A huge part of the MBA experience at Willamette is the PACE project. This is a year long “supercurricular” project with a team consisting of a sub-set of the class. Half the PACE project is planning a for-profit enterprise (execution of this plan isn’t necessary, but that’s not to say that it’s easy) and the other half is consulting for a non-profit organization.
My group is consulting for the Salvation Army of Marion/Polk counties. One project we’re working on for them is an analysis of data from their 2005 Kettle Drive. (The Kettle Drive is those people you see at stores ringing a bell between Thanksgiving and Christmas.) The tragedy in this is that their record keeping seems to be somewhat inconsistent…
So I’m currently going blind using excel. I’m dealing with hundreds and hundreds of cells of data that I’ve meticulously linked to other sheets within this spreadsheet so as to collect as much data as possible and then make it meaningful. I’m not even sure I’m doing a great job yet, but by God I hope this turns out…
