Hop on the BUS! is an annual opportunity, started in 2006, for North Carolina students (grades 9 - 12) to gain knowledge of entrepreneurship. The program gives students, working as individuals or teams, a “real life” experience within a formal or non-formal educational setting. The program allows young people to discover what it would be like to generate an idea and build it into their business. Additionally, one of the opportunities with this program is encouraging our young people to believe they can start new business ventures.

• Participants will develop a blueprint of their own business during the course of this competition. The business plan is a document that all businesses should prepare in order to get a successful start. Also, the business plan is needed to take to the bank when looking for a loan. In this competition, the judges will be your “loan officers.”
• Hop on the BUS! will take place during the 2009 fall semester with the final judging taking place in late February, 2010.
• Click here for the Full Competition Guidelines
• Click here for the REAL_Cashflow.xls

Hop on the BUS! Rules and Guidelines:

The following are the basic rules and guidelines established for the Hop on the BUS! business plan competition. All participants in this competition must adhere to these in order to remain eligible.

1. Entries are restricted to students currently enrolled in a North Carolina school or after school program, grades 9, 10, 11 or 12. (The school can be a private, public, home-based school or extra-curricular program like 4-H, Boys and Girls Club, etc.)
2. Only one entry per student or team. (Teams consist of a minimum of one student and a maximum of four students.)
3. All participants are expected to demonstrate respect and professionalism with all aspects of the contest and its activities.
4. All team members must be identified at the time of registration (i.e., team members cannot be changed or added at a later date.)
5. All ideas or business concepts must be legal, within the boundaries of local or state laws, and ethical.
6. All ideas and business concepts submitted must clearly demonstrate that they are unique ideas and that they could be established as a North Carolina based business.
7. All ideas and business concepts submitted are expected to be original and created solely by the student or team providing the work. Any plagiarism or dishonesty will be grounds for automatic elimination from the competition. Additionally, all students are expected to honor other students’ ideas with confidentiality.
8. As a learning activity, Hop on the BUS! requires that the student or team complete the work. Technical assistance should be limited to advice from instructors, parents and mentors and not doing actual work for the student or team. Entries must adhere to the timelines established by the Hop on the BUS! committee, including meeting all submission deadlines. All late submissions will be eliminated.
9. All decisions of the judges are final.
10. The Hop on the BUS! committee reserves the right to use content, concepts and pictures or video clips of participants and work submitted in promotional information regarding the Hop on the BUS! competition.
11. All ideas submitted will remain the property of the submitting student or team.