The impact of COVID-19 on student charity associations

Business schools are designed to shape the leaders of tomorrow. They provide technical skills in specific fields as well as soft skills such as teamwork. What could be more instructive than giving your time, skills and energy to a cause that is close to your heart? However, as we face the consequences of the Covid, charitable groups are being hit too.

Many business schools offer students the opportunity to join student associations from their first year of study. Taking part in an association brings together recruitment processes, team organization, event organization, projects, and a common end goal. We can even say that it resembles a company: a group of people forms a team and together they carry out projects and fulfil objectives.

Some of you might be wondering: why would I join an association in addition to my various school projects, my classes, my homework and my social life? There are a million answers to that question. Fundamentally, they come down to the fact that study is part of life and we are more than just study. If more and more students want to participate or even create associations, that’s no bad thing! In 2018 at Ohio State College, there were 765 registered associations, compared to 841 in 2019, a number that is constantly growing.

The current context has put associative life at risk. Students have found it harder to find participants, to carry out their projects and achieve their yearly objectives. Digital tools have therefore proved to be a real asset during this trying period.

To illustrate how these charitable groups have used digital tools in order to continue thriving, I chose an association that is very close to my heart: Lueur&Elégance, an association of the EDHEC Business School.

The importance of associations

Business schools allow students to take part in different experiences and to learn a variety of skills that will be useful in their careers. That is why most French managers are business school graduates. According to Les Echos, 44% of the top 50 French CEOs of CAC 40 and CAC Next 20 companies are business school graduates.

12 reasons to join a student association

Bentley University has created a list of 12 reasons to join a student union, let’s take a brief look at it:

Student unions will allow you to:

• Learn more about yourself: you might discover your goals, strengths and weaknesses
• Develop soft skills: you might learn how to communicate with different types of people and how to efficiently work in teams
• Learn team working: in a student association, you need to work with other people to achieve your goals
• Have networking opportunities: as you share common interests, you might be interested in the same type of companies
• Practice in a safe environment: if you want to work in communication, you can practice by doing the entire communication campaign of your association
• Use skills you have learned in class: if in class you have heard about a management technique that you think is relevant to the association, you can use it to progress
• Engage with different groups of people: if you want it to work, an association will need members with different personalities and with different backgrounds
• Gain skills in leadership: that reason is self-explanatory
• Take a break from studies: being part of an association is not a chore but a pleasure that makes you feel useful
• Expand your resume: associative experiences are considered as professional experiences, do not hesitate to highlight it!
• Give to the community: you give your time to a team, a cause and people who might need it
• Student unions allow you just to have some fun!

So, are you convinced?

If you want to know more about the delights of being part of an association, you can check out this link and this one on EDHEC Business School’s associations.

What about the activities during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Changing roles…

The role of student associations before this pandemic was, for the most part, earning money by launching events and fundraising campaigns, inside or outside of the school. That money was then donated to the cause the association chose to defend. Student association may also play a preventive role at times.

Before joining Grenoble Ecole de Management, I spent 4 years at EDHEC Business School, including 2 years in the charity Lueur&Elégance. This 30 people-team fights against breast cancer, the most frequent cancer in France. The aims of this association is to raise funds for the Ligue Contre Le Cancer and to help the women who suffer or have suffered from breast cancer by restoring their self-confidence. Throughout the years, various events have been organised : tea parties inside of the school, a wellness day for Women’s Day, a contest for Movember and events dedicated to our models and students.

The main event that has been organized is a fashion show that featured models from Lueur & Elégance and that was open to school members, families and external individuals such as the Mayor of Roubaix.

Following the pandemic, schools were closed for a long period of time. Lueur & Elégance was, therefore, unable to organize internal events at school or even promote their activities. They could not organize the fashion show or do any fundraising. So, how did they adapt?

The team used social media to highlight their cause and the models they recruited the previous year.

In particular, they:

• Made more posts on social media, especially Facebook and Instagram according to their audience and targeted audience
• Organized events such as a rose sale that was entirely run remotely through Instagram for Valentine’s Day 🌹 — it is a great way to make people talk about the association
• Highlighted previous models by posting videos of past years’ fashion shows
• Posted support messages to their audience on social media to help them go through this tough period
• Did live performances during Pink October with the illuminated Eiffel Tower
• Launched remote recruiting via Skype or FaceTime
• Promoted past events and teams

What else could be done?

According to my research and personal ideas, there are still things that can be done with digital tools in order to promote the association and its participants. Here are my suggestions:

The team could have organized Instagram lives with the models, especially the ones from last year, as the recruitment was shifted this year. This could highlight the models, as well as the benefits that the show and the association have brought them. It is always very touching to hear their stories, they want to share what they went through to raise awareness for the cause and the association. They are also very active on social networks and like or share all our posts to support the association.

Similarly, they could do more awareness videos, including asking La Ligue Contre le Cancer to share some of their content or do some interviews with their staff to discuss the money raised by the association over the years and the help they have provided. They could take this video as an example, just to say “thank you and we will always be there”.

Models are generally not very comfortable with new technology but it could be interesting to organize small group calls with the models. They could also organize small events respecting the health and safety rules for the team and models to meet and to be able to create this bond of trust that is so important in this work.

Despite the lack of events and social link between the members of the association, it would be interesting to have more posts on social networks about the internal organization, especially meetings or moments spent together in order to show that everyone works despite this specific context.

Joining an association means meeting a team, a family with whom we share values and want to work for a common goal. Dr. Loretta Scott says “we can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone”. I think this entirely sums up what a charity is meant to be: just a bunch of small actions with a huge impact.

As we await a resurgence of activity for our favourite associations, I invite you to check out their social networks and support them via Instagram and Facebook!

About this article

This article has been written by a student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Masters in Digital Strategy Management. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminate the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content. Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DSM.