It was a snowy day in Montreal in November 2000, when Kariann and Eric met. At the time, Kariann was a sessional instructor in the bachelor of commerce program at McGill and Eric was in the MBA program. Both had worked in the voluntary sector, both had strong convictions about community service; both were somewhat disappointed with how little connection there was between their business school and Canada’s community organizations. Both were thinking that something really had to be done about that.

So, they met, they chatted, and within about 20 minutes, the idea for what would be CEI was struck! It was literally that immediate and that obvious that their shared vision and ideals would materialize into something concrete and proactive.

Coming up with the idea was effortless. Making it happen was not quite the same.

Consultation with sector leaders…

It seemed the time had come for such an idea: taking place in the faculty of management at McGill was the McGill-McConnell Voluntary Sector Masters Program. Unique in Canada, this program brought together leaders from the sector from across the country. Kariann and Eric met with them and shared their idea of an internship program. What did they think? How would it work? Were they interested in getting business students involved in their organizations? YES – a resounding ‘yes’, was the answer. BUT – a resounding ‘but’ followed the YES, however. How much would it cost? How could they afford it? “We need to be financially committed to the intern, but we can’t afford a full salary”. And so in discussion with them, the matching funding model idea was crafted: host organizations would cover half the cost of the intern and the still nameless CEI would find the other half - somehow.

Innovating in the grass roots of management education…

We were excited by their enthusiasm. We had a winning idea we believed. We positioned it as “bringing the voluntary sector to the grass roots of management education”. Great that there is an executive level program, we thought, but more needed to be done for the everyday student, those in the undergraduate and masters programs. After all, they too care about the issues that so many of the McGill McConnell Program participants were working on. With that conviction firmly in our hearts, we went to the J.W. McConnell Foundation to pitch our plan. We hoped they would understand the importance of expanding their innovative ideas to the rest of business school students – the future leaders of the community, private and government sectors. And they did. They bought the plan and so we had the money for Year One! We were on our way.

We stayed close to home in the beginning, and took full advantage of all the support we were getting from McGill. We advertised the program to all 150 McGill-McConnell Program participants and were sure we would have an inbox overflowing with projects. Four organizations came through with projects. It was less than we had hoped for but more than existed before – so we were happy! The summer of 2001saw 5 business students find internship placement through CEI. Four of them were from McGill and one from UBC: we were a national program!

No pain, no gain…

As anyone who has started their own business knows, entrepreneurial growing pains are inevitable. As a 2 x ½ person program, run out of spare rooms and basements, we worked hard to convince foundations, sponsors, organizations and business schools of our idea. We had lofty goals and elaborate language. More importantly though, we had the support of students who applied by the hundreds to the handful of opportunities CEI had to offer. We were small but we were making head way. We plowed forward despite funding shortfalls and lack of celebrity and slowly grew - intern by intern, business school by business school, program by program. We found individual allies within institutions who helped guide us and who funded our programs.

Thanks to the support, the perseverance and the demand by students, in 4 years CEI has expanded from domestic projects to include international projects, career fairs and alumni workshops. CEI had carved a niche for itself.

As the organization entered its fifth year in 2005 it was time for reflection and learning. With another successful summer under way and 17 interns placed across the country, CEI took time to look at itself, learn from the past to better enable it to plan for the future. In August of 2005 a strategic workshop was held with CEI’s key stakeholders and some of the like-minded Canadian organizations and associations with which there are as of yet unexplored potential synergies!

In 2006, 16 interns were placed across the country and new corporate sponsors joined the CEI community. We made many improvements to our program based on lessons learned so far. We learned that there are certain criteria of an internship placement that are essential to ensure a successful experience for both the student and the host organization and so we developed a very detailed assessment matrix to rate projects, involving phone interviews between CEI alumni and hopeful host organizations. We learned also that interviewing business students for a potential job is a specific skill, and not necessarily one that the community sector has had the opportunity to develop extensively. We therefore produced an interview protocol & guide sheet to assist organizations with candidate selection and ensure the best fit possible. Both of these innovations saw the active and essential involvement of CEI alumni. Students too began to play a more active role in CEI and the year marked the re-branding of the 'CEI annual career event' to the 'Leadership and Social Change Career Event & Conference'. There was a special thrill for CEI when the name was decided upon by students and alumni through an open dialogue process. CEI's mission when founded was to engage business school graduates as active supporters in the creation of a more socially responsible and environmentally sustainable society. MBA students who were drawn to CEI identified with leading social change… 2006 was a good year.

2007 marked CEI's 7th summer and 12 interns joined the growing alumni base. Through CEI, 83 business graduates had now directly experienced the Canadian community sector and applied their management skills towards helping organizations achieve their mission. The interest in CEI was still strong from students, organizations and now more so from the corporate funders who began to identify CEI interns as high potential young talent. Business schools also started to recognize more directly the value of community sector placements for their students: both the Sauder and Rotman schools of business offered scholarships to a number of their MBAs who received CEI placements. Both of these changes marked exciting shifts in the landscape. CEI developed a 'Leadership and Social Change Career Event Manual' including basic how to's, local contacts and wisdom accumulated from previous years of experiences and successfully transferred the event over to business students directly. The events had now become part of the annual activities that the local Net Impact chapters organized in their respective schools and were being supported by school administration. All this was a tremendous sign of success for CEI and of how times have changed over 8 years. When it was founded, CEI had clear objectives of effecting change within business schools - that they integrate more fully the values of community engagement, social justice and environmental sustainability. In 2007, with the transfer of the career events and the establishment of the school-specific scholarships, CEI was two steps closer to achieving this objective.

…to be continued!