Actually, the profits of our 48-hour social enterprise total $1121, but who’s counting. :) It all started in June, when I began receiving many emails everyday from desperate upperclassmen trying to sell dozens of textbooks via mass emails. I would respond occasionally when an item piqued my interest, but NEVER got through on the party line because the items were always already dibbed. It began to aggravate me, which culminated in a ranting email to some friends:
“DUDE! If people do not stop selling me their used toilet paper books, I swear to goodness that I will organize a coherent streamlined book distribution service … with volunteer cashiers during a ONE TIME sale, at which the volunteers can take a cut of their profits as a fundraiser for their organization …. SERIOUSLY! STOP EMAILING ME!”
Fast forward 2.5 months later, and this simple threat resulted in the implementation of the first-ever centralized Student-to-Student Book Sale at Harvard MeDental School. Two days of skipping Pharmacology classes could not have been a better investment (don’t tell). We simply had folks drop off their books all day Thursday, and then sold these books on two simple cafeteria tables Thursday and Friday afternoons. It had the complexity of a Lemonade Stand, but the daily sales volume of a … dental office. ;)
Sellers determined their own asking price, wrote it on an envelope, put it in the book, and then customers remitted their payments in the envelopes and we (student volunteers) took a 10% cut for our efforts. The volunteer response was more than adequate to staff book intake, physical set-up, money laundering… I mean, handling, and distribution of payments/unsold merchandise to sellers.
My co-entrepreneur, Crissy, is the chief leader of our ASDA chapter (American Student Dental Association) and I myself head up the new Harvard Dental chapter of the American Association of Public Health Dentistry, which we call OPEN (Oral health Pursuit of Equity Network). OPEN began this March, so as a new organization we need all the fundraising we can get. ASDA and OPEN, therefore, worked evenly toward the sale and will each get 50% of the profit for our own community-based projects this year! It’s more than any grant we could have applied for in the same short period of time, and we now have complete freedom to allocate the funds to any event/effort we so choose.
I am ecstatic at the results of two days of hard work, and very proud of all involved for donating their precious spare time and creating a $valuable$ experience for everyone. We literally moved TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS CASH from eager student buyers to excited student sellers, meaning that HMS/HSDM student-sellers are $9,000 richer today then they were yesterday, and our two fine student organizations can begin robustly planning for an eventful year.
Now, I need to catch up on the 10 chapters of Pharm. reading that I’ve ignored. It’s all worth it.
