Regan is a member of the board of Students Publishing Company, The Daily’s parent organization. He is also a former columnist.

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Twitter: @beccasavransky