MBA Students Caring for their Community

My day as a ThunderCares volunteer

In the watery light of an early Saturday morning, ghosts of white t-shirts float luminescent around the Thunderbird campus pavilion. The word “ThunderCares” trumpets from the chests of t-shirt wearers. The Thunder is short for Thunderbird School of Global Business Management. The cares is the verb all of us volunteers will do today in various forms and at various locations around the Thunderbird campus community.

The Thunder is short for Thunderbird School of Global Business Management. The cares is the verb all of us volunteers will do today.

For the Thunderbird School community, today is one of two days a year to reach out into the surrounding community and lend a helping hand. ThunderCares Day started about three years ago as an activity for members of Thunderbird’s NetImpact Club - a nationwide organization for leaders “who are changing the world through business.” The purpose and value of the club’s volunteer activities resonated with leaders of the school’s student government, as well as with students, and soon ThunderCares days became a school-wide activity.

Kate Denney is the NetImpact group’s Events Coordinator and in charge of ThunderCares Day. She says that typically ThunderCares Day attracts 120 plus students. Today there are about 150 people, including a professor and his daughter, signed up to volunteer at the various pre-selected locations.

“We have six groups that we’re helping today including a charter school, a food bank, a xeriscape garden, and a horse stable. We also work with a group that helps resettling refugees,” Kate tells me. I ask her how they choose who to help. “We generally just call organizations and ask if they need a group of volunteers. We have been trying to build more of a relationship with the organizations. Today, except for one group, all of the clients are repeat customers.”

“We have six groups that we’re helping today including a charter school, a food bank, a xeriscape garden, and a horse stable. We also work with a group that helps resettling refugees.”

Personally, I’m drawn to the idea of MBA graduate students giving up a Saturday morning to volunteer out in the community. Granted there are bagels and coffee, free t-shirts, a barbecue lunch, and the possibility of extra credit points for some classes. However, most of the students do not seem tortured to be here. In fact, all of them are upbeat, chatty, and looking forward to doing something useful for others off campus.

When asked why she’s volunteering today, student Shelley Pursell says, “It’s a way to give back to our community, and it’s a good way to get our name out there.” She signed up to shovel horse manure at a local stable today. I am relieved that I am put on the botanical xeriscape garden.

It’s 8:30, so we prepare to depart to our destinations. The botanical gardens are part of a place called Sahauro Ranch Park, in the heart of Glendale, AZ. It’s about an eight minute drive from the Thunderbird campus. I ride with students I’ve never met before: Adam; Matt; and Suguna. Adam is from the Middle East, Matt is from the U.S., and Suguna is from India. All of them will graduate in May. Adam and Suguna both say that ThunderCares day is a good way to meet other students – although they expected more people today.

At our location, we gather around the Garden’s volunteer coordinator who gives us a brief history and background of the Sahauro Ranch Park xeriscape Botanical Gardens. Xeriscaping is the practice of water-efficient landscaping; from the Greek word “xeros,” meaning dry. These particular gardens are also home to a variety of roosters, peacocks, and guinea hens. In fact, two of the peacocks strut leisurely, paying the group no heed, on a low wall next to us.

The Garden’s volunteer coordinator makes a round with a cooler of water, donuts, and bananas. As she encourages us to eat and drink, she keeps saying “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

My job is to trim down a plant with a complicated name and thick branch-like stalks with long-handled clippers. It turns out that I’m not to trim as much as I’m supposed to hack the poor bush down to a bald clump of sticks. The Garden volunteer coordinator assures me that it makes the bush grow back even fuller. My partner in destruction is my car-mate Suguna. It is Suguna’s first time to participate in ThunderCares as well. I ask her if she has done anything like this before. She tells me that in India that “there aren’t many opportunities like this [community volunteering] where I am from.”

My Work Before and After


After about an hour of work, the Garden’s volunteer coordinator makes a round with a cooler of water, donuts, and bananas. As she encourages us to eat and drink, she keeps saying “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

After two hours of work and a short tour of the rest of the gardens, we head back to the cars. Adam is pleased with what we were able to accomplish. “It’s so great you know? What would take them days, we could do in two hours.”

When we gather for the ThunderCares picnic, all of the volunteers are in good spirits. People ask each other what they did at their site as they wait for their burgers and beers. Shelly is a little indignant that it seemed that all their work was undone at the end. “You shovel all this manure, but by the time you’re done, they’ve already messed them again.” Someone else puts the job in perspective by asking her to imagine if that were her full-time job. She can’t.

Soon, talk of looming projects and deadlines signals that the time for looking outside of our individual lives is coming to an end. However, the community experienced this morning – among groups of students and around the city – is very real. You can see it making new connections and strengthening established ones. It will also serve to drive students to volunteer again in the fall.