At the end of March this year, a group of Marketing students saw their winning Pitch It! session to the Pulmonary Vascular Research Institute (PVRI) receive a loud ‘Encore!’ from its Chief Executive, Stephanie Barwick.

PVRI, a global medical research charity aiming to raise awareness of pulmonary hypertension, a fatal cause of heart failure, had asked the Kent Business School students to consider ways to attract and engage corporate sponsors with the charity. Under the mentorship of KBS Senior Lecturer Marketing Communications, Dan Petrovici, student groups worked on the challenge and presented their results in a heated pitching contest to PVRI’s CEO.

Mrs Barwick was so taken with the innovative awareness campaign suggested by the winning team that she asked them to come back in the spring and re-pitch their ideas to PVRI’s entire operational team.

The second pitch, which took place on the 11th of May, was described by PVRI’s panel as creative, scalable, pragmatic and – most importantly – workable on a global level. Mrs Lynette Swift, Head of the PVRI Fundraising Committee, said: ‘The students came up with some excellent ideas and we will certainly discuss internally how best we can use these. Well done to everyone!’.

Mrs Barwick commented that ‘the ideas presented were so good that she could not see how PVRI would not implement them straight away’.

PVRI offered a summer internship to one of the students on the winning Pitch It! team, who will work with PVRI on further developing an awareness and fundraising campaign, targeting corporate sponsors.

For more information on KBS Pitch It! sessions, please visit KBS website, send an email to KBSbusiness@kent.ac.uk or call: 01227 824068.

For more information on PVRI, please visit their website: www.pvri.info