Business Analytics Meets Societal Impact

• Students in a master’s-level analytics course at the University at Buffalo learn firsthand how to use their data storytelling and visualization skills to support sustainable community-focused initiatives.
• For their capstone project, students work with a nonprofit that helps underrepresented populations break cycles of generational poverty.
• Schools can amplify the impact of such projects by setting clear expectations, dividing large projects into smaller components, and aligning student skills with organizational need

 
Business leaders increasingly agree: The days of corporations operating solely to maximize shareholder value are behind us. In addition to paying attention to a slew of additional metrics alongside the bottom line, organizations are assessing the effects their actions have on employees, customers, communities, and the planet. 

How can business schools help companies measure their true impact on their stakeholders, as well as amplify their positive social capital, not merely their financial performance? Carefully selected student projects are an especially good place to start. One “hard skills” discipline is particularly well-suited to serving the needs of the community: business analytics.

At the University at Buffalo (UB) School of Management in New York, we are integrating the societal impact of management into our programs, teaching, experiential learning, and research. That effort extends into our Master of Science in Business Analytics program, launched in 2021 to help meet the skyrocketing demand for data analysts and technology leaders.

Throughout the 11-month program, students build their advanced technical, managerial, data visualization, and storytelling skills. The curriculum culminates in a capstone course where students work on projects for a variety of organizations, gaining valuable experience delivering solutions to key stakeholders.

Our students could work with any number of for-profit companies to hone their analytics skills. But by addressing issues faced by nonprofits, students can boost their skills while also contributing to the community. That has been the case for one project in particular—the capstone project with Buffalo Prep, a nonprofit that empowers students from underserved communities to rise into meaningful careers and leadership roles.

A Foundation for Change

This past spring, Buffalo Prep reached out to the UB School of Management for help. As the organization approached its 35th anniversary, its leaders wanted to launch a new endowment campaign to ensure it could continue serving generations to come. But as a nonprofit with limited resources, the organization needed assistance with pulling data together that would help tell its story.

In addition to using data that Buffalo Prep supplied, a team of graduate students extracted information from external sources such as LinkedIn and Indeed. They used this data to identify the job positions and salary outcomes for Buffalo Prep alumni, as well as to make confident estimates of expected salary ranges where such data is not public. The team then organized and cleaned the data, before providing Buffalo Prep with three sets of deliverables, each targeting a different audience:

• An interactive series of dashboards that Buffalo Prep’s management team can use to conduct real-time analysis to identify trends and generate reports.
• A report of key performance indicators that the nonprofit can give to stakeholders to highlight its biggest successes.
• Training documents and accelerators that members of the organization’s internal operations teams can use to maintain and update the data sets and dashboards.

The students’ initial analysis revealed compelling results. For instance, the data show that Buffalo Prep graduates are breaking the cycle of generational poverty, earning estimated median salaries that range between 75,000 USD and 135,000 USD. This is significantly higher than the median household income in Buffalo, which is 37,000 USD. And nearly half of the organization’s alumni either hold influential senior-level positions with companies or own their own businesses.

In the U.S., it typically takes the members of low-income families five generations to ascend to the middle class. Thanks to the work of our student team, Buffalo Prep can now see how its alumni are reshaping that story of social mobility.

These metrics illustrate that the effects of Buffalo Prep’s programs extend well beyond high school and college graduation. The organization equips alumni with the skills and opportunities to make meaningful contributions in fields such as technology, healthcare, finance, and education.

The UB students’ findings demonstrate that education is a powerful equalizer. The data show that programs that expand educational access help dismantle systemic poverty and create pathways that sustain upward mobility. Through their analysis, our graduate students provided a persuasive narrative that Buffalo Prep can use to showcase its long-term benefit for donors, foundations, and corporate partners.

A group of Buffalo Prep students on UB’s South Campus. (Photo by Dawn M. Gibson)

The nonprofit recently launched Illuminate the Future, its ambitious endowment campaign. Using its new data analysis tools and reports, the organization will be able to effectively illustrate its outcomes and advocate for the sustained financial support it needs.

With that financial stability, Buffalo Prep can continue to offer scholarships, programming, educational resources, and opportunities to students in Western New York and level the playing field for future generations. Our master’s students will continue to support the nonprofit via two additional projects scheduled for spring 2025—one of which will continue the study on alumni outcomes.

Focused Projects, Big Results

When working with students on projects such as this, partner organizations often will submit large-scale initiatives whose time frame will extend beyond the typical academic semester—and this is especially true with initiatives focused on achieving long-term positive results. To ensure students can complete these meaningful projects over time, we carefully set parameters in these areas:

Scope. We collaborate with partner organizations on each project to define expectations that are manageable for students yet still provide valuable outcomes for the organizations.

Flexibility. We seek out challenges that have both quantitative and qualitative aspects to accommodate different types of analytical work that suit both student learning and organizational needs. For example, past students have completed consumer behavior analyses in which they learn to combine qualitative interviews with data to help organizations serving the public better drive platform and content engagement.

Complexity. Similarly, we ensure that the projects we select are complex enough to offer rich learning opportunities to students and structured enough to deliver tangible benefits to organizations.

Completion time. Many projects are likely to extend beyond a single semester. Therefore, we “time-box” each one, identifying smaller components that students can complete end-to-end within the semester while still building toward the larger objective.

Capstones provide supportive environments where students can build their abilities in communication, presentation, and stakeholder management while applying their technical skills for community benefit.

Team assignments. We align students’ skills and interests with appropriate projects to maximize engagement and learning outcomes.

Faculty support. Our faculty serve as mentors to students, providing guidance and oversight to ensure that projects stay on track and that students navigate challenges successfully. Where nonprofits are concerned, the challenges students face predominantly involve the cost of technology. Faculty often work with student groups on projects to help clients leverage their existing technology stacks, low-cost options, or open-source alternatives.

Our capstone practicum for the MS in Business Analytics is a great way for our master’s students to gain the confidence and practical skills needed to engage effectively with business leaders. Capstones provide supportive environments where students can develop professional competencies in safe settings. They allow students to build their abilities in communication, presentation, and stakeholder management and prepare for industry interactions.

These objectives also make the capstone the perfect vehicle to give students firsthand experience in applying their technical skills for community benefit.

Amplifying Real-World Impact

As our MS in Business Analytics program grows and the capstone practicum continues to evolve, we plan to expand faculty involvement and industry partnerships to further enrich the experience. Plans are underway to add faculty to supervise the projects, bringing diverse expertise and allowing for more student support.

We will be introducing new courses and practicum opportunities, such as those focused on applied artificial intelligence, to diversify project offerings and distribute supervisory responsibilities. One such project portfolio includes building AI-assisted applications to support classroom and career development.

Students often can complement the practical experience they receive through the capstone with other hands-on opportunities to increase the societal impact of management. These include the Projects Clinic, Social Impact Fellows program, Western New York Prosperity Fellowship, and the Jordan A. Daniels Nonprofit Board Fellowship.

Through these opportunities, we align business education with broader community engagement to shape leaders who excel in their careers while creating positive social change. In each case, our students are learning that business is about more than understanding how to use data—it’s about understanding the profound ways that data and people can intersect to drive society forward.