Collaboration for Change: UC Davis MBAs Partner with Hui International to Expand Family Support

Global migration is increasing, and more and more families face resettlement in new and often culturally foreign settings.

Hui International (Hui), founded in 2021 and rooted in the culture of the Hawaiian Islands, has a successful history of delivering programs and workshops that promote both effective child raising and family conflict resolution strategies in difficult environments.

This Davis-based non-profit is renowned for supporting families facing relocation and other major life disruptions. Hui, which means group in Hawaiian, works with academics, agencies, and parents and caregivers with many different backgrounds—and has reached more than a million families.

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Recently, I led a team of three UC Davis MBA students that partnered with Hui as our client for the Integrated Management Projects (IMP) core course. Our three-student team embraced the challenge of helping Hui expand its impact.

Innovative Solutions for Family Support

The goal of our project was to help Hui expand its marketing and fundraising effectiveness. As the team lead for this project, I had the privilege to work with my teammates Marissa Hernandez and Josue Robles to make recommendations for Hui.

Hui’s mission includes enhancing the wellbeing of women, their children and families worldwide. Hui’s programming combines insights from social research to create and deliver culturally responsive programs and materials. This programming has changed the intergenerational trajectories of many families and their children in the city of Davis.

Or team explored opportunities for scaling Hui’s current programs and content to disseminate them to an even wider audience.

Co-Founder and Executive Director Lucy Morse Roberts realized that to expand Hui’s reach, it needed increased financial and programmatic stability. She asked our team to “identify approaches and opportunities that allowed Hui to reach more women and families with its evidenced-informed content.”

She thought the diverse backgrounds and perspectives of our team could infuse Hui’s marketing and fundraising with new ideas and techniques.

Looking Under the Hood of Hui

Our team began by gaining a better understanding of Hui’s current programming and its target audiences. We then interviewed a range of service providers and subject matter experts to discuss successful practices being implemented elsewhere. These interviews gave us insights into practices that Hui could adopt to increase its own reach and effectiveness.

We also conducted extensive research into federal, state, local and private human services to gain the understanding of program operations. To maximize the value of our recommendations, we wanted to understand both the existing scope of services in Hui’s space and the types of funding and support available.

Our faculty advisor, Lecturer Keith Weissglass, helped guide our project, keeping us focused on translating our research findings and analyses into meaningful insights for CEO Roberts and her board of directors. His expertise and counsel were invaluable to us as we progressed through our 10-week project.

Our Deliverables

At our final presentation to Hui’s leadership and board, we shared our findings and recommendations to serve as a foundation for Hui’s sustainable growth. In addition, we provided the following deliverables to help kickstart that growth:

1. Pitch deck to help Hui present itself and its incredible mission to potential partners and funding sources.
2. Funding research guide that provides tools to help Hui identify opportunities state-by-state to expand its reach.
3. Toolkit to help Hui obtain an evidence-based rating in two prestigious evidence clearinghouses.

Finally, we prepared materials to help initiate a rotating internship position that would focus on identifying relevant funding opportunities that Hui could pursue.

After the presentation, Roberts commented that the project’s work products will allow Hui International “to operate on a higher, more professional, and effective level.”

“UC Davis MBA students have infused our organization with a level of business savvy that we would not have been able to achieve ourselves.”
- Lucy Morse Roberts, Hui International CEO

Skills Gained, Impact Amplified

Our team was honored to take on such a meaningful project. Each of us acquired new skills during the project. Roberts was very supportive, which made the project much easier to execute.

Most importantly, we fulfilled the goal of identifying opportunities to support Hui in its efforts to grow sustainably and deliver its incredibly important work to a wider constituency.

This project was a classic example of applying business skills to help strengthen the impact being made by an important community partner. Projects like this will continue to integrate UC Davis even more strongly into the region’s social and cultural fabric.

Our team looks forward to seeing how Hui can turn our project’s findings and recommendations into action to expand its impact and successes even more widely!