Charities are profiting from liaisons with tomorrow's financiers, lawyers and doctors. It is a surprising revolution, begun in Dunedin, which is already starting to spread nationwide. Bruce Munro takes a look at Ignite Consultants.
Close your eyes and it could be the chatter around any boardroom table anywhere in the country.
''So is there anything else we need in order to realise those parameters?,'' Marco Wilkins asks.
''No? So, we obviously need the funding documents. We also need to be able to get in touch with some people who work there. So maybe you can tee that up, Jonathan and Georgia?''
''Sure,'' Jonathan replies.
''And there's a chance we might be able to do post-interview interviews with the clients, which would be faster than if we tried to do it later on.''
General noises of agreement accompany Mr Wilkins' effusive affirmation, ''Yep, loving it, loving it. What an idea.''
There is just one problem; the voices sound improbably young.
Eyes open and the facts are confirmed; these are indeed young men and women for whom ''20-something'' is a badge of honour barely earned rather than a fond, distant memory.
But now something else is wrong.
The six university students are each seated behind a laptop, Macs outnumbering PCs five to one, glasses and bottles of water close at hand.
The conversation is measured, informed, thoughtful.
Where is the goofing off, the alcohol, the idling away of endless hours?
Instead, finding time between classes, they have gathered here for the third time this week to plan and execute a voluntary eight-week consultancy with Dunedin Community Law Centre.
As the project team continues talking, another young man seats himself at the far end of the table.
Alex Devereux (23) is chief executive officer of Ignite Consultants.
The Dunedin-born and bred accounting and economics double major has already lined up a job starting early next year with dairy giant Fonterra.
But while finishing his studies, he is also heading up this burgeoning philanthropic endeavour.
Ignite began in 2010, the overflow of a presentation by Polish exchange student Agnieszka Nararuk which posed awkward, intriguing questions about how best business practice could help charities increase their effectiveness.
It was evident the not-for-profit sector, while passionately pursuing all manner of goals, often lacked the financial and human-capital means to access ideas that could help it achieve those worthy ends.
When Ms Nararuk left the country a few months later, she left behind a handful of University of Otago students busy making Ignite a reality.
The idea was to match small groups of bright young things with not-for-profit organisations facing challenges or wanting to take the next step.
The student teams would be given a brief, a mentor from the business community, and eight weeks to come up with innovative, achievable solutions.
And it is going gangbusters.
Almost 30 charities have received consultancies. More than 100 students applied for the 20 consultant positions on this semester's projects.
And buzz about the scheme among the city's not-for-profits (NFPs) means they are queueing to knock on Ignite's door.
Involvement with Ignite is being sold to students as an excellent employer magnet on their CV.
But in reality, the students' academic credentials and passion for purposeful engagement make that carrot a little redundant, Mr Devereux says.
''The students we get ... are already top of their class. Many of our consultants already have internships, clerkships and jobs lined up,'' he says.
''Generally we've found people of our generation are more informed and more aware of social issues ... I'm sure the research is out there that would say the geopolitical economy is reaching a tipping point where it has been so focused on capitalism for such a long time that this next generation doesn't just have that capitalist focus but also a broader sense of how societies should function.''
Certainly those sitting around this table appear to have smarts, drive and empathy in spades.
Mr Devereux's gap year before beginning tertiary studies included voluntary work with a United States-based organisation building much-needed housing as well as kick-starting micro-credit businesses in Central America.
And in 2012, shortly before getting involved with Ignite, he spent six weeks helping at a street children's rehabilitation centre in Manila, the Philippines.
Five of the Community Law Centre project team are studying law.
None, including the youngest, commerce student Olivia Esposito (20), are doing less than a double major degree.
Two, Lance Green (21) and Laura MacKay (22), have internships that will hopefully become employment with Bell Gully, a national law firm that has won awards for its million-dollar-a-year pro-bono legal services programme.
The team members are discussing the law centre's finances and what role that will play in the project.
Georgia Robertson (22), who volunteers at the centre and is on the Ignite executive, offers a suggestion.
''That's the cycle I'm trying to articulate,'' she says.
''It's just inherent in non-profit business that everyone needs funding. But the cycle is, the more visible you are, the more funding you attract. The less visible you are, the harder it is. So you need to work within those means to get them in a position where they can get there.''
• Across town, Dunedin Community Law Centre managing solicitor Caryl O'Connor is feeling pleased her organisation is one of four selected for this semester's consultancies.
The others are the Dunedin Night Shelter Trust, Curtain Bank and Otago Settlers Association.
The Filleul St centre uses the volunteer services of 120 law students and 80 lawyers to give free legal advice, representation and education to about 10,000 people a year.
But there have been numerous changes in the social service sector in recent years, Ms O'Connor says.
And, with talk of a new tendering process in the wind, she decided it was an opportune time to have a comprehensive organisational review.
She had heard talk of Ignite at community organisation meetings.
''Everyone said they were just marvellous.''
So three months ago, she got in touch.
She has since met once with the Ignite executive and three times with the project team.
''They're a great bunch of people,'' Ms O'Connor says.
''Their questions were on point ... And the enthusiasm is all there.
''I guess what I would like to learn from this process is how we are doing and what we could do better.''
What remains to be seen is whether the team will deliver.
The same question applies to the whole Ignite enterprise.
Is it really about under-resourced charities being able to access readily transferable, best-practice concepts at no cost?
Or is it more likely to be impractical ivory tower theories regurgitated by young people with no real practical experience?
''That's a bloody good question,'' Mike Kernaghan, who has seen both sides of the equation, says.
He acknowledges it is a ''learning experience'' for the students.
But having senior business people acting as mentors to project teams ''ensures there is a level of best practice utilised'', he says.
And the proof is in the NFP-Ignite pudding.
Mr Kernaghan is chief executive officer of the Otago and Southland division of Cancer Society New Zealand.
Two years ago, his organisation enlisted Ignite's input to help it get more traction with 18- to 25-year-olds.
''Because I didn't think we engaged at all with that age group,'' he recalls. ''And there's 20,000 of them who are literally next door to us.''
The Ignite team came up with several recommendations. Key among them was setting up a youth wing of the Cancer Society as an Otago University Students Association-affiliated club.
Cancer Core, as it became known, went on to organise New Zealand's first university in-house Relay For Life.
The event, held in April, with the participation of more than 1000 students, raised $60,000 for Cancer Society initiatives.
Cancer Core also provided many of the volunteers for the recent Daffodil Day fundraiser.
''So it isn't just a theoretical exercise, and certainly it's made a huge difference for us,'' Mr Kernaghan said.
He has been so convinced of Ignite's potential he has acted as a mentor and is now a board member.
Despite attempts to find negative feedback, reports from other clients are equally glowing.
Averil Pierce is the founder of Chat Bus, which provides free mobile counselling to children under 14 years old.
She contacted Ignite last year when ''we weren't sure what the next step was''.
''They were a word at the right time, in the right place,'' Mrs Pierce says.
''They had the ideas and the contacts to help make it happen.''
The service has since expanded to two buses and three counsellors.
Deborah Manning says her consultants were ''absolutely terrific''.
She is the founder of FoodShare, which collects unwanted food from grocery stores, restaurants, cafes and farmers markets and distributes it to 16 Dunedin social agencies to be given to their clients.
Last year, Ms Manning asked Ignite to help her develop a plan to connect with potential corporate sponsors.
''They offered a unique perspective from a different generation,'' Ms Manning says.
''Their collective intelligence brought something really beneficial to the project.''
• Becoming an Ignite consultant is a competitive business.
Before Marco Wilkins (21) became team leader for the Law Centre project he had to submit a CV and covering letter, make it through a screening process which eliminated half the applicants, and survive the interviews that determined the 20 successful project members.
Applicants come from across the full range of academic disciplines, although most are business, law and medical students.
Mr Wilkins, who was raised in Dunedin, is in the final year of a law and finance double degree. He thinks he will be able to apply his learning to the Centre project as well as gaining valuable practical experience.
Team members contribute different skills, he says. As leader, he brings ''positivity and the ability to make everyone feel comfortable'' because ''that's when the best ideas come forward''.
His real motivation for getting involved is ''helping build a healthy bridge between town and gown'' which also ''hopefully brings prosperity to a city which richly deserves it''.
It could sound saccharine, but the way Mr Wilkins voices it, it is obviously heartfelt.
Bringing the voice of experience to the team is their mentor Mike Horne, managing partner at the Dunedin office of international business consulting firm Deloitte.
Ignite has a bountiful basket of mentors.
In addition to Mr Horne, this semester's mentors are fellow Deloitte partner Kyle Cameron, Methodist Mission chief executive Laura Black and Malcam Trust chief and former bank manager Andy Kilsby.
Mr Horne says his role is largely to keep the Centre team on track by providing a framework and being a sounding board.
''It's not to get involved hands-on in the actual consulting,'' Mr Horne says.
''It's very important that they do that themselves.''
His initial impressions are that the team seems ''keen to be involved''.
''I'm a big believer that one of the most important things in life is the attitude and energy you bring to things,'' he says.
''They certainly have that. So that's a good starting point.''
In May, Ignite Consultants won the supreme award at the TrustPower Dunedin Community Awards, selected over 116 other entrants.
But Mr Devereux's eyes are on a loftier, more distant horizon.
He hopes Ignite will spark a long-term nationwide revolution.
His dream is not just to see these Otago students help Dunedin NFPs now, but, through their Ignite experience, to sow a seed in them that produces a bigger harvest in due course.
''That one day, they will take it up a little more seriously,'' he says.
''That they'll be drawn back to be board members and trustees of organisations and potentially CEOs of big organisations in the not-for-profit sector. It would be awesome.''
Discussions have already begun in Christchurch and Auckland which would see Ignite spread to universities in those cities.
The Centre team seated around this boardroom table on the edge of campus is making headway.
The group's natural 2-IC, Miss MacKay, summarises where they are up to.
''So if those are our three areas - the RBA [results-based accountability], community outreach and effectiveness - then we can pretty much start drawing up the terms of engagement,'' she says.
More nods and the discussion flows forward. They are already talking about holiday-break video-conferencing with each other from their homes throughout New Zealand.
