Genesys Works National - GuideStar Profile (2023)

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Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.

We envision a future when all youth in America finish high school equipped and empowered with the knowledge and skills required to achieve career success and a lifetime of economic self-sufficiency. We believe that one of the biggest barriers low-income students face on their path to economic mobility is lack of self-confidence in their ability to succeed in professional careers. By serving as the bridge between business and education, we have demonstrated that our model engages students into promising career paths while also providing valued services to corporations. The question now is how can we scale to serve the greatest number of students? We aim to serve more than 11,000 students with training and corporate internships over the next seven years. The amount earned by these students while in high school will be more than $100 million, putting much-needed income into the hands of some of the poorest families we serve.

The next year will be dedicated to two major growth and enhancement priorities for our organization:
Strategic Account Sales and a Strategic Growth Plan. Executed successfully, these initiatives stand to help our organization grow to serve many more students in the years to come, while generating millions of additional dollars from both earned income and philanthropy. Once we develop a strong strategic plan with an optimized sales operation, we will be able to launch and execute a growth capital campaign that will support the next 5 years of growth for the organization. Paid internships are at the core of our program's success, but the fact is that we can only serve as many students as the number of meaningful internships we are able to secure. Internship sales to date have been conducted at the local level by executive directors and their business development directors using common sense techniques, instead of utilizing proven enterprise-class methods and tools. These best practices would allow us to secure a greater number of internships per client, particularly with strategic accounts. We also believe this new approach will allow us to serve new corporate markets and sectors with trained high school students. Building on our infrastructure accomplishments the last two years, and now beginning a new strategic sales process for acquiring more internships, we are ready to plan the next phase of growth. We envision expansion being both deep and wide, serving more students in current locations and as well as in new communities. The strategic planning process will guide us to make the best decisions of where to focus our current resources and plan for the potential of the organization going forward. Using our new financial model, we will conduct extensive sensitivity analysis and scenario modeling in order to determine the best path forward and the corresponding funding required. When completed, our strategic growth plan will be the catalyst for the launch and execution of our first growth capital campaign, targeted to start by the end of 2018. Working with a consultant, we will: assess our current operations and business plan, including all sites and National Office; review growth opportunities and consider optimal use of growth capital; evaluate all aspects of our fundraising program at sites and National Office; and develop a campaign case for support.

We have been building our infrastructure and positioning our organization for scalability. We made substantial progress toward standardizing best practices, reaching technology-enabled organizational goals, and establishing a financial model to guide our expansion planning. We replaced our ineffective and outdated accounting system with NetSuite, an enterprise class financial system. We improved the functionality of our program system and its integration with our other systems of record. We completed an overhaul to our professional skills training curriculum and bolstered our measurement and evaluation tools. We also underwent a brand refresh, including a new logo, website and external messaging. Recently, we hired a Chief Development Officer to lead overall development strategies for the organization, ensure sufficient funding levels for current operations at the National Office, and plan and implement an organization-wide capital growth campaign. As part of the updated internship sales approach, we plan to hire a seasoned sales expert focused entirely on establishing best-selling practices at existing and new sites; providing continuous training to site personnel; monitoring performance of secured internships and sales pipelines; and maximizing relationships with national level partners.

Working toward an updated internship sales approach, we have engaged a consulting firm (CEB) with specific and proven knowledge of B2B sales techniques and business insight to inform the overhaul of our current sales process and staff training. Deliverables include: common vernacular and structured processes to explore customer insights and opportunities to maximize strategic clients, strong value proposition based on research, framework for sales collateral, tracking tools and systems, and organization-wide staff training to increase efficiencies. We have also taken the first steps of a strategic planning process. The process was launched at the National Board meeting in May, and we have secured the consultant. We will begin engaging the sites this Fall. Our new Chief Development Officer is fully up to speed and executing the priorities listed above. By Q4, we will secure the right talent to fulfill the executive-level sales director role. Over the next year, we will implement the components necessary to scale our internship sales process and executing on our strategic planning process. Every site will be operating at increased growth rates and the organization will be maximizing earned and contributed income.