My Summer Spent Outward Bound - Madeleine Tregidga

When I tell people I spent the summer working for Outward Bound, they immediately form images in their heads of rock climbing, river rafting, hiking, and rappelling. And I can’t say that they are entirely wrong, as I did get to experience an Outward Bound course as part of my summer, but we’ll get back to the perks later.

Actually, I spent the summer doing marketing for a comprehensive school reform model called Expeditionary Learning (EL)—a specialized arm of Outward Bound that has almost nothing to do with the wilderness. Which brought me to one of my first challenges in marketing EL, namely, how can you capitalize on a well-known brand image when the product or service you promote lies outside the traditional realm of the organization?

Expeditionary Learning is not about wilderness trips and ropes courses, though EL schools often participate in these activities. In reality, the program is about taking the values of Outward Bound, like self-discovery, teamwork and reflection, and applying them in an academic setting.

Students go on Learning Expeditions, focusing on a single topic for an entire semester as the basis for an integrated curriculum of all their subjects. Students might study Egypt and learn about geometry from pyramids, paint their own hieroglyphics in art, and write research reports about King Tut. The idea is to engage students and faculty more in the learning process, and see greater academic achievement. And it works. The model is based on scientific research, a key factor in the age of No Child Left Behind, and it is showing results where schools implement the program well.

The only catch is that no one has ever heard of it. Even in the educational community, EL is relatively obscure, perhaps because the organization has never put much thought into marketing or public relations. They never had a marketing plan, nor any marketing staff, despite the fact that they derive most of their revenue from these schools, which pay upwards of $50,000 per year for EL’s professional development services. But as is the case with so many non-profit organizations, the program was built and grew on its social merits, rather than its business sense.

Fortunately, they had the foresight to hire a Columbia Business School intern to solve all of their marketing woes. Not having any sort of background in marketing, I was a bit intrepid to accept a position where I would be single-handedly developing the marketing strategy for an organization with a $7,500,000 annual budget. (You investment bankers might be chuckling to yourselves, but this is no paltry figure in the nonprofit world.)

With some initial help from the president and field directors, as well as outside consultants from Bridgespan (Bain’s nonprofit consulting arm), I got the tools I needed to embark on my own learning expedition. I spent time reviewing EL’s current marketing materials, doing market research on other school reform models, evaluating the current and potential market channels, and identifying Expeditionary Learning’s value proposition. I wrote a comprehensive marketing plan which examined these topics and suggested marketing protocol for the organization going forward. I created new collateral marketing materials and revised existing ones, including a redesign of the website, new PowerPoint presentations, profiles from successful EL schools, and the content for a new brochure. What once seemed daunting and unattainable became reality, and I conquered my own fears and anxiety along the way, just like people do on Outward Bound courses.

And now back to those perks. I spent a week on the Colorado River in Utah, courtesy of Outward Bound, meeting an amazing group of people and challenging myself daily. Not that life in the office was so bad either. I don’t think I ever came before nine or left after five. I spent the summer in an enormous, beautiful, turn-of-the-century mansion on the banks of the Hudson River, in Garrison, NY, about an hour north of the city. There was yoga on the porch at lunchtime, hikes through the surrounding woods, raspberry picking and chipmunk watching, and wine- and cheese-tasting on warm summer afternoons. Not such a bad gig.

All of this was made possible by your donations to the CORPS fellowship, so thank you to everyone who donated. The fellowship made it possible for this non-profit organization to get some much needed help in marketing and for me to have an incredible summer and still pay my rent.

Outward Bound President, John Read, will be speaking on campus Oct. 5th for a Social Enterprise Club event—Switching Sectors: Moving between the private and the non-profit sectors.

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