Enterpreneurship

Date 4.11.2021

REMAIN FOCUSED ON YOUR GOALS AT ALL TIMES

EXERCUTIVE SUMMARY

Problem

Despite having the financial means to attend college, nearly half of all low-income high school seniors never ever apply. Students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds suffer an information gap when it comes to selecting universities to apply to, completing a university application form, writing an effective college application essay, and understanding the complexities of the financial aid process. A single college counselor serves as many as 740 students at a time in low-income high schools.

Concept

AppSuccess helps low-income kids who want to go to college get the same chances as their more affluent counterparts by filling in the information and knowledge gap (Barlow, P., 2021). For free, Mentors will help Applicants through the college application process, including where and when to apply and how to create a convincing admissions statement, by working one-on-one with them on a website. When other volunteer organizations have struggled because of regional and logistical constraints, we can overcome these issues with our online guidance program.

MISSION

Low-income students who are eligible to attend a four-year college are given the resources to do so through AppSuccess. In order to fill the informational void surrounding the college application process, we pair up prospective students with current students at top universities who act as mentors, guiding them through the application and financial aid processes on our online platform. Change Theory In order to help low-income students get into better universities, we need to give them with tailored college application support. An AppSucceed management team features five founding members with experiences ranging from education to computer development to finance to consulting to philanthropy. As our business grows, we plan to recruit web developers to assist in the development of our website.

Market Analysis

AppSuccess intends to reach out to the 440,000 low-income students who are eligible for college but do not attend. A focus on Title I schools, which are those with the highest number of pupils from low-income families, will be one of our primary recruitment strategies. There will be 90 applicants served in our first year of operation, but this number will expand in the future. For the first time, AppSuccess will be providing free, tailored college aid to low-income students across the United States. AppSuccess is now the primary source of college counseling for low-income kids because of this. Planning for your financial future we expect to be cash-flow positive by the third year of operation, according to our model. Advertorials and business partnerships will gradually be added to our revenue sources as well as grants and private donations. Mentors will come from three institutions in our first year, then we plan to expand our network to include schools on the US News Top 100 Colleges list. Campus Leaders—student leaders who will recruit Mentors and serve as a link between AppSuccess and Mentors—will be recruited in each campus where we engage with us.

ORGANIZATIONAL SUMMARY

What You'll Need to Be a Winner to be successful, AppSuccess needs to have a user-friendly and functional web-based platform as well as competent applicants and dedicated mentors? Applicants who meet the requirements AppSuccess is open to high school students who meet the following two requirements:

A Title I school is required, as is a high school diploma.

Secondly, they must have a college degree.

In September of their senior year, students can sign up for an AppSuccess Mentor. In order to connect them with a mentor with a comparable profile, they will provide basic information about their academics, interests, and ambitions. Applicants will be required to watch a series of video lessons on the fundamentals of applying to and attending college before being matched with a Mentor (Barrow, C., 2018). Applicant foundational information and a commitment to perseverance are the primary goals of this section of the application process. In order for parents to be a part of their child's journey with AppSuccess, there will be a section of the website dedicated to them.

Committed Coaches Every Applicant will be paired with a Mentor who has recently completed the college application process and has been accepted to a top-tier university. A stringent application process is required for Mentors, as opposed to Applicants, who are automatically eligible to participate in AppSuccess if they meet the eligibility standards. Mentors that meet our three requirements of being responsible, respectful, and tireless in their desire to help others are sought after. In order to ease the matchmaking process, mentors will fill out a questionnaire that gauges their interests and background, similar to the questionnaire that the applicants complete. To help them understand how to use the website, the timeline, and their responsibilities as Mentors, they will also see a series of films that teach them how to assist Applicants. An important part of Mentoring 101 is learning how to distinguish between helping an applicant out and performing their work for them. Mentors are responsible for a variety of duties once they have been hired and trained, such as:

• Assisting their Applicant in deciding on which universities to apply to. •Encouraging a potential employee to seek out references; reviewing application essays; navigating the financial aid process.

Their Applicant must complete all prerequisites, reach all milestones and submit their applications on time.

• Answering inquiries, providing basic advise, and expressing strong support throughout the process. •

Every year, Mentors will commit 30-40 hours of their time to working with the Applicant. Leaders who are effective on campus AppSuccess will recruit college students to serve as Campus Leaders at each campus where we have a chapter. The Campus Leaders, rather than AppSuccess directly recruiting huge numbers of Mentors at each college, are responsible for recruiting Mentors at their colleges. Our Mentor supply will be driven by our ability to recruit strong Campus Leaders; thus this will be a high goal for AppSuccess in recruiting these individuals. Campus Leaders must possess four qualities: initiative, accountability, the capacity to inspire others, and a commitment to the organization's objective. A written application and a phone interview will be part of the selection process for potential leaders. Campus Leaders will oversee recruiting Mentors, but they will also be in charge of keeping in touch with them to make sure they are on track, keeping in touch with AppSuccess staff to make sure their curriculum is in line with AppSuccess's, and organizing social events and meet-ups for the Mentors at their university.

Platform that is accessible over the Internet

AppSuccess's web-based platform will be used for the interactions between the applicant and mentor. It will include several essential features, including:

Candidates and Mentors must fill out an application; an algorithm will then match the two based on their interests, hobbies, and professional aspirations.

• Videos for applicants and their parents to learn the basics; To ensure that Mentors have learned the training materials, there will be videos and assessments to ensure that Mentors have learnt the contents and can lead their Applicants through the application process (Watson, K., 2018). Applicants and Mentors can edit, communicate, and video chat on the same platform at the same time.

What's in it for me? The Applicant and society benefit from the use of our goods. An Applicant's Worth Application Success's core value proposition is to lower the Applicant's educational costs. There are three methods in which we accomplish this. AppSuccess reduces the cost of information for students and their families by providing all high school students with free and easy access to information essential to their college applications. It's easier for low-income students to apply to college since AppSuccess offers free college counseling services to those students, making it possible for them to compete with their more affluent peers.

A program like AppSuccess provides a huge financial benefit to society. In addition to the Applicant's intangible benefits, like as improved exposure to a wider range of ideas and cultures, it also provides economic benefits to society. Net present value of investment in an AppSuccess Applicant has been estimated to be more than $45,000, with the bulk of that coming from the enhanced earning power available to college grads and those from higher-tier universities.

Performance Evaluation

Quality, efficiency, and customer satisfaction will be monitored by AppSuccess in four key areas: Motivation for our students to succeed Getting students into institutions that are a good match for their qualifications is the major goal of our company. Percentage of "on-track" applications and percentage of mentor capacity employed in a reporting period are two leading indicators. Late indicators include the percentage of applicants accepted to a college or university and how much money each applicant saves through scholarships or application waivers, as well as how many applications each applicant makes and how many of those applications are accepted. There will also be a focus on crucial growth metrics like the number of applications submitted each year, which we will track. We'll be able to track Applicants after they've applied, measure enrollment and matriculation rates, and perform fit surveys to evaluate the effectiveness of our Mentors in helping Applicants select institutions that are a good fit. Platform Capabilities for High-Performance Applicant/Mentor traffic is too high for us to provide Mentor services without an operational infrastructure. Quality Control audits, feedback from Applicants and Mentors and unique site hits are all metrics we use to measure our success. Providing Exceptional Customer Service Only if all of our stakeholders are satisfied with the way our processes are implemented can our services be considered truly effective. To this aim, we plan to conduct regular surveys of Applicants, Mentors, and Campus Leaders to measure their happiness and solicit their ideas for improving the overall experience.

Analyzing the market

Applicants' Market AppSuccess aims to help low-income students who are eligible to attend a four-year university. In the absence of our intervention, these students would either not apply to college at all or would apply to less selective universities in which they wouldn't have the opportunity to fully realize their potential.

Strategy for pricing

Applicants to AppSuccess will not have to pay for any of its services. This means that rather than charging our applicants, we will adopt a sponsorship approach where individual donors will "sponsor" an Applicant to go through our program.

Marketing Strategy

Marketing efforts for both Applicants and Mentors will be launched by AppSuccess. Technology and strong relationships can help us reach our audience at a reasonable cost. The Applicants' Marketing Plan Stage 1 of our growth will begin with a number of high schools around the country, where we will build personal relationships with teachers and staff who can help us identify Applicants who would benefit from AppSuccess. Early on, we will focus on building connections with school staff members in order to better understand their needs and concerns.

Securing our market

Our plan for securing our market has three pillars: Assuring that you are the first to market Prioritizing students who are college-ready but lack access to the information they need will help us entrench AppSuccess in low-income neighborhoods and Title I schools. Strengthening Your Company's Name Recognition AppSuccess will gain a great reputation in the areas where we serve if we work closely with all applicants and mentors over our first two years to maximize our success rate and publicize our success.

Analyzing the potential dangers

AppSuccess poses few risks, and the mitigation measures will greatly limit the occurrence of the most significant ones. Low Mentor Attendance Many Mentors will be needed to maintain a low Applicant/Mentor ratio, especially if Mentor turnover is high. (Watson, K., 2018).We plan to reach out to current university community service hubs a year before we intend to recruit Mentors from them. Expansion into other colleges and the temporary acceptance of applicants who may not meet their own profile are further reactions to a lack of mentors. Applicants in the Low-Income bracket have a lower level of risk. Attrition in the Workforce Applicant focus and commitment must be maintained throughout a period of six months or more. First and foremost, as previously indicated, we'll have early warning signs to spot when these applicants go off course before attrition. All applicants will be required to find a "sponsor" teacher—someone who can attest for a student's dedication and supply their personal contact information for us to utilize if we need someone to encourage the applicant in their local area—in addition to this.

FINANCIAL PLAN

By year three of operation, we want to have a financially viable organization, which means that our application assistance must be free of charge to the applicants. Both of these objectives are met by our projections. By the end of year six, revenues will have grown from a base of around $210,000 to more than $940,000. Thanks to donations and partners, as well as advertising for our company's growth, we've made these gains possible (Genadinik, A., 2019). By line item, here are the details: Grants. In the United States, four of the top ten foundations are dedicated to supporting education-related NGOs. 5 Citi Foundation and Lumina Foundation are examples of other foundations that focus their funds on disadvantaged communities' college access efforts. Our first funding will come primarily from grants, but as we expand, we expect to rely less and less on them. The vast majority of our revenue will come from grants in our first year. During our sixth year of operation our reliance on grants will drop to 30 percent of our total revenue... We expect annual donations to account for an ever-increasing amount of our earnings as we continue to establish our name and cultivate a group of dedicated financial supporters. We'll be working with businesses like College Board, ACT Inc., Princeton Review and Embark to help students get into college through our AppSuccess program. Ultimately, our goal is to create relationships with our students and eventually direct them to their website.

Donations

Our "Sponsor an Applicant" initiative will be our primary source of funding. One hundred dollars is all that is required from donors in order to sponsor an applicant via the AppSuccess program. Applicants will be required to send letters of gratitude to their sponsors in order to secure long-term support from donors. Due to the personal nature of the donation, similar sponsorship schemes have been incredibly successful for other organizations.

AppSuccess' quarterly income statement shows a seasonality that coincides with the college admissions process. Web design, advertising, and travel expenses will all be concentrated in the first half of the fiscal year because of college application deadlines that fall between mid-November and early February. The first quarter of 2012 is expected to see a surge in revenue thanks to the $25,000 award from the HBS Business Plan Competition. Annual Cash Flow Statement Our cash flow statement looks a lot like our forecasted earnings statement.

Sustainability

It's a major issue for any business, but especially so for non-profit organizations. The long-term viability of the AppSuccess business is something we intend to achieve by prudent planning, leveraging our partner relationships, and utilizing revenue streams that are not directly related to our main business (Genadinik, A., 2019). By the end of our third year in business, we expect to be cash flow positive. Even though our services are free, we are aware that without donations and foundations, we are unable to support ourselves. We want to tackle this issue in a variety of ways. Maintaining a Low Cost of Operation to run our business and build our website, our running costs are extremely minimal, which means we can spend less time seeking money and more of our time providing a superior product. It's important to keep your fundraising goals reasonable. In order to stay afloat financially, we just need to generate $200,000 a year in grants. In the United States alone, education NGOs receive about $5.5 billion in financing each year, and we feel this is a modest estimate Education financing was unaffected by the economic downturn.

References

Barlow, P., Baehr, M., Beyerlein, S., Horton, J., Hurd, B., Jain, C., Mahaffey, L., Moore, M., Smith, P., Ulbrich, I. and Watts, M., 2021. Business plan.

Barrow, C., Barrow, P. and Brown, R., 2018. The Business Plan Workbook: A Step-by-step Guide to Creating and Developing a Successful Business. Kegan Page Publishers.

Seisdedos Barrabés, S., 2021. SON-SOLUTIONS: Business Plan.

Watson, K., McGowan, P. and Cunningham, J.A., 2018. An exploration of the Business Plan Competition as a methodology for effective nascent entrepreneurial learning. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research.

Genadinik, A., 2019. Business plan template and example: how to write a business plan: Business planning made simple. Alex Genadinik.

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