Boston University’s Student Government sponsored Saturday’s TEDxBU conference at the Questrom School of Business, donating $2,000 and marking BUSG as one of the event’s largest sponsorships.
Daniel Collins, SG’s Senate chair, said making the donation was an easy decision. SG approved the proposal in February, The Daily Free Press reported.
“We sponsored TEDxBU because we’re very excited and proud of what the organization has put together to bring to BU, and Student Government wanted to be a part of that,” Collins, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences, said before the conference. “We very quickly decided to give them the largest possible sponsorship to help them get the event on and to help Student Government get its name out there as a group on campus.”
The conference was co-chaired by Khizer Baig and Madeleine Frasca. Frasca said they originally were seeking sponsorship from organizations outside BU, but ultimately found more support from groups on campus.
“We ended up going through the different student governments to gain sponsorship, which I think tied in really nicely with our event, because the theme is “Landscape,” and so by going to the different student governments which each represent students of the different colleges, it really brought the different BU colleges together,” Frasca said during the conference.
Frasca said one of her College of Fine Arts professors, Wendy Swart Grossman, had experience as a nonprofit consultant, and so Frasca reached out to Grossman to help the group organize their fundraising approach. They decided on dividing their donors into three tiers of sponsorship: bronze, silver and gold.
“[Grossman] was really influential in helping us come up with the tier strategy, so when we went looking for sponsorship, we had sponsorship packages with what we were asking sponsors for and what would be included at each amount,” Frasca, a senior in CAS, said. “We were initially kind of low-balling what we were asking for, and she really pushed us to ask for more, which in the end really paid off, because we ended up exceeding our goal — our fundraising goal.”
The benefits of sponsorship included having a logo displayed on the event’s website, getting mentioned in the closing remarks, tabling and leading breakout activities. SG organized two of those activities.
“Our first activity is a “What would you do before you graduate?” wall so you can write anything you want to do before you graduate BU,” Vaishnavi Kothapalli, the director of outreach for SG, said. “We also have another station where you can write a letter to yourself, and we’ll mail it to you in a year, so you can see how you progress and how different you are in that timespan.”
Kothapalli said one of SG committee’s brainstormed the events, focusing on activities that were both engaging and built off the theme of the conference.
“It helps you see how much you’ve succeeded and what changes you’ve made,” Kothapalli, a sophomore in Questrom, said during the conference. “We thought that’d be helpful, especially due to the theme of this event: success and leadership, that it would be really fitting to think about how you want to pursue yourself.”
She said TEDxBU was a great opportunity, not only for SG, but for all students at BU.
“We all love TED events, we think they’re a great idea, they provide great leadership insights to everyone who watches,” Kothapalli said. “It’s a great thing to have, especially at BU with this many students, it’s a great opportunity for all the graduate and undergraduate students who come.”
Several students who attended TEDxBU said they were glad SG donated to the conference.
Aiden Truong, a freshman in Questrom, said the conference helped to inspire people who attended.
“I think this kind of event is really nice in the way they spread knowledge and ideas,” Truong said. “It’s really beneficial for everyone who’s attending this, so funding from the Student Government is justifiable.”
Sho Nihei, a sophomore in Questrom and CAS, said the activities SG put on at the conference built off the theme of the day to keep students engaged.
“I think setting a clear goal for your future self like that is really important, and a lot of the talks that we heard in TED today had to do with finding a purpose and things like that, so I think it’s sort of goes in tangent with setting a goal for yourself in the future,” Nihei said. “I think that’s a cool exercise to do.”
Valerie Nam, a freshman in the Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, said that although she wasn’t aware that SG was sponsoring the conference, she thinks it’s a good investment.
“I think having TED at BU is a really good opportunity for students who are interested in it, because you can take a lot from it, there’s a lot of different messages that are coming from the different speakers,” Nam said. “I’m really into just exploring different ideas and thoughts, I’ve already taken in a lot of information from them and kind of thought about myself and reflected, so it’s been great.”
