Canisius MBA

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Learning to Be an Un-Consumer John Perry, 44, a marketing manager, co-founded The Compact, a group that avoids unnecessary consumption. Two years later, it has more than 8,000 followers. As told to Thomas M. Anderson From Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine, July 2008 How did The Compact begin? Over dinner, nine friends and I decided to go an entire year without buying anything new besides food, medicine and hygiene products. If we needed anything else, we would borrow it or buy it secondhand. Why bother to put yourselves through this? We have concerns about sustainability, and we are Type-A personalities. We wanted to see if we could adapt our behavior as consumers to live off what we have while maintaining a modern life. We thought it would be fun to see how long we could go. How did it grow into a movement? We consider ourselves accidental activists. The people and the media came to us — we did not pitch to them. RELATED LINKS Recent ‘My Story’ Profiles Complete 2007 ‘My Story’ Collection Tell us about your online community. I created a Yahoo group (groups.yahoo.com/group/thecompact) soon after we started. We had a lot of friends who wanted to keep score. The address for the group was listed in the first newspaper article about The Compact. The group took off and has grown to 8,000 people. Who are your members? They’re spread all over the world. People join for different reasons. Some are concerned about credit-card debt, and some want to simplify their lives or set a good example for their kids. You must be saving money. Before, my family — me, my partner and two kids — probably spent $200 a month on things we bought without thinking. When we stopped doing that, we freed up money for other things. Now we overpay the mortgage every month, and we give more to charity. If everyone followed your lead, wouldn’t it hurt the economy? Runaway consumption and the depletion of natural resources is going to have a worse impact on our economy than some middle-class people like us deciding that enough is enough and that we’re going to stop buying things. What happened after the first year? Most of us re-upped our membership in The Compact. My family is in its third year. It is a lot easier than we thought. That was the real discovery.

Nick Tober Canisius MBA’08

Nick Tober is a staunch proponent of experiential education. Virtually every day he applies concepts acquired in his MBA classes to some aspect of managing QuadGear, a company he and four classmates launched just two years ago. “There’s a certain knowledge you take away from actually doing things—trial and error,” he says. The company began on the basis of a business plan Tober and his cohorts wrote for a class in Entrepreneurship during the last semester of their senior year at Canisius College. “As soon as the gears got put in motion, we said, ‘You know, we could actually do this,’” Tober recalls. “We were passionate about seeing it up and running.” As members of the Canisius chapter of the community service organization Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE), the fledgling entrepreneurs decided to use profits generated by the company to fund SIFE-sponsored community outreach and consulting programs.

Today, operating from rent-free headquarters in the basement of the college chapel, QuadGear turns out such customized merchandise as apparel, pens, mugs, fleece blankets, lanyards—”anything you can think of,” Tober explains. “Our primary business is Canisius—clubs, departments, special events”—but recently they’ve expanded their customer base to include Shea’s Buffalo Centre for the Performing Arts and other organizations in the community.Their bottom line has expanded as well, from $20,000 at the end of the first seven-month fiscal year to nearly double that total this year. The staff includes 14 employees, of whom 12 are undergraduates and two, including Tober, are MBA students. Tober hopes the business will become a magnet for undergraduate business students who decide to earn an MBA before entering the corporate world. Running the company provides “real experience, and employers will recognize that in job interviews,” he says.

Clark Banach has a soft spot in his heart for struggling artists.

Banach, his sister and business partner Dean Bourque are all artists who have experienced the challenges of trying to make a living as a full-time artist. Banach knows how tough it is. That’s why in 2006 he founded Creative Hope - a nonprofit agency to help those in underserved communities explore and develop their art and music skills.

“I have to sit here and read spreadsheets all day,” he said. “I don’t mind, but if I had my (way), I’d be performing or doing poetry or something like that. I want to produce opportunities for artists, who have the best stories to tell.”

Last year was an organizing year for Creative Hope, which offers resources for those locally seeking to express themselves: an art gallery, art production and merchandising company and a Web content management company. An Erie, Pa.-based recording studio is also part of the mix.