Randy Brown is the quintessential work horse, prioritizing substance over flash. He told the Chicago Got Game campers that “short-term goals lead to long-term dreams.” His hard work on the court and in the classroom allowed him to excel at the highest level. This message applies as aptly to those of us without hoop dreams. Stay focused on your goals and the action steps necessary to accomplish them. Put in the time each day and never give up.

-Greg Nance

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The camp was designed by Jamie Adams and Patrick Miller, heavily-recruited varsity star athletes at Hales Franciscan, a private Catholic high school. Patrick and Jamie are successful Moneythink mentees who wanted to connect high school varsity athletes with great role models, including NBA players and executives, college athletes, and minority business leaders from Chicago’s inner-city. Jamie and Patrick believed that this opportunity for connection and collaboration was a key formative experience for the athletes, who benefited from discovering the personal stories of perseverance, ambition and hard work from these fantastic role models.

Current college basketball players led campers in drills and shared their experiences as collegiate athletes. Camp counselors came from the varsity squads at the University of Chicago and Redlands College. The camp consisted of five discussions led by notable NBA executives and business leaders, six drill sessions and a break-out session to discuss goal-setting. The University of Chicago was so impressed with Chicago Got Game’s format and vision that it granted $2,000 in seed funding to launch the camp.

Chicago Got Game is the first business launched by Moneythink’s entrepreneurship program. Hales Franciscan students received twice weekly instruction in business fundamentals, goal-setting and leadership. For their final project, Jamie Adams and Patrick Miller pitched a basketball camp to inspire top South Side athletes. Moneythink mentors and classmates worked to improve the business plan in preparation for the Moneythink Young Entrepreneur’s Conference. Patrick and Jamie’s presentation at MYEC earned them top honors from the panel of business leaders and educators.

Chicago Got Game was directed by Greg Nance, Dustin Popiel and Mike Casey.

Chicago Got Game’s guest speakers:

- Randy Brown, Assistant General Manager and former Director of Player Development for the Chicago Bulls and 3-time NBA Champion

- Gene Dibble, Managing Director for Early Stage Venture Partners and former Duke University basketball player. Prior to founding ESVP, Gene held many prominent positions for the City of Chicago and Clear Channel Entertainment

- Kathryn Volzer, Assistant Director of Admissions and Athletics Liaison, University ofChicago

- Ian Mahoney, Ian Mahoney is Vice President of Marketing for Ion Media and has served as Marketing Manager for the Chicago Bulls and Director of Basketball Administration for the New York Knicks. He is in his 7th season as the Assistant Varsity Basketball Coach for University High School.

- Donna Gaines, Executive Director of The Alliance of Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs (ABLE). ABLE was founded in 1992 and is comprised of a select group of leading African American CEOs in Chicago that provide proactive mentoring and outreach.

~posted by Greg Nance

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What I love most about Moneythink is that it shows the potential and skills that everybody has inside of them.  From high school students executing engaging pitches to mentors taking the initiative for new projects (or saving my own backside more than once), the organization gives everybody involved an equal chance to shine.  This blog post cannot even begin to describe how much I’ve learned from that, or the depth of the friendships that I’ve developed.  Above all, Moneythink has taught me to believe in the goodwill and potential of everyone around me.

Morgan

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Moneythink, is one of twelve finalists in the Sparkseed Social Innovation Competition. Sparkseed is an awesome organization that funds college social entrepreneurs. We at Moneythink are crossing our fingers that we’ll be selected as one of a few winners and get to experience the incubation and prizes awarded to Sparkseed winners.

Notably, Sparkseed is also a winner of a similar-type competition, hosted by the Financial Times. Here’s the press release:

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Financial Times Award Signals Shift in Social Change

Small Nonprofit Wins with Big Vision

NEW YORK, NY (March 25, 2010) – Last night, the Financial Times Social Innovation Awards confirmed the rise of a new force: student innovation. The Social Innovation Awards present a forum for organizations to highlight their latest methods for addressing social needs and promoting better business. Though some of the largest and most well-known corporations were among those competing for recognition, a small non-profit, Sparkseed, went home with the prestigious Best Social Investment Strategy award.

Sparkseed uses a unique approach to help young risk-takers apply business principles to address the world’s toughest problems.  Founder Mike Del Ponte guides Sparkseed in identifying, incubating, and investing in the next generation of social entrepreneurs.

As the recent success of Facebook demonstrates, college students can build revolutionary organizations with global impact. Sparkseed works to harness such capability to develop a new class of young entrepreneurs interested in social return on investment.

As Del Ponte explains, “Students have the creativity, passion, and drive to address issues like climate change, poverty, and global health through novel ventures. But they often lack the means to turn outside -the-box thinking into ideas that yield social dividends. Arming this untapped brain trust with the right resources will have untold benefits for society.”

Sparkseed has supported 31 ventures since 2007 and will select ten more on 1 April. By leveraging an impressive network of partners, Sparkseed provides mentoring, skills training, executive coaching, and consulting to each of its student-led ventures. And by investing capital directly in the student ventures, Sparkseed provides validation and financial resources to best student ideas in hopes of yielding social returns and financial sustainability.

To learn more about Sparkseed and the ventures it supports, please visit www.sparkseed.org.

To contact Mike Del Ponte for information about the organization or for broader commentary on social innovation, please e-mail mike@sparkseed.org. Biography and high-resolution photos available upon request.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Be on the lookout for Moneythink’s upcoming article in the Chicago Tribune!

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I believe this stark contrast is most noticeable in football. Sure there are a few exceptions – Tony Siragusa comes to mind – but I find this to be a very interesting phenomenon.

Undoubtedly, the networks have done their homework and have found that viewers identify with this strategy for one reason or another. Some guesses as to why….

1. The networks want to appear to be non-sexist, so they place females in a relatively non-important position that is not meant to illicit much interpretation of the sport, etc.

2. These female reporters are meant to appeal to the heavy male audience (they usually are very attractive, just saying).

3. They are meant to appease the growing female minority.

4. Females are better at eliciting the emotion, passion, and personality of the coaches and players that they express on the court.

These are just a few guesses, have at it.

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A youth organization runs an operation that gives its members hands-on experience running a mercantile business, one that sends them door-to-door, teaches them how to market their wares online, and puts its proceeds right back toward programs for the young merchants. Furthermore, the operation is focused on giving girls this opportunity to learn business sense on the fly, thus working to eradicate the under-representation of women in the workforce.

What words does this idea evoke? Savvy? Genius? Yes and yes, but how about… delicious?

The organization in question is Girls Scouts of America, and their wares are those omnipresent cookies–Thin Mints, Samoas, and all the other savory flavors we’ve all been munching down since time out of mind. Everyone knows this is an effective fundraiser, but lost on many is the fact that these girls are learning lessons that will help them raise their own funds (salaries) in the future.

GSA is going online to market cookies for the first time this year, adding a new facet to both the fundraising and financial literacy portions of their project. Cookies will not be sold directly online or via e-mail–too many safety concerns arose to expand that far–but the Internet will be used as an advertising resource. Thus one more important aspect of the business world will be added to the slate of working-world training these young saleswomen are receiving.

Cookie sales are still active this year–they end March 7–and it would benefit all of us, not to mention the girls involved, to purchase some.

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In a report done by the American Council of Education, the college student body has been 43% male since 2000. For those of you too lazy to do the math, this yields 133 women to 100 men. A skewed result, but not anywhere near 185 to 100.

This does not mean David Brooks research is incorrect, it simply means that men are graduating later; which is supported by a survey done by the American Community Survey in 2008 that surveyed 25 year olds and found that there are 141 women college graduates per 100 men college graduates – much as we would expect from the enrollment data.

So what can it be?

A few ideas to ponder…

1. Men may take longer to graduate college due to course selections. Perhaps more men are enrolling in 5 year programs (science, pre-med, etc.) than women. Also, it is becoming increasingly uncommon for people to graduate college in 4 years which may perpetuate this data.

2. Men may be more inclined to take a “gap” year or year off in the middle of studies. In addition, men are more likely to join the military. Many people serve for a few years and return years later to graduate, thus they are older when they graduate.

3. Men may be more apt to get unfocused and chase girls instead of grades.

Just a few thoughts.

Dustin Popiel

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For example, as a U.S software-developer, one may drive a Toyota (a Japanese brand that is manufactured in China), wear a Zara shirt (Spanish brand made in Vietnam), and uses a HP laptop (made in Taiwan). Also, this person creates an iPhone app for people to use in Europe, China, and Latin America.

Everyone in the society is engaged in the global economy now. Therefore, the problem that occurs in any country does not only affect the local resident, but it also produces a chain of effects on many foreign economic entities. This is the exact reason why a subprime mortgage crisis led to the mega-scale global recession.

The following two articles are examples of such stories:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aMUkg_B7PG2E

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ah4×5Nnk0J_g&pos=2

Though Asian countries have relatively small financial industry compared to the Western world (since they rely heavily on exportation), Asian markets have been hit hardly by the shrinking of Western demand over the past two years. Thus, with global economy, every country is responsible for the global financial stability.

David Haisha Chen

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Although this short term strategy kept Greece in the Euro Zone, it brought about Greece’s long term financial distress. Just before the crisis started, the banks that helped Greece hide its debts started gambling on the default of Greece. Why would these banks bet against the countries they were supporting? It is a hedging strategy. An analogy to this action is that an adventurer buys life insurance before starting a dangerous venture. However, the negative sentiment towards the Greece’s debt market accumulates as more players bet on Greece’s default. This hedging activities of investment banks drove up the cost of debt the Greek government had taken.

The result of all these events is the current high potential of a Greece’s default.

Here are three articles that cover the story more comprehensively:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/business/global/25swaps.html

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/fed-reviewing-goldmans-moves-on-greek-debt/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aK1wUM.mdeao&pos=5

It’s time for us to ask some questions as the financial crisis heads towards an end. How should the government regulate the financial industry? Should banks take advantage of a country’s disaster?

David Haisha Chen

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The immediate gut-reflex of anyone that is a member of MoneyThink is to declare: “Of course!” The MoneyThinker then goes on to present an array of anecdotes, examples, testimonials to corroborate his point. He may cite the student from Hales that put money he earned into a Certificate of Deposit instead of buying gym shoes. He may explain the group of girls at South Shore who not only opened a bank accounts, but talked their parents into opening bank accounts as well.

But, of course, we are not responding to the heart of the critic’s question. The critic is asking, is there any scientifically verifiable evidence that financial literacy leads to an increase in some social metric (increase in savings rate, increased earnings, etc.). And herein lies the problem of any financial literacy organization. Few organizations have actually scientifically tested the effectiveness of their programs. Their metrics say “x % of our participants feel financially responsible” or “y % of our participants have increased positive attitudes towards education.”

Yes critics, we agree. We need to not only teach in classrooms, but we need to make sure that our teaching is having an impact. Rest assured, we are working on making that happen. Keep checking back.

Cheers!

Shashin

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