Coffee Bean Club

I talked about the charity idea in Feb. Here is the result: Coffee Bean Club. It has attracted some funding and three of my friends have agreed to donate for the foundation. I believe it is the time for me to disclose more information about it.

I believe by connecting college students and the successful young professional/artist or enterprisers are great inspiring for both. So I have setup meetups between those who graduated from university for 5 – 10 years with the students. It is something similar with what JA (Junior Archivers) is doing with some very unique characteristics.

1. The meetup is limited to one host and about 5 students (8 is the maximum number). This is to encourage in-depth communication, instead of one-way presentation.

2. Host pays the bill for Coffee or tea. Typically, we put it in Starbucks.

3. Each students need to pay the host 50 RMB in cash and get a receipts from host.

4. Students come back to the university and find my casher to get the money reimbursed by my foundation.

For the host, their coffee, parking, transportation are all covered and with a little bit income, which is a very small sense of achievement.

For the students, they practically paid nothing. However, it is important to use this routine to keep a sense that nothing is free. I believe anyone would say the talk is much more worthy than the money they spent; it is part of the education of business.

For the donators, they clearly track how their money is spent and get clear understanding of the return from the donation – they will be very proud when they get a name list tell them that hey have sponsored these students to meet with these people. I am sure if we keep doing this, the talk will inspire lot students to choose a different path for life and archive a lot.

I have put my initial funding into the club and have hosted two talks. Literally, I got 300 incomes so far (while donated 1000 RMB). I am very comfortable with the rule of the play.

More Donations?

I’d like to invite more donations. The amount of the donation is not my goal. I just want to prove the way we run donation works. Part of the reason I started this is, I am thinking of some practices I can share with Smile Library or other non-profit organization.

The unique characteristics of donation to this club are, the donator has 100% control on where to spend the money. Upon receiving the donation, the donator should be given a registration form and state the propose. Here is what my propose for my part of the donation looks like:

1. Sponsor Coffee Bean meetup of any topic (50 RMB fee)

2. All hosting fee, domain name for any technical experiments.

3. Tickets for Shanghai Museum and Shanghai Museum of Art.

Anyone who is a member of the club can request reimbursement from the foundation.

Linda are also willing to donation and her propose may look like:

1. Only to grade 4 college students.

2. Sponsor them to pay for dress up for interview or tickets for interview.

No matter what the propose is, the committee will follow the will of the donator and look for a match. We also charge about 5% for the administration fee to pay the students working for this project. Now, Miss Cai from SJTU is acting as casher, Mr. Huang, and Yan also help on people/IT infrastructure.

That is what I have been planning from Jan this year. I just want to try doing something meaningful and impact. If there are 10 students enrolled in the program and get help, I will be very happy already. For more information about this project, please contact Cai at cai_jy1105 at hotmail dot com.

10 thoughts on “Coffee Bean Club

  1. this is a very interesting program and I’m sure it is very beneficial to the students. In the US, there is much pressure on students to get internships in the summer and there are often different chances to talk with people in the business world, but that opportunity doesn’t really exist in China as much, this program goes a long way in starting that communication.

  2. please contact Cai at cai_jy1105 at hotmail dot com –> that’s a funny and strange way to write an email address?????

  3. James,

    Actually it’s pretty standard to write an email that way to avoid being picked by spammers’ bots scanning web sites like this to gain email list.

  4. hi js wang, im new to ur forum ,but feel touched by ur efforts, im interested in this club , but i wanna some business school students to hold meeting about some business idea and i wanna listen what is their idea, so can something like this be arranged?i can fund sevral such meetings and my ultimate target is to find young talent and employ them in my company.

  5. sv

    oh really? never saw one of those before so….but then again, someone who’s not internet literate is very much likely to put in the address bar that particular address instead of the intended address format don’t u think? :)

  6. The idea sounds Great! Maybe it will go like the BBC Program “The Apprentice”.

  7. there’s a new coffee bar along Nanjing West Rd called Figaro Coffee..a must try. The flavor is very European. =)

    It’s at the Tian An Centre building. 338 Nanjing West Road.

  8. It is an interesting idea….however, I have a silly question here, “donation”…have you got the permit from government authority to have such activity?

    anyway, good luck!

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