Student teams help local business and community – new project teams are now available so get in touch

Dear Partners,

Here at the University of Brighton, the Brighton Business School will have a large number of student research/business project teams available to work on local projects (in and near to Brighton and Hove) from November 2019 to March 2020.

‘Developing Professional Practice in Business’ provides teams of 5 students to work with you to help you develop a project you have that needs resourcing. You might want to investigate a particular activity or direction; test something out with customers/clients; run a survey; or carry out some marketing. If so then our students can help you. The module helps final year students develop their employability and project management skills through the completion of a business project. We are now delighted to offer this opportunity to businesses, third-sector organisations and public sector partners.

Students will be working in small groups to go in to an organisation to work on a project for 30 hrs per student in total (excluding writing up and feeding back time). So this is quite a useful resource for organisations to take advantage of and it is free.

Does your organisation need a plan researched and created (for example, a business plan, fundraising, marketing plan) or do you need help to implement and evaluate a current project? Or maybe help with social media, and social purpose marketing? The students are supported to deliver a project by the module tutors and the Active Student Volunteering Service.

Previous successful projects have included:

• Surveys for a community rail partnership; a University department; and small businesses
• Evaluating careers and employment guidance tools
• Creating a business plan for an organisation that had recently become a charity (from a community group) – the business plan the students created helped the organisation gain a year’s funding for their local project
• Developing a loyalty rewards scheme for an eco car-wash
• A digital marketing plan and trial for a restaurant
• An employee handbook for a local bakery
• Product testing new software
• Evaluating and enhancing the digital marketing strategy for a boutique
• Creating a marketing plan and social media engagement plan for a public sector body
• Running events

Does this fit with your needs? Could you use some help with your plans? If the answer is “absolutely, yes please”, do contact:

Jim Simpson, DB366 Module Leader, for business based projects (profit-making companies) j.simpson2@brighton.ac.uk or

Susan Bentley, at Active Student, for third sector, community and public sector projects (not for profit organisations) s.bentley2@brighton.ac.uk.

We are keen to provide business/research support to a variety of projects so please do run any ideas by us. If your project looks suitable, we will ask you to provide a Project Brief and complete further paperwork so that we can look to allocating a ‘Client Team’ to you based on what you need and what students are able to deliver.

Please contact us as soon as you can to register your interest and so we can send you further information. There may be a further call for projects after this date if we have spaces left.  Please find attached the module registration pack.

Many thanks,

Jim Simpson (Module Leader) and Susan Bentley (Volunteering Project Officer)