Ole Miss MBA students raise thousands for campus cause

A University of Mississippi MBA class turned a spring project into real money for fellow students, raising $2,207 for the William Magee Center for AOD and Wellness Education with help from 71 donors. The campaign showed how a business course in Oxford can move beyond case studies and spreadsheets, using fundraising, collaboration and problem-solving to support a campus need.

The project was part of the MBA program’s social entrepreneurship course, where students design and lead fundraising campaigns for campus causes. In practice, the class functions like a live laboratory for building a venture, but with the goal of channeling donor generosity into direct help for students who may be struggling. Over the past 10 years, MBA students have raised more than $48,000 for projects that benefit fellow students.

That track record makes the effort more than a one-off goodwill gesture. One earlier MBA project brought in $1,767 from 42 donors toward a $1,600 goal, while the 2025 campaign for the William Magee Center exceeded its $1,800 target. Together, the projects show a repeatable model that depends on students identifying a need, building a campaign and asking the Ole Miss community to invest in it.

The William Magee Center says it enhances student well-being and fosters success by providing education, intervention and support services. The center also offers free presentations and workshops for classroom instructors and student groups, giving faculty and student organizations a direct way to connect with its programming. Those services sit within a broader university effort that ties student support to the Lafayette-Oxford-University community through long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships and co-creation.

The center’s backstory gives the fundraising a deeper weight. The William Magee Institute for Student Wellbeing was established at Ole Miss in 2019 after William Magee died in an accidental drug overdose in 2013. That history helps explain why student-led support for wellness and intervention programs resonates on campus and across Lafayette County, where the university is a daily part of civic and economic life.

The MBA program itself is housed in the School of Business Administration, which says it has been going beyond the basics since 1917 and can be completed in as little as one year. Ole Miss describes the program as top-ranked and among the top 75 nationwide according to Bloomberg Businessweek. But the fundraising projects show another measure of the degree’s value in Oxford: not just how students learn to build businesses, but how they learn to build support systems that can be used again and again for the next campus need.