A week with HandsOn New Orleans

And off we went… to help make a difference with our organization. Like at St.Bernard Project, 10 people split into two groups. Our group was asked to do a cost and benefit analysis on their hands@work program. What projects brought more revenue than others, and what projects were maybe not even worth pursuing?

This task entailed a lot of digging into the financial statements and it didn’t take long until the numbers were spinning around in our brains. Thankfully we had two accountants in our team, Jeshica and Vanja and with the help of Tom, who had done something similar before in his previous job, we managed to establish a very detailed picture of the income and expenses over the course of a few years. 

the group working from the Mariott Hotel 

For Shane and myself, this accounting-based task was on the one hand very instructive and informative but we – as the marketers in the team – were slightly missing the creative side. So on Wednesday we decided to sit down with Brianne, the HandsOn Marketing VISTA, to ask her if she needed our input on a marketing-related topic.

This conversation turned into a second big project: we had 48 hours to create 1) a strategic marketing plan for the HandsOn Volunteer house and 2) a plan for long-term corporate volunteer engagement. The latter was an ideal subject since we could apply a lot of knowledge gained from previous Pro-Bono work with non-profits in Chicago.  

As for the promotion of the volunteer house, I could identify myself with the task a lot since a few years ago it had been one of my dreams to open my own traveler and backpacker hostel. Presenting the purpose, the competitive advantage, target audience and the niche of an affordable and social accommodation with the indirect contribution to a good cause (as opposed to staying in a hotel) were exactly matching my interests.

part of the building makes up the  HoNO headquarters 

On Friday, we presented our results to the organization. They were thrilled by what we’d achieved in such a short period of time. HandsOn New Orleans is very keen on maintaining the relationship with DePaul students in the coming years. This has been the beginning of a great partnership! We want to thank HoNO for this incredible experience. As much as we helped them, we also gained a lot of knowledge so it was a win-win situation overall.

Sabrina