ECCO Holds Case Competition for CARE International

The Emory Community Consulting Organization (ECCO), a group of Emory MBA students who provide management consulting expertise to non-profit organizations, held its first case competition in November.

The client for this year’s competition was Atlanta-based CARE International, a well-known global organization whose mission is to fight poverty in the developing world. CARE is seeking an innovative approach to effectively communicating policies and procedures to its numerous globally dispersed, decentralized country offices, which often lack the infrastructure to support easy electronic communication.

The winning team presented "Focusing on the Recipients of Change" as an answer to CARE's question about how to effect policy implementation around the world. The team of Evening MBA students included:

• Kenneth Brandon
• Cara Daly
• Jin Fu
• Aashish Mehta
• Belinda Minta
• Jessica Prince

While this may have been ECCO’s first formal competition, it was not the organization’s first non-profit management consulting project. In the spring of 2007, ECCO’s founding members worked with Friendship Force International (FFI), a non-profit whose mission is to provide cross-cultural exchange programs for senior adults, ages 50 and up. Since FFI’s inception in the 1970’s, the organization enjoyed consistent membership and steady participation from program ambassadors (members to travel on an exchange program). When faced with the issue an aging and declining membership base, FFI arrived at the realization that they needed to change their membership recruitment strategy in order to survive.

After receiving custom training in structured problem solving, a team of ten ECCO members spent three months decomposing the central problem, analyzing data and finding solutions. Through this process, it became clear how much the ideal-centered FFI organization relied on tacit knowledge and gut-feel for both strategy and operational decisions. ECCO’s recommendations showed FFI how to take simple steps towards data-driven decision making. The ECCO team presented a multi-tiered strategy for specific and measurable goal of recruiting 300 new ambassadors over the next twelve months. FFI is currently in the process of adopting the recommendations presented by the ECCO team, and are optimistic about their long-term impact on membership growth.

ECCO was founded in the fall of 2006 by students in the Evening MBA program’s Class of 2009. The formation of ECCO was groundbreaking, since it was the first club to emerge from the Evening program. The program development was spearheaded by Matt Ryder, whose vision and dedication quickly drew the support of his classmates. He effectively led the steering committee to create the organization’s mission, vision, and charter. Founding members include Alison Barclay, Jonathan Bohn, Cara Daly, Kaustubh Deshmukh, Hina Hosain, Kevin Hsiao, Lauren Tepley, Satish Hemachandran, Sidd Negretti from the EvMBA Class of 2009. University faculty Susan Gilbert, Patrick Noonan and Susan Hogan provided instrumental initial support and training vital to ECCO’s inception.

While ECCO was founded in the Evening MBA program, membership and case competition participation is open to the entire Goizuetta Business School, which is comprised of full time MBA programs, Executive MBA programs and a BBA program.