Business As Mission
The Center for Business As Mission serves as a hub for the academic study of Business As Mission and for connecting students to local and global opportunities to engage and apply what is being learned in the classroom.
Business As Mission (BAM) is an invitation to participate in profitable business as a means of leveraging the marketplace to create sustainable solutions for the common good of those in need both locally and globally.
From a theological perspective, BAM might also be thought of as a holy collision of business and mission, work and faith, and kingdom and culture.
Why Business as Mission?
We believe training students to see business with a missional framework will produce:
- Sustainable impact upon global and local needs. Business As Mission is a proven strategy for serving the underserved through sustainable development, use of profit for impact, empowerment through job creation, and the formation of strategic partnerships.
- Better equipped, more experienced, more creative, more globally engaged students. Students are engaged in a high level of experiential learning both locally and globally. This enables them to be better equipped in the local and global marketplace. Embedded in BAM is the discipline of Social Entrepreneurship. These disciplines require solving not only complex business problems but also social problems. Students practicing these disciplines naturally become highly skilled problem solvers who will be equipped to make a significant impact upon an organization.
- Employees that contribute greater value to the workplace. Our students have a sense of purpose that goes deeper than just making an income for themselves.
- An understanding of the upward trending market demand of social responsibility. 90% of global customers indicate that they make purchasing decisions based upon the social impact a business makes.
Conscious firms outperformed the overall stock market by a ratio of 10.5:1 over a 15 year period, delivering more than 1,600% total returns when the market was up just over 150% for the same period.
— John Mackey, "Conscious Capitalism"
BAM is integrated into the entire College of Business experience through our ongoing focus on training students to embody five specific Values and Virtues of Jesus, chosen by our faculty as essential to business.
The College of Business offers a minor in Business As Mission to students across campus. This minor offers classes that help students develop a framework for living out faith ranging from the office to the marketplace to the board room.
Business as Mission Minor
Co-Curricular
A vital component of BAM is experiential learning. Students learn real business while engaging in real mission. Whether building products or services to generate profit that is used to empower others or offering real world consulting to local and global areas of need, students immediately apply their education in BAM in a way that is impactful.
Our Entrepreneur’s Intro to Business class gives our students a foundational and experiential opportunity to learn business in a real-world setting. Students open and run their own businesses during the semester using a startup capital loan to creating products and services that create a profit. This class also exposes our students to how business can be used to do good in the world. Class profits are used to empower aspiring marginalized entrepreneurs in developing parts of the world. This allows students to create and learn real business and real impact simultaneously.
Local
Students do not have to look very far to engage opportunities in Business As Mission. Students have the opportunity to invest directly in the local community by seeking to empower immigrants, refugees, or those lacking opportunity through teaching entrepreneurial skills that allow local individuals to break free from the entrapment of poverty cycles.
Global
We believe in long-term sustainable mission that moves beyond the handout. Students are encouraged to engage in addressing root causes of global poverty by equipping and empowering others. To accomplish this task we offer an immersive experience that takes our students into the heart of systemic problems abroad. This is where students can apply their BAM education to breaking cycles that limit opportunity.