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| [Practice] What is the most remarkable experience you had in college? | | Date Created: Nov 11, 2004, 04:01 PM |
| The most remarkable experience I had in college is that I took part in the Nonprofit Organization Marketing Contest. The contest was held by the Cheng Gong University and divided into two parts: qualifying test and finals. Contestants were required to form a team, interview an nonprofit organization, and develop a marketing proposal. Each qualified team was asked to present the proposal in the finals. Since my major is Business Administration, all I have learned is to make profits. Although the field of nonprofit organization was a new one to me, I viewed it as a challenge and tried to overcome it. |
| In the beginning, my teammates and I faced the problem that we didn't know whether we could apply the logic of business administration to nonprofit organization. We did background study in the NTU library and interviewed several people at Taipei Wild Bird Association, the organization we chose. After having background knowledge about NPO, we understood that NPOs worked as firms: they had their missions, products, and customers. The mission of a NPO was its 'product.' They 'sold' their 'product' to public. The more 'customer' bought their 'product', the better a NPO grew. However, there were still a few differences between business firms and NPOs. Business firms' goal was to maximize profits for stock holders but NPOs' was to make contributions to environment, culture, human beings, etc. Based on this acknowledgment, we constructed a marketing plan for Taipei Wild Bird Association and submit it to the qualifying committee. |
| Although we were confident of our proposal, it was a disappointment that we only received the lowest grade among those of qualified teams. We reviewed our plan to find out where the problem was. We didn't find apparent logic mistakes in our plan. The only problem could be that the committee didn't notice the points we emphasized. We did our best to make the plan practicable. Because a NPO was unable to run an expensive marketing plan, we put budget control on the top of our list. We developed a tiny but innovative marketing plan which cost only one hundred thousand NT. Compared to other competitors' plans, our proposal seemed less attractive. As the result, making our belief clear was the primary goal to us in the final. |
| We combined many multimedia factors, such as short film clips, background music, and photo slideshows, into our presentation to make it vivid and interesting. With good eloquence, we made our presentation not only interesting but also professional. We focus on our budget and pointed out that although there was a budget constraint, we invented a new promotion tool, postcard-DM. We joined postcard and DM together. Customers could tear off the postcard side and read the information on the DM side. Judges agreed with the idea that we should make a practicable budget instead of a expensive one and they praised our presentation in the final. They declared that we won the championship. |
| From the contest, I learned that people should be willing to take challenges. Even there are adverse circumstances against us, we should overcome them and keep going. Finally, we will achieve our goals. |
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