Non-Profit

Background

The Art School was founded by Nancy Barno Reynolds in September 2005. The school is located in Broome County New York with its two main facilities in Vestal at the Our Lady of Sorrows Church and in Endwell at Broome West Senior Center. Nancy serves as the Executive Director and the only full-time (non-contracted) staff member. The Art School strives to offer "affordable art education for everyone" and does so with classes ranging from $5-10 an hour. The classes include a variety of art, cooking, dancing, and writing mediums and are taught by numerous visual arts teachers in the surrounding areas. The faculty members are handpicked by Nancy for their creative talent and the unique spirit that they each can offer The Art School. Nancy describes The Art School as a way to "combine my loves: family with work; art & language with cooking; talented artists with willing students; education with community improvement."

The Art School is the only school in the area with such a broad amount of variety and creativity for students. It was founded with only a couple of months of consideration and planning by Nancy after a friend suggested that something of its nature was needed in the community. Aside from teaching members of Broome County about art, The Art School is extremely service oriented and is very involved in giving back to the community whenever possible. Monthly art demonstrations take place at either of their campuses for free and various donations are made for free art or cooking classes to other organizations in need of support (WSKG Art Auction, Mothers & More group, S.O.S. Shelter Art Auction, etc.)1

The Art School is currently functioning as a non-profit organization without official "not-for profit" status. Since their opening in September, enrollment has been fairly flat, management of the existing clientele database has been difficult, and maintaining enough funds to break even with costs is becoming extremely problematic. The Art School is faced with the concern of whether to achieve non-profit status on their own or to partner with an already standing organization of this nature. The need for The Art School has proven relevant over the past eight months however the internal structure is not supporting the needs of the community as a whole.

Our Mission

Our team discovered The Art School during January 2006, at the start of the Strategic Leadership and Consulting course (Lead353). We met with Executive Director Nancy and learned about the mission of the school as well as the values that they possess and hold to be important. Through this meeting we learned of the many problems that the organization was currently facing and we were compelled to choose them as our model for learning about the fundamentals of strategic leadership and external consulting. Strategic leadership is the ability to formulate strategies that insure the long term survival and profitability of the organization in conjunction with the ability to energize and mobilize the internal stakeholders those of the organization to effectively implement organizational strategy. The stakeholders in a corporation are the individuals and constituencies that contribute, either voluntarily or involuntarily, to its wealth-creating capacity and activities, and that are therefore its potential beneficiaries and/or risk bearers. These members can either be internal or external in nature. Being able to effectively manage and lead the external stakeholders is also an important part of strategic leadership. (Please see Appendix 1 for a list of internal and external stakeholders of The Art School.) Through our strategic plan we hope to provide Nancy with the tools that will help The Art School to better manage their external stakeholders, alleviate some of the current problems, and help her to become a more effective leader.

The Art School's mission of affordable art education for everyone is an inspiration for the entire organization and it is important to maintain this mission within any future changes or partnerships that are established while still supporting it self financially. Nancy is a very dynamic and creative individual and her energy towards The Art School is contagious. However, unless The Art School is able to formulate a long term strategy that directly influences its funding, they will be forced to close their doors after only one year in operation.

As a team we have conducted several tiers of internal and external analysis about and for The Art School. Our mission is to focus our efforts on improving upon their operations, marketing and service in order to increase company efficiency and customer enrollment.

1. Marketing: The identification of customer needs and the generation of sales.

2. Operations: The processes of transforming inputs into finished products and services.

3. Service: The support of customers after the products and services are sold to them.

Each of these elements is influenced by Nancy's leadership styles and skills and we hope to provide a better understanding of how the essentials of strategic leadership can be implemented into The Art School's design.

External Analysis

External Analysis

Researching the external environment affecting The Art School was vital for analyzing how well The Art School is doing now and how well it will do in the future. Researching and analyzing community competitors as well as national competitors gave our team a sense of where The Art School fits in and what it can become with the proper support and plan. Another part of our external research focused on grant-writing and non-profit status. Since The Art School is not formally a non-profit organization; our team felt it would be in the best interest of The Art School to look into the process of granting-writing and how to become non-profit. The external research that was acquired, such as competitors, how-to's, and strategic planning model, is extremely helpful in being able to develop our recommendations fully so they will maximize the benefits for The Art School. We will take a look at both direct and indirect competitors of The Art School. These concepts are defined as:

* Direct Competitors: Any organization that provides creative art education classes of a similar nature to that of The Art School.

* Indirect Competitors: Anything or any place that children and adults could