Group to Advise Organizations

Students with the Carolina Consulting Solutions, a new campus organization that strives to financially advise student groups and help them run more efficiently, say the group is still in its initial stages.

Justin Cunningham, the president and founder of CCS, said the group's main goal is to provide student groups with consulting services free of charge. It will most likely begin administering financial advice next semester.

"We plan to provide a service to student groups by helping them think through business issues and provide solutions to the problems they have," Cunningham said.

The main target group of the organization is primarily student groups, but Cunningham said the CCS plans to expand and include local nonprofit organizations in the near future.

He said the CCS will split organizations into two groups.

One group will be concerned with start-up organizations, and the other will be for existing ones.

The CCS has began informal talks with several student groups on campus, Cunningham said, and every organization has expressed interest in the committee.

The group hopes to recruit students from the Kenan-Flagler Business School to act as consulters next semester. Cunningham said the committee also will attempt to enlist business school professors to act as trainers for the consulters.

The committee hopes to get practicing consultants from the business world to teach members of the committee real-life professional tactics.

"We are trying to mimic a real consulting firm and recreate the experience on campus," Cunningham said.

Daniel Johnson, a co-founder of the CCS, said several efforts have been made in order to recruit students. He said fliers have been posted at the business school as well as e-mails sent to certain group listservs.

"We want to take on some clients and work the kinks out of our system," Johnson said.

Cunningham also said seven executive positions are still open.

Applications are available on the group's Web site at http://www.unc.edu/ccs and are due Monday by midnight.

One of the main jobs of an executive is to train future recruits of the CCS, Cunningham said.

He said another goal of the executive committee is to work on problems presented by clients on a case-by-base basis.

Cunningham said another goal of the group is for student organizations to be able to submit requests for assistance through the Web site.

"Our goal is to strive to have other groups succeed," Cunningham said.

John Curtis, the faculty adviser for the CCS, said he thinks it will be a positive addition to UNC.

"It sounded like something worthwhile," he said.

"I happen to strongly adhere to students learning from students. It's a great manifestation of it."

The University Editor can be reached at udesk@unc.edu.