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MBA INSIDER: SAMPLE APPLICATION ESSAYS Boston College (Carroll): Essay 1 QUESTION: What are your career goals upon graduating from the Carroll School of Management at BC? Please be specific. What steps do you plan to take before, during, and after your degree program to achieve career success in this field?
I have worked in the nonprofit world for seven years and witnessed the elemental nature of nonprofits' role in small communities. I have also observed that they operate under their own terms, often overlooking business trends and omitting basic strategies that could lend stability to their vital programs. While nonprofits largely depend upon the corporate world for financial support and expertise, they struggle to develop mutually beneficial relationships with these corporations. This factor handicaps their ability to be both entrepreneurial within their mission and competitive in current markets.
My goal is to become a leader in the nonprofit sector supporting the visual arts. I hope to become an executive director for an arts institution, such as a museum. I believe that the arts are valuable agents for social change, capable of building tourism and economic stability, educational opportunities and mutual understanding among people. My goal is to find creative ways for arts institutions to take full advantage of their cultural resources and provide solid economic development within communities. Museums have a unique capacity to drive tourism and retail sales that exponentially increases a community's economic strength, all while adding to its cultural breadth. I wish to develop these facets to their fullest potential. I envision leading a nonprofit that specifically works to build markets for local artists and integrates arts curriculum into public schools. At the Museum of [deleted] Foundation, I have built funding constituencies for four museums. These museums consistently integrate education into many aspects of their public programs and exhibitions at great benefit to local families and visitors. While these elements are at play in museums they can also occur in a distinct capacity, as with Aid to Artisans. This global nonprofit represents artists and simultaneously builds their marketing acumen, facilitates the distribution of their products and fortifies their livelihoods. For four years I have devoted myself to the Museum of [deleted] Foundation. Housed in a beautiful 200 year-old adobe house on the [deleted] Plaza, surrounded by 400 years of multicultural history, the work accomplished by the foundation brings progressive ideas to an historic community. In this extraordinary setting, I have learned the strengths and weaknesses of the four museums whose funding is my charge. Our dynamic foundation manages $12 million in endowment and builds private support for these state museums. The foundation effectively ties together arts, education and economic development by offering state museums an entrepreneurial avenue for growth. We incorporate both the museum shops and a licensing program into fundraising operations, and steady income streams are growing as a result. As Director of Development, my experience has encompassed communications, funding campaigns, finance, donor cultivation, estate planning, management, and marketing inclusively for the museums. Fundraising is the central focus to the foundation's mission and my work has a major influence on our direction and success as an institution. I am the primary liaison between the museums and their donors and my role is both to promote institutional credibility in the eyes of constituents and to gain their financial commitments. One unexpected benefit of working with the foundation is that I have been given tremendous responsibility. I was promoted to a senior leadership position two years ago, becoming the youngest woman to hold this position in foundation history. I have excelled in building cooperation among museum departments, involving donors in our organizational vision, and improving intra-office relations with museum staff. Additionally, my fundraising colleagues are primarily volunteer board members who are active community leaders 50 to 80 years of age. The ability to gain their respect has developed my confidence as a leader early on in my career. I have learned to work within the [deleted] community to build private funding sources within the political context of a state institution. I seek an MBA degree from Carroll School of Management because it will empower me to improve the level of professionalism and management in the nonprofit world, while also working to increase sustainable income in a competitive economy. I plan to build relevant finance, marketing and management skills through business studies. Nonprofits need to better translate their needs into a message that communicates with corporate sponsors, engaging businesses to fulfill their corporate goals and fundraising goals at the same time. I intend to gain a better understanding of the private sector and apply it directly to the unique issues and politics of nonprofits. Charles DuBois once declared that the important thing is, "To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become." This eloquently embodies my motivation to enroll in graduate school at this time. While I am currently in a career that offers much growth potential, I believe that it is more important to gain skills now that will not readily be learned on the job. MBA training will dramatically broaden my scope of business vision and I will be able to apply this new knowledge immediately. In return, my contribution will be to bring maturity, humor, determination and a passion for nonprofits to the Boston College community. Carroll School of Management will lend structured business acumen to the experience I have already gained, truly bringing renewed creativity to my nonprofit arts career. 
BW MALL
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