The Rainmakers Social Impact Challenge

Business works to influence human decision-making all the time. Regardless of the behaviors targeted, individuals who are paid to drive marketing campaigns must always evaluate the outcomes of those campaigns with hard data. Since companies spend billions on commercials that increase sales of their products or services, their executives must be convinced that those billions of dollars produced the outcomes they paid to ensure.

To simulate the challenges of those demanding activities, teams of seniors form ‘marketing agencies’ and meet with the school principal or district superintendent to discuss school/district goals. Teams then devise a social marketing campaign they believe will produce a response that is aligned with the administration’s objectives. The campaign might focus on improving grades in math, reducing the number of students who vape, eliminating bullying behaviors, or convincing students to reduce their use of non-recyclables on school grounds.

Most critically, students must develop an evaluation plan that will track campaign impact with accurate data accrued via acceptable methodologies just as they would if they were in the corporate market.

Teams review their campaign ideas with school officials and seek approval for same to ensure that students’ ideas align with and support the goals of the school.  The administration must also approve the content of any posters or emails sent to students and the data-gathering\evaluation plan.

Teams will implement the program and then gauge the effect of their campaigns at the end of a three-month period of time. The team develops a video presentation that spans the entire project from beginning to end and will have a terminal meeting school leadership to present all findings, including what the team learned in the process (what went right/what went wrong/the challenge of developing a way to measure ‘soft’ data.).

The administration selects the top two projects and forwards them on to The Internship Depot for external judging and awards as appropriate.