Building Blocks International

BBI

* Charity company

* Asking for donations

o Both in cash

o Or in form of an employee for an entire year

* Held numerous meeting with prospectives who SEEMED interested

o But never received a call back

* Program had been running on donations from individuals and foundations but never received the long term support and commitment they had been hoping for

* Anastaoff along with several other students (idea team) from Harvard founded Building Blocks International in 2000

o Mission: Helping children in developing countries enter school, stay in school, succeed in school

o Instead of creating their own institution, would work through local already established institutions

* Felt community based organizations were better suited to the unique needs of each place, rather than a general one size fits all ideal used by global organizations

o BBI would bring to these local institutions a higher level of management expertise in order to expand capacity and improve effectiveness

* Community Based Organizations (CBO)

o BBI only worked with CBO that were non profit with a well defined mission and a strong team in place, that had identifiable potential but were not yet reaching it

o Thousands of these CBO all around the world in every country, helping an average of 200 kids each, and an average of about 1 in 4 kids dropping out of the programs each year

o She estimated BBI could deliver to the CBO an annual growth in the range of 15% for about 6 years after which the growth would flatten out

* Connecting business expertise with Central Based Organization

* Competition: Ashoka

* Corporate Service Corp. members

o In the model for this, corporate service corp members would commit to living for four months to a full year in the CBO's local community and working with the CBO to provide advice to its managers and strategic guidance

* Do they target rookies just out of an MBA program? Or go after those that have been out a couple years

* Or those with 7 to 10 years experience?

* More experience means greater impact on the CBO

* Launch Strategy Phase 1

o Attracting corporate start-up funding in the US and Chile was unsuccessful

o To attract financing run a one year pilot program to prove companies merit in Santiago

* To do this they sought donations from individuals who were just benefactors with no tie to the organization

o Seeked to recruit people with MBAs or master degrees promising to offer than an experience that could not be matched anywhere else. Giving them the foundation for success as a leader

o Commonly believed leadership skills were better acquired through experimental methods rather than in the classroom. Yet 90% of leadership training programs were classroom based

o Attract seed capital through individual donors who were moved by the mission of the organization

* Aswell as additional funding through the corporate service corp member themselves

* Forcing each member to raise $5000 on their own through whatever sources they could find

o Results were mixed, attracted 40 applicants, 3 would go to chile

o Limitations

* Corporate service corp member would not be comfortable asking family and friends for donations

* And gaining individual donations were very time consuming for such small amounts

* Decided they needed a constant source of income, ex. Corporate funding

* Launch Strategy Take 2

o New Model: Corporate Ally