Along with winning a regional champion trophy earlier this month in Atlanta, Ga., ENACTUS, which stands for Entrepreneurial Action (For Others Creates a Better World for All of) Us, received a $1,000 travel stipend in order to compete in the 2016 national competition May 15-17, to be held in St. Louis, Missouri.

Globally recognized, ENACTUS is an international non-profit organization that aims to mobilize university students to engage in meaningful service by forming teams with business leaders.

Stetson, along with 24 other universities in the southern region, will compete against more than 100 teams in May for the national title. The national winner will advance and compete in the ENACTUS World Cup to be held in Toronto, Canada.

Stetson’s ENACTUS chapter impressed the judges with their unique community projects, effective leadership and social advocacy, representing Stetson University’s institutional value commitment to Global Citizenship in their work.

Facilitating projects such as Strides That Matter, the Leave a Legacy Project and the ENACTUS Friday Lecture Series, ENACTUS engaged the Stetson community by applying business techniques to outreach programs.

“We wanted these projects to be sustainable using social enterprise to tackle socioeconomic problems,” said Tara Batista, Ph.D., visiting assistant professor of management in Stetson’s School of Business Administration and ENACTUS faculty advisor.

Every project ENACTUS presented was analyzed for direct and indirect impact through the number of active participants, revenue, capital raised and job creation—similar to how a company would survey its products’ costs and benefits.

“We don’t give hand-outs,” said Theresa Shaw, junior general business administration major and ENACTUS team member. “We give hand-ups.”

“A lot of community service projects will plant a garden or build a house, using donations and government grants,” said Batista. “But what happens if that money dries up? What do you do when your budget is limited? We encouraged the implementation of profit-generating mechanisms.”

Along with Shaw, David Sawyer, Will Giberson, John Sawyer, Danielle Haight and Justin Ringer presented nearly 20 minutes of content and were prepared for approximately five minutes of questioning.

“We were really fortunate during this year’s questioning period,” said Shaw. “We had a few actual questions, but the rest were compliments.”

“They asked us questions like, ‘where do you find the time?’ and ‘how did you get all this done?’” said Batista. “A lot of schools outsourced a lot of what they did, and didn’t do anything themselves except maybe fundraising.” However, Stetson’s ENACTUS chapter aimed to be as interactive and hands-on as possible.”

The TSOLife project, a company started by the club president David Sawyer, general business administration major, demonstrated the unique fervor Stetson had for community outreach through the Leave a Legacy Foundation.

“It’s a website platform where you record your life’s history so generations after you, can have access to knowledge about their ancestry,” said Shaw. “What Leave a Legacy does is give the accounts for individuals who cannot otherwise access their families’ ancestries, so they can also share their stories.”

ENACTUS members are dedicated and passionate about their work in the community by maximizing the benefits and the impact each of its members has on the community. For those interested in becoming a member, ENACTUS candidates are invited to apply and interviewed.

“We look for people who care,” said Shaw. “One of the questions asked is ‘If you could see one problem fixed in your lifetime, what would it be?’”

“ENACTUS is a time-consuming organization that is rewarding if the student is passionate about social enterprise,” said Batista. “We look for hard workers.”

The impact ENACTUS has had on the local community is and will be long-lasting, Batista said.

For more informational on the national ENACTUS competition, please visit https://www.enactusunitedstates.org.

by Veronica Faison