The Business Club held its first community outreach event on Saturday, March 11, with it’s Walk-a-Thon. The club worked with the March of Dimes Foundation to create the Walk-a-Thon, held at Rancho Laguna Park in Moraga. The project’s goal was to generate donations for the March of Dimes foundation, which funds research and child services.

The Business Club itself is a section of the Future Business Leaders of America organization, which works with the March of Dimes Foundation to sponsor events. “One of their projects is either take part in a section project or you can go out there and attend other events that they do and take part, or you can do your own project which is what we’re trying to do. That’s how we heard about the March of Dimes,” said co-president Sydney Liu.

The Walk-a-Thon’s profits were added towards the March of Dimes’s organizational goal of $1.3 million, according to Bay Area section campaign director Ricky Hans. “What they’re doing is great. It’s a fundraising effort for a great mission,” said Hans.

For the club, the project was just a stepping stone to greater ambitions. “One of our bigger goals is to do things outside of school. A lot of clubs, from my experience, tend to focus on things on campus and they’re more academically oriented. I feel like, with business club, we’re a little more outside of that,” said Liu.

According to Liu, the Business Club offers students a wider range of real-world experiences that aren’t usually available.  “You can go out and network with a bunch of people you don’t normally meet at school,” Liu said. “Especially people who are just phenomenal and really really smart because we just don’t have that, we have that tight little community at Moraga with the Lamorinda schools, but you really get to see what the outside world is like.”

From a business perspective, the Walk-a-Thon was an excellent lesson in marketing strategy and multimedia advertising.

With a Facebook page and events available online, the club utilized various forms of media to get the word out about the event. “I think through this event, a lot of us have learned a lot about marketing and that’s very very valuable and as high school students it’s not something we do on a regular basis,” said co-president Eric Ho. “We wanted to market for something real, like it’s very easy to market a concert but for this event we did a community outreach event so we could use it to help others.”