ESADE Alumni concludes its 11th Giving Back Consultants, an ESADE Alumni Social Enterprise project and the first giving-back volunteering venture held in Spain by a business school. Thanks to Giving Back Consultants, more than 1,800 ESADE alumni have helped boost cooperation between social organisations and the business world. In these eleven years, alumni volunteers have carried out more than 100,000 hours of giving-back, free, pro-bono consultancy services worth €7.5 million. In addition, they have provided giving-back consulting services to more than 250 third-sector organisations including Unicef, Greenpeace, Vicente Ferrer Foundation, AcidH, Arrels Foundation, Casal dels Infants Association, Hazloposible Foundation, Amics de la Gent Gran, Planeta Imaginari Foundation, Exit, Ared, Caritas and Nutrició sin fronteras.

“This programme is ESADE Alumni’s vehicle for providing useful tools to alumni wishing to play an active role in the third sector,” said Isabel Rallo, director of ESADE Alumni Social Enterprise. “The willingness of these ESADE alumni to volunteer their knowledge is very well received by the different NGOs, because it takes their sustainability another step forward,” she added.

The importance of volunteers

In this programme alumni give free advice to NGOs about different subjects including marketing, fundraising, finance, human resource management, the feasibility of new projects, marketing of products or services, and internal organization.

This year, for example, ten giving-back consultants have worked with the Gil Gayarre Foundation, which provides support for the mentally handicapped and their families, on developing a balanced scorecard for monitoring the foundation’s strategic plan. Javier Perea of the Gil Gayarre Foundation considers the experience to have been very positive. “Highly praiseworthy work that entails the capacity to share such a valuable asset as knowledge and boost the development of other organizations that are not ‘for-profit entities’ but are still entitled to grow, develop and create value.”

Juan Manuel Garcia, a 2016-17 giving-back consultant at the Aldaba Foundation, emphasised that “a project like this is a vital experience because of its enormous impact... It is very enriching and really raises your awareness. You learn how great things can be achieved with very little.”

New opportunities

“Next year, ESADE Alumni Social Enterprise will evolve into a broader and more comprehensive project which will not only provide volunteering opportunities in social consultancies but will also offer new projects related to crowdfunding and management volunteering” said Maya Riera, area coordinator in ESADE Alumni Social Enterprise. Giving-back crowdfunding in particular will include the launch of campaigns to encourage the ESADE community led by its alumni to provide economic support in the form of microloans. The comprehensive help will include volunteers setting up the campaign itself and help from the entire network in broadcasting these campaigns. The funds raised will provide extra funding for improving the social enterprise projects run by the network of NGOs and social enterprises with the closest links to ESADE Alumni.

This year has also seen the creation of closer links between ESADE Alumni Social Enterprise and the university development service ESADE SUD with a view to creating more volunteering opportunities. The resulting Together project has enabled alumni and student interns to work together on four projects in developing countries, i.e. Mexico, Paraguay, Bolivia and Nicaragua, with a view to helping boost the productive activity of said countries.