5 Lessons from 5 Years of Creating Economic Opportunity — Lesson One: Do Branding From The Very Beginning
This year, we celebrated five years of All Star Code. All Star Code is a leading organization that creates economic opportunity by developing a new generation of boys and young men of color with an entrepreneurial mindset who have the tools they need to succeed in a technological world.
Each summer is a life-changing experience for both our students and teachers. At the beginning of the summer, our students walk into the classroom tense and uncertain. By the end of the six-week experience, there’s a whole different young man there. Their eyes are up, their chests are high, and they know they belong inside some of the best organizations in the country. We know that if you can’t see it, you can’t be it. The Summer Intensive provides students access to real-life work environments and allows for our young men to see what they can be.
During the six-week course, students are introduced to essential web development skills, while cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset, teaching soft skills and providing a network of peers who also love building things that matter. The curriculum is built on the foundation of the “growth mindset,” with the guiding principles of “Daring Greatly,” “Celebrating Failure” and “Telling Your Story.”
At All Star Code we teach that you learn the most from your mistakes, hence our “Celebrate Failure”pillar.
Since founding the company in 2013, I have acquired many valuable lessons on starting an organization from scratch. Some are from experience, some are based on advice given to me. For those who are in the beginning stages of launching their own business or venture, this series reflects on a few of the lessons I have learned along the way.
LESSON ONE: DO BRANDING FROM THE VERY BEGINNING
Idealism drives mission. On a practical front, it is the dark art of marketing that sells an idea. I have found that branding is a key part of getting people to care about the work that you are doing.
Tl;dr: you should sell your organization, using the same dark art that corporations use to sell their products.
When I began All Star Code in 2013, creating the program was my number one focus. We had to be excellent and demonstrate results from the very beginning. The budget was geared almost entirely towards students, curriculum and evaluation.
At the same time, several people advised me to focus on branding the organization. However, my lead advisor (and major donor), insisted that it would be a waste of money during the start-up phase. At the time, I couldn’t agree more. The cost seemed astronomical (roughly $25,000), and it was during a season where I was raising money in only $1,000 increments.
“You don’t need it,” he said.
He was right in a sense. Even without branding we had a really strong product and clear plan that gained us a lot of initial PR. We publicly launched with an article in Fast Company. We received funding from Google, Darren Walker, Robert Smith, Richard Parsons and other prominent investors early on — all with no branding. And we still grew nicely, with our flagship program aiming for 200 students in three cities this upcoming summer, up from 20 students in NYC in 2014.
Yet, to meet our goal of national expansion, we do need professional branding. The lack of early investment in marketing led to lots of wasted time. We changed our logo twice in our first year (and it changed twice more before 2016).
In 2016, we partnered with a boutique agency, led by two sisters, called Harley & Company. It was through their work that we realized our organization’s culture was driven by our students.
Today we have a growing team of professionals dedicated to showcasing who we are. In the past few months they’ve created an interesting and engaging monthly newsletter filled with inspiring first-person voices from our community, insights about our impact, as well as the latest news about our doings and open positions. And in the process they’ve also filled a crucial hole in our operations taking on the creation of invitations, Summer Intensive acceptance letters, our email database and added a lot of best practices that support the rest of the team, like copy editing and consistent graphics and messaging. And with the foundation laid by our branding, the team has lots of plans for capitalizing on it further (stay tuned).
What I hadn’t realized in 2013, is that being a successful organization with strong branding would only increase our ability to change hearts and minds. Although I sold all of our funders in face-to-face conversations, branding brought people outside of our network to us and it is now opening up a host of other opportunities.
Branding will feel costly at first, but the return on investment is worthwhile.
The most important thing, of course, is to build value. But this is about lessons learned and I knew that from the very beginning.
Interested in All Star Code? For the first time, we will be having a rolling admissions process for our program. Students in NY and Pittsburgh will be able to apply for next year’s Summer Intensive and be accepted within a matter of six weeks. We hope this decision makes planning the summer a little easier for our prospective families. Click here for more details.
