Back in the early 2000’s, the graduation rate in some of the inner city Baltimore high schools was a dismal twenty percent. Three other entrepreneurs and I got together to try and find a solution to that problem. We thought there had to be a way to bring the private sector into the schools in a meaningful way, because although there are hundreds of great mentoring programs out there, there aren’t a lot of corporate workplace-based programs that operate like a business model. We decided to create a vision that for one day, each month every Baltimore city high school would be empty because all the kids would be out spending the day in a corporate workplace being mentored by a young professional or business executive, and being exposed to things they might not have access to otherwise.
What we came up with was a foundation called b4students, a corporate workplace-based mentoring program designed to increase graduation rates by linking high school kids with local businesses, thereby helping the kids develop lasting relationships with caring mentors. The “b” stood for Baltimore and Business.
To launch and sustain the foundation, we each pledged $25,000 a year for four years, and we asked other companies to do the same. The idea was that when companies signed on to participate, they would own their program; it would be theirs to nurture and grow. The four-year commitment was not only about sticking with the program for that long, but also sticking with the students, because our vision was that each company would track alongside their kids for their entire four-year high school experience. This long-term business commitment was very different from anything that was out there in the youth mentoring world at the time, but we believed that’s what it would take to make an enduring impact on these kids’ lives.
We recognized that four years and $100,000 was a hefty commitment. To convince companies to come on board, we told them that b4students was important for Baltimore and that it would make a difference in the lives of thousands of students. We used my personal story of being a product of the Baltimore city public schools as a real-world illustration. I was a kid whose own senior class was decimated by a high dropout rate, yet I managed to overcome it with a little luck and some caring mentors of my own. But our message wasn’t resonating. We kept hitting brick walls; not a single company would commit to joining us. Eventually we realized that just because my story was true didn’t mean it would necessarily connect with everyone.
It’s wasn’t that we had to make up a new story about my childhood, but we decided we were going to have to tweak it with an eye toward our audience and what was most important to them. And although corporate philanthropy was important to the audience, what was really important to them was having a way to be philanthropic while simultaneously improving their employee experience. They wanted to improve their retention, their profits, their performance, the company’s culture, and their turnover rates. They wanted to attract more qualified candidates and at the same time be part of a community of other private sector companies that were giving back in a meaningful way.
So, we revised our story to say that linking with b4students would benefit not only the kids and the community, but also the participating companies. Becoming part of this project would make a difference in the lives of their employees. It would increase morale and culture in each company’s environment, and it would give them a terrific public relations boost. Our new and improved story made it OK to be selfish because the companies would be giving something of value in exchange for receiving something (actually, many things) of value in return.
Immediately after altering our story, we got our first “yes,” and more soon followed. Since then, b4students has become a model program that has raised the graduation rate from twenty percent to ninety percent among participating students, and it’s now being proposed as a nationwide, sustainable model.
Moral of the story: Watch YOUR Why.
Joe Mechlinski is CEO and Co-Founder of entreQuest, where he's helped hundreds of companies prosper through some of the worst economic times in history. Joe's debut book, Grow Regardless, an instant New York Times bestseller, defines strategic growth, change management, and organizational development.
