UCLA Anderson MBA students conduct Applied Management Research (AMR) projects in lieu of a thesis. The nation’s first business school field study program, AMR partners students with top organizations to solve a key strategic problem. The Center for Global Management sponsored UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 teams to collaborate with established NGOs seeking sustainable solutions for global economies, health delivery systems and environmentally sensitive parts of the world. UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 AMR students made their final presentations on March 9.
By Idan Ariav (’18), Ernesto Cruz (’18), Jose Lanzagorta (’18), Justin Lee (’18), Sid Parikh (’18)
In January 2018, our Applied Management Research (AMR) team visited Alta Verapaz in the northern highlands of Guatemala with our client Strategies for International Development (SID). SID is a nonprofit organization that develops and promotes methods for helping poor farmers reclaim eroded land, increase income and overcome poverty.
Having successfully launched campaigns in Bolivia and Honduras, SID focuses currently on helping coffee farmers in Guatemala. SID engaged our team to help answer some of the nonprofit’s toughest strategic and marketing questions in order to ultimately drive its fundraising efforts. We traveled with key members of the SID team, including executive director Charles Patterson and Guatemala National Program director Bayron Leon to apply and improve SID’s new strategy on the ground.
We met with a representative from the United Nations Development Program to discuss grants for which SID is eligible, and learned about an upcoming grant for nonprofits that aims to preserve indigenous land. We conducted a workshop in the community of Chinar with local farmers to define the practices they need to adopt in order to graduate from poverty. This included discussions of key business and agricultural techniques. We conducted a similar workshop for farmers in the community of Baleu.
We held a forum with representatives from the San Cristobal municipal offices to discuss and devise methods for promoting SID’s practices throughout the nearby communities. During meetings with key political members we discussed their ideas and concerns and we held a demonstration fair in the centrally located community of Acquil Grande to show the farmers how to implement technical solutions and exhibited husking machines, reiterating the value proposition of purchasing them for the community. We toured Finca Aurora, a commercial advanced coffee-husking farm and learned leading practices in the coffee industry and developed ideas about how we could implement these practices into SID’s strategy.
On our final day, we met with and interviewed a board member of the Specialty Coffee Association, a potential donor and strategic ally of SID. As an expert of the Guatemalan and world coffee industry, he provided vital information for our project.
We made four key recommendations to SID:
- Reinforce presence in Guatemala and grow existing infrastructure.
- Revamp marketing strategy by improving website, modernizing social media presence and establishing the SID brand within the nonprofit sector.
- Improve proposal win rates by utilizing the revamped proposal template and increasing the quantity of proposals sent according to donor fiscal year spending patterns.
- Partner with foundations and organizations of similar size in California.
This primary research trip was an essential component of our project. Given our client’s challenge and the scope of our project, it was imperative for our team to experience the work of SID firsthand and become immersed in the communities the organization is helping. Without the assistance and guidance of the AMR and Center for Global Management (CGM) staff, this trip would not have been possible.
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