Who Said Facebook Was a Timewaster?

It's always fun to celebrate milestones, but it's especially cool when that milestone includes one of our favorite hangouts: Facebook (yes, we admit it). Turns out our 10,000th Facebook fan just happens to be an undergrad Chapter Leader, who - totally not surprisingly - is using social media to stay connected to other Net Impact members.

So everyone, meet Taylor Kilpatrick. Taylor majors in International Relations (and minors in Environmental Studies) at the University of San Diego. While she dreams of working for the UN, she's preparing by co-leading Net Impact USD Undergrad with two friends.

Lily: So how'd you first get involved with Net Impact?

Taylor: I was always passionate about social entrepreneurship and trying to make the world a better place, which is one of the reasons I was drawn to Net Impact at the campus club fair. Three of us freshmen went to all of the meetings last year and when the senior presidents graduated, we sort of inherited the club and revived it.

This is the first club position I've held in college -- none of us knew how to do things when we started; fortunately, we had a lot of help from our campus mentor (a business professor). As co-president, I've learned a lot of business skills in general, like how to manage a budget and a team of people. I've definitely become more organized and connected to others, as I sometimes have to approach businesses off-campus and communicate with them to make sure we're on the same page.

So, how can Facebook help Net Impact members?

Being able to connect with other Net Impact chapters is an amazing opportunity. We could say, 'Hey, we're in San Diego and maybe the UC Santa Barbara chapter wants to host an event together.' Net Impact is a global organization, but we can actually connect with so many other college campuses if we want to.

All of our chapter members are also really interested in hearing about internships - something I know Net Impact already does. But I think a lot of people don't know how connected Net Impact is to businesses. I'd love to see more opportunities offered for students to put on their resumes, showing they have skills, but that they also care about changing the world.

[Ed. Note: You got it, Taylor! Don't forget to check out the Banana Republic Grad Student Challenge and WaterMatch Makers University Program, just two of our current student opportunities.]

Tell us a little about the coolest thing Net Impact USD Undergrad is up to.

This year, the founder of Nika, a for-profit bottled water company that's pretty well known in the San Diego area, came in to guest speak. Nika sells water bottles, donates their profits to building wells in Africa, and then provides education to those living there to take care of the wells as job opportunities. The company's built from the ground up, and showed us all what it means to be an entrepreneur that makes a difference.

We also do events -- for example, we worked with Living On One, a group of students from Loyola Marymount. They went to Guatemala to live on one dollar a day to see what their experience would be, and went on to make a documentary. Net Impact USD Undergrad launched a campaign that ended up funding a microloan for their work.

Cool! After folks like Net Impact on Facebook, what's the next blog or website you'd recommend for additional inspiration?

I follow the founder of TOMs, Blake Mycoskie, on his blog. It's related to the work we do at Net Impact, but it's also just fun to read. He's always doing interesting things and shows both sides of his work -- he's a business person who happens to be trying to make a difference. Since I'm really passionate about connecting with other cultures, and am interested in all of the challenges facing the environment and the economy, I hope that in some way I could help make a difference in communication between other countries and cultures. This is one reason why I work with Net Impact -- to make a difference both locally and globally.