Future Leaders Fundraising Challenge Entering Cooperation with Laureus

From September 1 onward, MBA students from WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, will once again spend a week raising funds for a good cause: As part of the school’s course in leadership, the Future Leaders Fundraising Challenge (FLFC) sees students work in groups of five or six to develop new concepts for non-profit organizations, find solutions to real-world problems, and put the theories they learn in the classroom to the test to help generate funding. Since its inception in 2016, the FLFC has secured over 650,000€.

Starting this year, WHU is now in collaboration on this project with the renowned Laureus Sport for Good Stiftung, a non-profit foundation that organizes more than 300 community exercise programs worldwide with the goal of reducing violence, racism, and discrimination—and promoting inclusion, education, and health for children and adolescents. This partnership is intended to run for five years, with the donations raised by WHU’s MBA students primarily going toward the foundation’s educational scholastic programs, such as their Tägliche Stunde Sport for Good [Daily Hour of Sport for Good]. This program is designed to help underprivileged students build their social skills, their resilience, and their self-confidence. “We’re very excited about this new collaboration between the FLFC and Laureus,” noted Professor Pisitta Vongswasdi, co-organizer of the FLFC alongside Professor Sascha L. Schmidt. “Laureus is a world-renowned partner that has always shown how sports and exercise can be the catalyst for positive change. And I look forward to carving out this path together with them.”

The FLFC, which comprises several sub-challenges, is the result of WHU’s efforts to combine two components essential for business education: practice-focused learning and a sense of responsibility. These sub-challenges change every day, with a new member of each team taking control, thereby strengthening the students’ leadership skills. At the end of each challenge, the teams are evaluated by a panel of experts and given feedback to help with their approach and managerial efforts. All the while, the students also receive support from alumni of the school’s MBA program.

Throughout the initiative, participants are in direct competition with the other teams as they make good use of what they’ve learned from their program—including product development, marketing, strategy, negotiation, logistics, and operations.