Wake Forest MBA Students Raise $25,000 to Benefit Communities in Schools

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C.—MBA students at Wake Forest University’s Babcock Graduate School of Management raised nearly $25,000 during the school’s annual charity auction held April 6, 2007. The money will benefit Communities in Schools, a nonprofit organization that helps youth prepare for successful lives by staying in school.

The Babcock School’s Student Government Association conducts the charity auction every year. This year’s total of $24,652 set a record for the largest amount raised by the auction. Each year, the students select a local charity to receive the auction’s proceeds. Organizations previously benefiting from the Charity Auction include the Children’s Home of Winston-Salem, Ronald McDonald House, the American Diabetes Association, Hospice, Habitat for Humanity and others.

Most of the items auctioned are donated by faculty, students and businesses. The first-year MBA students purchased a cook-off between professors for $6,900. The cook-off is a long-standing friendly competition—Texas barbecue versus North Carolina barbecue—that traditionally has drawn the auction’s single highest bid. Every year Babcock professors with ties to Texas and North Carolina host the barbecue and cook for the winning bidders. Other donated items included luxury accommodations in St. Maarten, a West Virginia hunting trip, gift certificates to local stores and restaurants, diploma frames and bottles of wine.

Established in 1989, Communities in Schools of North Carolina is an independently incorporated not-for-profit organization representing both private and public interests in the state. CISNC assists communities by supporting the 31 local CIS organizations across the state and serving as an advocate for children and youth. CIS is the nation’s largest stay-in-school network, serving more than a million youth in 154 communities across the United States.