AFC Bournemouth’s Commercial Director Rob Mitchell was invited to Bournemouth University to deliver a guest lecture to students.
Rob, a Bournemouth University graduate with a degree in Leisure Marketing, returned to BU to speak to around sixty students about the importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) from an ethical, community and business standpoint.
Guiding students through his own experience working for football clubs, Rob demonstrated what he had learned, having also worked at Southampton and Northampton Town football clubs, and how his current club AFC Bournemouth had taken his advice and applied them to its own CSR efforts.
Stressing that CSR was not only a duty of large organisations; Rob demonstrated how it could support corporate objectives by improving reputation and building bridges within local communities. He spoke passionately about how Bournemouth engages with CSR, why it did so and how that might change in the future.
He was on hand to answer questions from the audience, using his acquired wisdom to dispel some of the myths about football clubs and community work. He spent time afterwards engaging with students who had attended the talk but refused to be drawn on questions about AFC Bournemouth’s potential promotion to the Premier League.
