Bachelor of Business students consult for Big Brothers Big Sisters

For Torrens University students studying the Bachelor of Business, this became reality through IND301A Industry Consulting Project. The subject gave students the opportunity to work with Big Brothers Big Sisters Australia, a national youth mentoring charity supporting vulnerable and disadvantaged young people through long-term, one-to-one mentoring relationships.

Working in a team of ten, students developed a donor-recruitment campaign for the Big Brothers Big Sisters Change Makers Club, a monthly subscription program designed to attract regular donors and help futureproof the organisation's financial sustainability.

The project was more than a classroom exercise. Students had to understand a real organisation, respond to a genuine business challenge, develop a solution for a specific audience, and present their recommendations directly to the client.

What is Big Brother and Big Sister program?

Big Brothers Big Sisters Australia matches young people aged 7 to 17 with trained adult volunteer mentors. Through long-term friendships, the organisation aims to build resilience, confidence and emotional wellbeing.

The Change Makers Club challenge

The Change Makers Club provides an opportunity for individuals and businesses to make a lasting contribution to this work through regular giving. At the beginning of the project, Big Brothers Big Sisters had 21 Change Makers and was aiming to reach 100 by the end of 2026.

The challenge for students was clear: how could they communicate the value of the Change Makers Club in a way that potential donors would understand and actually want to watch?

The project also connected to a broader social need. Access to extracurricular activities is significantly lower among children and young people from Australia's lowest socioeconomic communities. Big Brothers Big Sisters estimates that mentoring a vulnerable young person costs approximately $1,500 for a year, compared with an average cost of around $1,400 per day to keep a young person in juvenile detention.

Independent research cited by Big Brothers Big Sisters has also found that every dollar invested in its mentoring programs can generate a significant social and economic return.

For students, this meant developing a campaign where the message, audience, and purpose all mattered.

Do students work on real business problems in consulting projects?

The students were asked to address the challenge: “to understand what might motivate someone to become a regular donor”.

That meant considering the different reasons people might join the Change Makers Club. Potential supporters might want to:

• Make a lasting difference in the lives of young people
• Support an organisation in their local community
• Understand how their contribution is used
• Feel connected to a community of people creating positive change
• Contribute to a practical solution to youth disadvantage

They were asked to turn those motivations into clear marketing campaign. Their work involved researching the organisation and its audience, considering the competitor landscape, developing campaign messaging and identifying how the campaign could be implemented across social media.

This is the type of thinking used in marketing, communications and consulting careers: starting with the audience and the client's needs, then developing a creative solution that supports a measurable commercial or organisational outcome.

What happens when a university consulting project has real-world constraints?

One of the most valuable parts of the project was learning that creative work must operate within professional, ethical and organisational requirements.

The students's creative needed to comply with Big Brothers Big Sisters' child-protection policy, which requires mentors and mentees to be shown as the same gender in promotional material.

They also needed to work their scripts so that they accurately represented the organisation's screening, consent and cooling-off processes. The language could not unintentionally suggest that mentoring relationships were established without the appropriate safeguards.

Another important challenge was communicating where donations would be directed. The team refined the messaging to explain that donations support mentor training and screening, processes that help reduce the organisation's waitlist rather than implying that donations directly fund mentoring activities.

These details may sound small, but they are central to professional communication. Effective marketing is not just about having a good idea. It is about making sure the idea is accurate, responsible, appropriate for the audience and useful to the client.

Co-leading this project taught me more about consulting, stakeholder management, and what it means to deliver under pressure than anything I have done before.

Jeremie Ntwali, student team leader

Nailing the client presentation through practice

The project concluded with a live pitch to Emma from Big Brothers Big Sisters Australia.

Students developed and presented the campaign concept, research context, competitor analysis, social media content and implementation recommendations. The students also presented the video they had filmed and produced themselves - after all, uni is the place to practice new skills.

The pitch was well received. Emma described the experience as a genuinely positive one for both the students and Big Brothers Big Sisters Australia:

Working with Evan and the Social Enterprise Hub at Torrens has been such a genuinely positive experience both personally and for Big Brothers Big Sisters Australia. Evan does an incredible job of understanding our organisation and creating a supportive bridge between BBBS and the students. This trimester's cohort has been particularly fantastic - bringing enthusiasm, fresh thinking and genuine care to their projects, with some really valuable ideas that I can take straight back to my team. BBBS is incredibly grateful for the opportunity to work alongside Torrens, Evan and the students.

Emma Peacock, Big Brothers Big Sisters Australia National Donor Support and Relationship Manager

Is it still worth studying business with AI?

AI can support many parts of a project like this. It can help generate ideas, organise information, compare options, draft content and speed up early-stage research.

However, a successful consulting project requires more than producing individual outputs.

Students still need to understand the client's purpose, interpret the audience's motivations, ask the right questions, respond to feedback, navigate ethical and organisational requirements, make decisions and bring multiple contributions together into one coherent solution.

AI can assist with the process, but it cannot replace the judgement, relationship-building and accountability required to work with a real client.

That is why university is an important place to practise these skills. Students can learn how to use emerging tools while developing the human capabilities that make those tools useful: research, critical thinking, creativity, communication, collaboration and professional judgement.

Consulting for a real client in a large team forces students to practise the skills employers actually ask for: negotiation, delegation, stakeholder communication, and project management, all under real pressure. A case study can never replicate that kind of learning.

Evan Karras, Academic Lead

Students interested in a Bachelor of Business may go on to explore careers in marketing, communications, consulting, project management, stakeholder engagement, social enterprise or not-for-profit organisations.

IND301A Industry Consulting Project is designed to enhance employability by giving students the opportunity to develop skills sought after in Australian and global workplaces. Students can build the confidence to respond to a brief, understand an audience, work with clients and develop solutions that have a purpose beyond the classroom.