Go Tutor Corps Navigating Uncertainty
What can we be known for?
And what drives our decision-making?
GO Tutor Corps, a nonprofit providing high-dosage tutoring, partnered with Champions Design to address funding, recruitment, and communication challenges. Through research and strategy, they updated their strategic framework to reflect who the organization was becoming and strengthen brand communications.
American schools today are largely unchanged from the way they operated 150 years ago. GO Tutor Corps is on a mission to change that by providing every student in the United States access to a tutor in their own school.
GO Tutor Corps recruits, trains, and supports a collective of young adults who are placed in partner schools where they tutor students as a part of a year of service through the federal AmeriCorps program. They call their tutors “Fellows” to encompass the several roles they play to instruct, mentor, and develop the students with whom they are matched.
We’re at a point where there is no money in the school system.
Currently serving the Northeast, they engaged us facing a perfect storm of headwinds; federal funding was dwindling, the number of applications from prospective tutors was decreasing, and tighter budgets at schools meant more apprehension from potential partners.
Provide every student in the country with a tutor.
A brand, product, or service is defined by its set of choices. If GO were to continue making the same set of choices, they would maintain a trajectory of uncertainty. To discover what set of choices would need to be different tomorrow than they are today, we began with research to understand the myriad factors they were up against that strategy would determinedly need to address.
Research captured the state of the organization through stakeholder interviews, a site visit to a partner school, a brand materials audit, and a peer audit. Across every touchpoint, we took inventory of the unique value communicated by the organization and assessed the consistency in message.
We came to find that no other peer within their arena of tutoring aspired to the lofty vision of providing every student in the country with a tutor. While that was a consistent message and remained energizing within the organization, other communications leaned on other reasons to get involved through funding or partnership. No longer a startup, GO Tutor Corps was not in a place to throw everything at the wall to see what would stick. An overabundance of attributes would only dilute their position in the market. To win funding, partners, and the hearts of prospective tutors, GO needed to get specific about the handful of things they wanted to (and could) be known for that would eventually make up their strategic positioning.
We are struggling against the perception today that teaching or being around kids is not joyful.
During the Brand Workshop facilitated by Champions, the organization’s leaders and board members came together to discuss the attributes GO had the potential to uniquely own as well as the kind of character it would take to win hearts and minds.
As we defined around who they are as people revolutionizing the school system revealed ‘joy’ as a critical and guiding trait that would work to meet the moment. And while ‘high-dosage tutoring’ was a popular term within tutoring, questions arose around how relevant the term would be in a couple of years and if it was evergreen.
GO Tutor Corps is leveling the playing field for students and schools in underserved
communities.
In branding, ‘know thyself’ is the rule of rules. The product of our work became a Strategic Framework clarifying what GO will commit to be known for.
Go Tutor Corps Strategic Framework
Every organization is defined by its set of choices.
Mission To provide students access to a quality education through tutoring.
Vision An America where every child has the support of a tutor in order to realize their full human potential.
Values Integrity, Equity, Collaborative Community, Empathy, Accountability
Attributes A corps of reliable student support for schools in low-income communities; a pathway to future teachers
Positioning Leveling the playing field.
Brand Character Devoted, Joyful, Unconventional
Design Drivers Heartfelt, Joyful, Innovative
Brand strategy only goes so far as the organization’s conviction to support and affirm their competitive positioning across every department. Going forward, GO must ensure that the decisions made on behalf of their brand like the allocation of resources, partnerships pursued, event details and the extent of their operations, all seek to level the playing field.