Mentorship and the StartupTree Decision
University of Manitoba | StartupTree
When University of Manitoba first joined StartupTree in December 2019, their first goal was to make their venture coaching program more community-oriented and efficient for their staff. After the major improvements and success for mentorship, the Center promptly began the transition to using StartupTree for competitions, events, and more. With a one-step-at-a-time approach, StartupTree has helped the Stu Clark Center become accessible to more students than they had ever anticipated.
The Challenge
The Stu Clark Center for Entrepreneurship at Manitoba University was dealing with a mentorship system that required extensive manual data entry. They realized that in order to gain the desired outreach and impact for the program, operational efficiency had to increase.
The Solution
To eliminate manual processes and challenges, and to save hours and hours of busy work, the Stu Clark Center for decided upon implementing StartupTree.
The Results
With immediate improvements to the program’s organizational ability, operational efficiency, and resource centralization, the mentorship program (followed by event and competition programs) was able to expand and positively impact more curious students.
ABOUT STU CLARK CENTER FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP
The Stu Clark Center for Entrepreneurship is the main entrepreneurship center at the University of Manitoba. Their main mission is to “spark the entrepreneurial spirit in all students, and enable students to realize that entrepreneurship is a viable career choice regardless of their area of study.” With over 25,000 students at the University, it is essential that the Stu Clark Center is an available resource to students across all faculties.
ABOUT STARTUPTREE
StartupTree is the leading platform used by top universities and organizations to unlock the potential of ecosystems through data and development of more robust networks.
Contact us: hello@startuptree.co
The Challenge
Room for error with extensive manual components, and time management
The Stu Clark Center created their mentorship program about four years ago. When they first started, students could set up meetings with mentors either by 1) going into the office and speaking with the front desk administrator, or 2) they could email to the office to get an appointment set up.
After some time of dealing with extensive manual work, the Center decided that they needed something to make their venture coaching program more operationally efficient. This would also include a peer to peer matching and communication program, which was not feasible with the current operational system.
"Scheduling mentorship was taking up too much of our time.
"Scheduling mentorship was taking up too much of our time.
The office administrator would have to look at the venture coaches calendar, talk to the students, exchange information, and then book an appointment and follow up with an email to confirm the appointment. And things would still get mixed up.
That is what pushed us to look at programs that could eliminate some of those manual processes and challenges.”
Lindsay Friesen
Marketing Coordinator at University of Manitoba
The Solution
How University of Manitoba rolled out mentorship step by step
The StartupTree Decision
Looking into Time-Saving Opportunities
When the scheduling component began to be too much to take on, the Stu Clark team began an analysis of potential platforms, with the idea of cutting out the hours of manual data entry they were doing. They eventually landed upon StartupTree, and started using it to manage their venture mentoring program right away.
One Step at a Time
Mentorship, Competitions, and More
The Stu Clark Center prides themselves on the success of their competition program, so they were hesitant to begin using a different platform to organize competitions. After they were comfortable with using StartupTree for mentorship, they decided to test it out on one of their smaller, undergraduate competitions.
"StartupTree eliminates all the back-and-forth between email chains and threads.
It allows students to go in and book a meeting themselves that fits in their schedule. Students now fill out an intake form so we can track important information about them (i.e. their faculty and their startup). Venture coaches now know exactly what students want to discuss [before meeting] and can be better prepared before heading into a meeting."
Lindsay Friesen
Marketing Coordinator at University of Manitoba
The Results
Mentorship increased, manual work decreased
With a gradual, step-by-step implementation approach, almost all of the manual work has been eliminated from the mentorship program, events board, and competition program.
With the increased number of students who seek mentorship, attend events, and apply for competitions, the automated metrics gathered by StartupTree are an essential time-saver, and have a huge impact on tracking the growth of the Stu Clark Center.
Marketing Coordinator at University of Manitoba
Lindsay Friesen
"Bringing on StartupTree has been incredible for us."
Executive Director of the Stu Clark Center for Entrepreneurship
Debra Jonasson-Young
"What we started out with three years ago has been leveraged in the number of touches that we have on students now by 100 fold from what we had before.
The more you can connect with a student, the greater opportunity you have to move them along the entrepreneurship continuum.”
What's next?
Building a community more accessible to students than ever before
Coordinating connections among peers, mentors, and alumni across all fields requires hard work and attention to detail from the right team. Through StartupTree, teams can work smarter, and not harder.
The sheer number of hours saved for staff, the increased visibility on metrics for stakeholders, and the centralization of community resources for students makes it all worth it.
“If we can mobilize 25,000 students to actually communicate across faculties... we can create a community where students from all backgrounds collaborate and help one another.
Something we could never do without StartupTree.”
Something we could never do without StartupTree.”
Debra Jonason-Young
Executive Director at University of Manitoba
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