Sabrina McEnaney is a senior majoring in accounting and finance. She is also the vice president of membership for Beta Alpha Psi (BAP), the accounting fraternity on campus. In August, McEnaney traveled to Atlanta, Georgia to participate in a BAP national conference competition, Project Run With It. Applicants were required to write an essay describing what they want to get out of the competition. Only 72 students were accepted out of over 1500 applications. The 72 competitors were assigned to a team of four.
Each team was presented with a business issue, not specific to accounting, from a local nonprofit. Teams had less than 48 hours to determine the problem, develop a solution, make a formal business proposal and present it to the judges.
A month before the competition, to prepare for the event, students were given a brief description of the nonprofit’s current situation . McEnaney took the initiative to do as much research about the organization as possible. She looked into the nonprofits competitors and the current market situation for what they were trying to achieve.
Within the 48 hours of the competition, McEnaney’s team analyzed the nonprofit organization’s needs, did a full competitor and market analysis, analyzed their budget, performed a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threat (SWOT) analysis, developed a marketing strategy, forecasted demand for the product, developed a marketing strategy and performed a price analysis for the product.
McEnaney’s team won first place and teams solution for the nonprofit is going to be implemented. The Boise State University Beta Alpha Psi chapter received $1,000. This is the second consecutive year that Boise State had a member on the winning team.
When asked about her experience with this competition, McEnaney replied, “The case competition was by far the most challenging, yet most rewarding project I have ever been a part of. The biggest lesson I learned from the competition was that people skills are the most important part of any project or work experience. You can take four people with dominant leadership personalities from diverse backgrounds and from different parts of the country or the world, with each one having a very different opinion of what the best solution would be, and there is bound to be some tension; however, when you all strive to reach the same goal and are able to work together despite all these differences, the results can be absolutely amazing and help so many others in the community. That is what I will remember most about this experience.”
About being involved with BAP, McEnaney said, “Beta Alpha Psi has helped me grow and develop myself in ways I could never have imagined, both personally and professionally. The organization has so much support from the community and so many resources they are willing to share with its members and other students. I simply took advantage of the opportunities the organization provides and chose to extend those opportunities and more to other members by becoming an officer. The officer team has been phenomenal in the past year and they have all come up with so many great ideas to improve the chapter and to give back to the community as a whole. It has been remarkable being part of such a giving student organization.”