We have all seen how communities draw upon their strengths to care for each other during these unprecedented times. All of these values are exemplified in #GivingTuesday, established as a day to celebrate charity and embrace its life-changing benefits.
While the events this year have been monumental and challenging, Giving Tuesday celebrates the best that our community can be. Please join me and your fellow members of the CSUF Entrepreneurship Community in supporting CSUF’s Center for Entrepreneurship, a leading Orange County voice for entrepreneurial growth, learning and action.
Please join me and continue to be a leading supporter of entrepreneurial growth and action in Orange County! To donate, please click the DONATE button below.
Why we need your help in 2020-21
Current events are unprecedented and challenging. We serve entrepreneurial students and Orange County ventures. They must deal with tough new realities and keep going. Challengers not victims, they will give their best. We know how to help, we will not sit on the sidelines. However, to meet the surge in need, we must scale up our operations. With your support, we will. Please review our Seven Philanthropic Opportunities for 2020-21. Your donation will assure expanded success of our outstanding outreach initiatives in 2020-21.
Seven Philanthropic Opportunities for 2020-21
You may donate to specific CFE philanthropic opportunities. It’s your choice!
Each opportunity below has an “Opportunity Code.” To donate, click the DONATE button on this Email. Click again on the DONATE Button on the OC Nonprofit Central website to open the donation form.
As you fill out the donation form on the OC Nonprofit Central Website, click on the red words, “Add a public message to this donation.” A message box will open. Begin your public message with your chosen codes. If you have a specific split in mind, list it as percentages. For example, OPPORTUNITY1-50%, OPPORTUNITY2-50%. After you complete your public message, continue your donation.
1. Help Entrepreneurial Students Work Their Way through College
National commentators widely agree that CSUF is an excellent educational value. Many of its academic programs, including ours, offer a private school education at a public school price. Even so, our students come from under represented demographics and households with extremely limited financial means. They need to work and provide family support while attending school. COVID-19 employment reductions have hit our students hard.
Hire entrepreneurial work-study students, paid interns and paid service learners. A typical entrepreneurship student is an upper division BA degree candidate in the College of Business and Economics with work experience. (Limits may apply on weekly work hours). Opportunity Code: HIRE. Recommended minimum donation $100 for posting one position (upon hiring, this donation will be refundable at your option). “Move the needle” by donating $1,000 to post ten positions! When you donate, please also directly contact the Director of the CSUF Center for Entrepreneurship to provide details concerning your posting.
2. Sponsor Student Consulting Projects
The Small Business Institute is the Center for Entrepreneurship’s student consulting program. It is a major community outreach program serving, small entrepreneurial ventures, both for profit and nonprofit. CSUF student consulting projects are intensive, semester-long projects undertaken by teams of business students (seniors and MBA). They consult under the supervision of their professor. For undergraduate teams, Volunteer mentors from the professional world also advise teams. Depending on client needs, projects may focus on specific business disciplines. For example, Operations, Finance, Marketing, Management, Accounting, or lean start-up. Or, a project may consider the client’s overall strategy.
CSUF student consulting is in its 46th year and continues to receive national recognition (70+ awards, 19 since 2006.) Student teams have helped thousands of businesses and nonprofit organizations from many industrial and nonprofit classifications. Student teams dedicate 300+ hours to each project. Clients report significant economic impact. CSUF student consulting charges small fees to cover expenses.
Recently COVID-19 mitigations have hit many promising Orange County businesses and nonprofits hard. They need to identify ways to weather the storm. We want to help, but many hesitate to apply due to the small fees we must charge to breakeven. We want to waive student consulting fees for more struggling ventures. However, we must remain self-sustaining.
Help struggling small businesses and nonprofit organizations identify ways to weather the COVID-19 storm. Your sponsorships will allow the Center for Entrepreneurship to waive fees for turnaround projects. Opportunity Code: TURNAROUND. Recommended minimum donation $2,000.00. “Move the needle” by donating $20,000 to sponsor ten projects! Contact the Director of the CSUF Center for Entrepreneurship to work out the details.
3. Recognize Praiseworthy Student Entrepreneurs
As noted above, national commentators widely agree that CSUF is an excellent educational value. Many of its academic programs, including ours, offer a private school education at a public school price. Even so, our students come from under represented demographics and households with extremely limited financial means. They work hard and do well. However, as they near graduation, they have been juggling academic requirements, part-time jobs and family needs for a long time. They need an extra boost to energize them and provide the financial breathing room they need to complete their degree.
Provide scholarships to recognize praiseworthy performers and encourage degree completion. Opportunity Code: RECOGNIZE. Recommended minimum donation, $2,000.00. “Move the needle” by endowing an entrepreneurship prize! Contact the Director of the CSUF Center for Entrepreneurship to work out the details.
4. Sponsor New Venture Launches
Launching a new venture, profit or nonprofit, takes more than a great idea. The CSUF Startup Incubator helps founders launch their ventures. Founders sign up for a six-month residency. “Residents” range from CSUF students working on launching their first startup to seasoned veterans looking to launch new ventures. The incubator develops a custom set of deliverables for each resident to guide the resident from idea to launch and funding. The Incubator provides expert startup coaches and introductions to members of the CSUF startup community of more than one thousand successful entrepreneurs, professionals and investors. The tuition for the residency is $5,000.00. Unlike many incubators and accelerators, the CSUF Startup Incubator does not demand percentage ownership in new for-profit ventures, and actively recruits social benefit startups.
Boost Student founders and social benefit start-ups at the CSUF Start-up incubator. Opportunity Code: LAUNCH.
Recommended minimum donation $5,000. “Move the needle” by donating $50,000 to sponsor ten social benefit startups! Contact the Director of the CSUF Center for Entrepreneurship to work out the details.
5. Give Entrepreneurial Students Gifts of Knowledge
The Center for Entrepreneurship provides free books to students enrolled in CSUF entrepreneurship classes. The CSUF Entrepreneur Community publishes the books. We seek to expand book distribution across the CSUF campus and to Orange County high school and middle school students. Current titles include, Your Entrepreneurial Journey: Fifteen Guiding Principles and Creating New Ventures: How to Shape Concepts into Achievement. (Available on Amazon)
Give entrepreneurial students gifts of knowledge. Opportunity Code: BOOKS. Recommended minimum donation: $20.00 per two-book set. “Move the needle” by donating $20,000 to sponsor 1,000 two-book sets! Contact the Director of the CSUF Center for Entrepreneurship to work out the details.
6. Support Entrepreneur Network Learning
Each year, the Center for Entrepreneurship mixes hundreds of aspiring and seasoned entrepreneurs in a busy calendar of free, live events– in-person and on-line. The events are great learning opportunities. Open to the public, the events take many forms. For example, lectures, workshops, working roundtables, new venture creation reviews, new venture launch reviews, fast pitch competitions, business plan competitions, and “open office hours” staffed by volunteers.
Many Center events draw student entrepreneurs from across the CSUF campus, local community colleges, high schools, and middle schools. Your ongoing support will help us afford an expanded event calendar. Join our network! Opportunity Code: NETWORK.
Recommended minimum, recurring donation, $25.00 per month.“Move the needle” by establishing a recurring donation of $2,500.00 per month to underwrite key events! Contact the Director of the CSUF Center for Entrepreneurship to work out the details.
7. The 3/3 Challenge
The Center for Entrepreneurship teaches, coaches and leads programs that create an entrepreneurial culture, forge new ventures, and dramatically benefit Orange County.
Our high impact approach leverages our resources and magnifies results. We energize determined practice, leadership and teamwork among our community of students, faculty, clients, volunteers and alums. Since 1974, we have contributed over 850,000 outreach hours to aid entrepreneurial ventures in Orange County. With your help we will do much more.
Today, via the College of Business and Economics, we attract and involve about1/3 of California State University Fullerton’s aspiring entrepreneurs. We have the opportunity to reach out to the other 2/3s via the University’s other Colleges and programs. A five-year push from 1/3 to 3/3 will triple outreach hours to 90,000 + hours per year. It will add $Millions to our annual economic impact in Orange County. To achieve 3/3, we seek a transformative Challenge Grant, $3 Million over five years, beginning with $300,000 to launch year one of the five-year push.
Fund the 3/3 challenge! Opportunity Code: 3/3
Recommended minimum, recurring donation, $330.00 per month.“Move the needle” by establishing a recurring donation of $3,300.00 per month! Contact the Director of the CSUF Center for Entrepreneurship to work out the details.
Did you know?
The CSUF Center for Entrepreneurship is a self-supporting Center of Excellence at California State University Fullerton’s College of Business and Economics. Established in 2001, the Center serves as an outreach center and support organization for entrepreneurial initiatives within CSUF and Orange County. The Center holds 70+ national awards recognizing its role in advancing new venture creation, funding and effectiveness by for-profit and nonprofit ventures. Within CSUF, the Center seeks to engage with all aspiring entrepreneurs across campus. It encourages them to become mutually involved in the CSUF Entrepreneurship Community. The Center reaches beyond the College of Business and Economics to CSUF’s seven other Colleges, Extension and International Programs, Associated Students, Inc., the Auxiliary Services Corporation, and the Library.
CSUF Entrepreneurship
We are dedicated to helping the next generation of entrepreneurs develop the skills that they need to compete locally and globally. The CSUF Entrepreneurship program does many things,