Student Empowerment and Social Enterprise: The Andy Babowski Interview - Part 2

What if you had the power to change a student's life? This podcast episode promises to enlighten you about the potential of social enterprises to address market and social problems. We're thrilled to have Andy Babowski, a social entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, and co-founder of Backers, as our esteemed guest. Listen in as we engage in a profound discussion about high-performing yet under-resourced students, who, despite their efforts, face struggles to achieve economic success. We'll explore the indispensable role of social and financial capital, and how Backers is revolutionizing the mentoring process to empower these students.

The episode also uses an innovative lens to view the concept of digital mentoring, showcasing our proprietary app that connects students with resourceful adults from diverse backgrounds. Uncover the potential impact as we walk you through the importance of journey-based mentoring and the power of having multiple backers for each student. Hear about how a simple cash stipend can support a student's ambition and everyday essentials. As we venture into the second half, you'll discover the crucial role of diversifying networks for youngsters through mentoring programs. We'll outline our unique selection process for students and backers, and the significant influence of these programs in amplifying social capital and providing invaluable connections. So tune in, and let's collectively reimagine the power of investing in each other!

https://www.linkedin.com/company/backrs/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andybobowski/

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Transcript

Joel: 0:33

What if investing in each other could change the world? I'm Joel Skeen with bizradious, and this is the Mindful Marketplace. Welcome back to another edition of the Mindful Marketplace here on Bizradious. Welcome, as always. And if this is your first time with us on this program, we talk to the entrepreneurs, the advisors, the industry leaders, the investors, the economic experts who are not only solving a market problem to make a profit, but who are also solving a social problem to make an impact. It's where we learn how to connect our money and our business to our values, our community and ourselves.

Joel: 1:15

Today I have on part two of an excellent conversation I'm having with social entrepreneur, tedx speaker and co-founder of Backers, andy Babowski. If you missed the first half of this episode, please go back and check that out. We talked a lot about Andy's background in education, in teaching, what he learned there and what he saw as a problem that could be solved not simply by the traditional means of the education system, but that could actually be solved by social enterprise. And we've also got to dig in a bit on what social enterprise actually means and what it means to Andy. So I'm just going to welcome Andy back into the conversation so we can basically pick up from where we left off.

Joel: 2:01

Andy, welcome back in. Really glad to have you on today. Thanks, joel Say, to be here. Yeah, so I know earlier we were talking about. You know kind of the difficulties that some students face that are doing everything right but that still face challenges when it comes to the opportunities that they have to achieve their goals in their lives and the impact that individuals can make. I'm excited to get to share with the audience about how you're working on that problem, so let's just kind of keep it basic. You know what? What is Backers?

Andy: 2:35

Yeah. So let me first kind of frame what we see as the problem across the country and then can share what we're doing at Backers. So first, when we take a step back and we look at students across the United States, what we find is that there are literally millions of high performing but under resourced high school and college students that are not flourishing as they advance into their 20s, 30s, 40s and beyond. In fact, they as a group are 20 to 30 times less likely to land a great first job after college and then subsequently have a life of economic opportunity. So to kind of dial into this a little bit more, if we were to start with a hundred high performing but under resourced high school and college students, the truth is that if you fast forward about four or five years, less than half of those have matriculated to a strong college that are ready for college and to do well. Far less than far fewer than them even are graduating from a competitive post-secondary option within four to six years with a competitive major. And then, if we look about six to 12 months after college graduation, only about three percent of those original hundred students have secured and are succeeding in a great first job. Okay. So from a hundred to three, right, and just to kind of underscore something here, this isn't just an average student, right? These are the high performing ones, the one that we talked about in the last episode, that are doing the right things, getting good grades, showing up to school. And so we take a step back and ask, like you know what's going on here? I mean, by our math there's about five million students that kind of fit this profile right high school and college students across the country. And so why is that? To step back?

Andy: 4:28

We talked in the last episode about how schools uh, great schools are are doing everything that they can and know how to do and doing their best to get students ready academically for what's ahead. But I gave the puzzle analogy, this idea that schools are trying to put together these pieces of the puzzle to prepare their students for the long haul. But when you actually take a step back, there's way, way bigger puzzle. Instead of working with four or five pieces, we're talking about a hundred pieces here and it turns out the research is actually pretty clear for why so many of these students aren't flourishing.

Andy: 5:02

All right, the first uh, the first uh factor in research base comes out comes from the work of Raj Chetty, who's a professor of economics at Harvard, and what he and his team have found is that there's four primary factors to social mobility, or this idea of a young person that's born in the bottom income quartile moving to the top income quartile, or two, uh, as an adult. And the four primary factors that they found are first, poverty, second, family structure, third, high quality schools and fourth, social capital. And what they found? Of those four factors, the number one predictor of social mobility in the United States is social capital, or, in other words, the connections that a young person has both in school and outside of school, and the diversity of those connections. Yeah, it's who you know.

Andy: 6:02

And, as a former principal, that piece of data hit me squarely between the eyes because, here I was, here, my staff was here, our parents were doing everything that we knew to do to get students ready academically and, again, all of that is essential, but it's table stakes, it's not the end of the journey, right, and so, in taking a step back and realizing that, across our country, our schools, our neighborhoods, our communities, our churches and many respects are more economically segregated than they have been in the last 50 years, who you know, continues to become increasingly difficult. So what we are seeking to do at Backers is to modernize mentoring, specifically by empowering high performing but under-resourced high school and college students to build both social capital and financial capital, while also making it easier and more rewarding for better resource adults to use their own skill sets, experiences and capital for good.

Joel: 7:03

Yeah, that's huge, because a lot of times when we talk about capital, we're really people just think of it as just money. Right, it's just. We look at that poverty issue but we don't think about how that poverty issue affects the social capital. Because if you grow up in a neighborhood where everyone around you has opportunities and has resources, then you're gonna have connections to those people who have those opportunities and those resources. It's like a web going out, and if the web you happen to be in is one that doesn't have resources and opportunities, it's not like there's a clear cut way for you to get in to a different web. I guess. How do you so then? How does backers come in? I know that you leverage technology, but it seems like there's more to it than that. How do you guys actually start to address that social capital issue?

Andy: 7:55

Yeah, absolutely. So we're trying to do four things specific aspects of our model that are a little bit different from a traditional mentoring. All right, so first we are, we're digital. So we have spent the better part of the last two years building a proprietary app that's available in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, and what that allows us to do is to meet our young people where they're at right. We're talking about high school and college students that are busy, they're on the run, they have jobs, they're in extracurriculars, they're playing sports, they're studying hard and our observations like gone are the days where many students are going to show up in a cafeteria every other Monday for an hour and a half after school. So, by being digital, we can meet our young people where we're at and, just as importantly, it's allowing us to get a lot more adults, who we call backers, in the game and, in many respects, people that typically wouldn't have the time to do a traditional mentoring organization Right.

Andy: 9:01

So imagine doctors, lawyers, management consultants, accountants the list goes on. People that arguably have some of the most resources, both financial and capital, typically aren't the ones that are able to do those type of opportunities, and so, by being digital, a whole, much wider range of folks can connect. So that's the first thing that makes us a little bit different. The second is that we are what we call journey based. So if a student start with us, starts with us as a 10th grader or a 12th grader or even a sophomore in college, we're going to stick with them all the way through the time that they secure land and succeed in a first great job after college. A lot of local organizations that are doing great work with kids on the ground, once that student leaves that high school or moves away, they're not typically able to support the student the same way. So by being journey based we can actually stick with students for a longer period of time and then harness the technology to maintain those relationships with their current backers, even as new backers as they join. The third thing is that every student in our community is backed by multiple, multiple adults. So not just one, where the sole onus is then on that particular person, right, but actually three, four, five, even six backers, and we try and be really intentional about the diversity of that team. So we want to make sure that if a young person is based, say, in Atlanta, we're going to make sure that one or two backers are from Atlanta or live in Atlanta. If that young person wants to be a pediatrician, we're going to recruit a pediatrician to be a part of the team, but we're not going to have five people from Atlanta. We're not going to have five pediatricians. We're going to be really diverse.

Andy: 10:49

Back to the research around social capital. Who you know. When a young person is backed by one adult, that one adult knows 50 people. But when you're backed by five adults who know 50 people know 50 people, it's actually order of magnitude difference. It's actually 10,000. It's a difference of 10,000 people, second degree connections, just for that one young person by being backed by five adults. And you know, for the adult, that again means that they can lean in and support when it matches their own skill sets, strengths and experiences. So if someone has a lot of experience creating budgets and the young person is hoping to create their first budget or open up their first savings account, chances are one backer on the team is going to be very excited to do that. It has experience in that. Or if a young person is looking to build a LinkedIn profile but they don't know where to start, chances are one backer on the team has experience building out a LinkedIn profile. And then the final thing that makes our model a little bit different is that the young people in our community receive a cash stipend we call it our flourish fund and that money goes directly towards the young people's goals, everyday needs and enrichment whether it's a new tie for an upcoming interview, saving for college gas money, because they're commuter students to and from, to and from school and that's their money.

Andy: 12:10

And I think I think it's really important here to take a second just to think first how impactful just actually a little bit of money can be on a young person. So I mean big picture, right, tuition at four year college is more than doubled in the last 30 years, even adjusting for inflation. Pell grants when it first started about 50 years ago, covered close to 80% of college tuition. Now they're only about 30%. And half of folks from low income communities when they ask, when they're asked why they're not pursuing a post secondary pathway, half of them say it's because of financial purposes. But here's the thing actually a very modest amount of money can make a huge difference. In fact, research shows that even when a young person has just a few hundred dollars in a savings account, they're three times more likely to go to college and four times more likely to graduate from college. Just a few hundred dollars. And oftentimes we see these huge sticker prices on college and we say, oh my goodness, you know, a young person that comes from a under resourced community can't possibly afford that.

Andy: 13:19

But when you take into account loans and scholarships and finding the best financial fit school for you, it's typically not necessarily the tuition that excludes a student from persisting. It's often that a student can't afford a $300 chemistry textbook and so they take chemistry. They can't afford the textbook, so they're doing their best to piece things together. They don't pass that class because they don't have the required resources. And then it turns out that when you don't pass a bunch of classes in your freshman or sophomore year, you often have to transfer down to a different school or take students that commute. They've gotten into the school, they've been accepted, they have a good scholarship and loan package, but then their car breaks down and schools 20 minutes away and they live in a city that doesn't have great public transportation. It was actually that $300 or $200 to fix their car that they couldn't do, which is the reason why they stopped out of college. So that's why, for us, the financial component of our model is absolutely essential to supporting students holistically in building more of their social capital and financial capital.

Joel: 14:32

What I think is really cool about that is that it seems like you're taking a few different models. So you're kind of taking a sponsorship model that a lot of us are familiar with, where you would sponsor someone in need financially. You're taking sort of a model of more of like a coaching or mentoring type program and also kind of a big brother, big sister sort of situation, but it's more geared towards it can be sounds like it's more focused towards the line of work or the industry that they're in and the things that all go around with this. And at the same time it seems like in each of those different models that you're sort of pulling from and drawing from Because of the scale of it and because of the technology aspect that we talked of it talked about a second ago, it sounds like you're actually kind of not only pulling in multiple different ways of attacking the same problem but also removing some of the limitations that are inherent in each of those approaches.

Andy: 15:40

That's right and it's, and it's something that most schools, right now at least, are not positioned to be able to do for their students, and I would often. I would often try and start many of my own mentoring programs at the schools that I led and we would typically have juniors and seniors in college that needed some community service hours and we had a few of the grandmas down the street and that was nice in terms of building relationships. When you actually take a look at, are these connections actually opening up new doors for my students? Thank you, they weren't right. And so, given that so many schools aren't positioned to do this, part of what we would posit is that we are gonna have to think a little bit differently about diversifying kids networks and if they're not currently baked into our neighborhoods and our schools, even as we move towards that, you know, in years and decades to come, we think that technology actually has a competitive advantage when it comes to diversifying networks for young people.

Joel: 16:41

How are these connections actually being made? I think that's really important. Like, are you just putting out ads online, like hey, be a coach. And like are you just kind of picking random students that's had good test scores, or like, how does the selection process I guess we can start with the students and then go to the backer side how does that process work?

Andy: 17:03

So the way it works is we partner with high schools, colleges and other youth-oriented nonprofits who serve as the vouching entity for the student. We recognize we don't know the student yet, so in business terms we're definitely a B2B2C type of company, right. We're partnering with schools. We're sharing with them a set of criteria to then turn around and select the students. They then nominate students based on a set of criteria, one of those being financial need, a second one being that they're doing well in school. Doesn't need to be like the top 1% of students, but they're doing well in school. If they're in college, they're good academic standing. They're not an academic probation. And the third, and arguably the most important, was that the students really wanna do it. They're motivated by this, they're excited by it. If you talk with 10 adults that have done mentoring before turns out a lot of people have done it.

Andy: 17:52

Probably about half of them are gonna say yeah, I wasn't sure if the student wanted to be there or they didn't show up a bunch, or if I've forced on them somehow Exactly, and so a student opting into this is a huge part of our model, because the whole model is predicated on their goals, their aspirations, what they want to be true. So once the students join us, we put them through a series of onboarding sessions that teach them about networking, to teach them about social capital. We do some cool purpose development work and, most importantly, you do goal setting with them. All young people have a set of goals that they want to accomplish, but sometimes they don't know how to articulate those and they certainly don't yet have the skill set for how to ask for help on those goals. That's a huge life skill that we spend a lot of time working with young people.

Andy: 18:38

Then what we do is we recruit the backers. We've done no paid advertising today and it's all been via word of mouth. And as we move forward, we are in particular, focusing with companies of all sizes who are excited again the game, for various reasons, right. Some are looking for a more effective volunteering option, others are looking to fulfill some of their DEI or CSR priorities and, importantly, some are excited to be able to work with fantastic young people that, either two years out, four years out, six years out could actually be the new hires at their company. So that's our go forward approach to securing more and better resource backers across the country. As we stand today, we actually have backers, or our mentors, from 38 different states around the country, which is super cool. We're working with high school students in six or seven different cities, but obviously our college students have now spread out and are all over the country.

Joel: 19:39

So the people who are benefiting from backers obviously are the students who are getting their increase in social capital. By what did you say 10,000 times? Am I exaggerating? What was that number? It was pretty big.

Andy: 19:56

Yeah, if you do the math on it, five people. If you're backed by five people who generally have 50 close relationships, who then know each of them know 50 people, that's about 10,000 additional connections. And I'll just give you one really quick example of this. Erica is a student at WashU in St Louis. When she was a freshman and she started she was considering majoring in pre-med to go into ophthalmology and ophthalmology. She didn't know any ophthalmologists but she asked her backers if they did. None of her backers even actually lived in St Louis. But people know people and they have connections and so one of her backers made a call, put out a request to his network.

Andy: 20:44

Erica actually had the opportunity to connect with In Shadow, an ophthalmologist and an ophthalmologist within just a few weeks in St Louis. It wasn't the backer themselves that was the ophthalmologist, but it was the connection to that backer. Now Erica came out of that and she decided, hey, I definitely do not want to be an ophthalmologist. That's half the battle, right, and typically those types of connections don't happen for young people like that. We have a lemma who had her first job interview. She never interviewed for a job before. She was super nervous and so she just asked her backers hey, would any of you be willing to do a mock interview with me? And so one of her backers got in a call. So in that particular case it was a backer that could spend just 20 minutes providing that connection for that student. That made the world different. She ended up getting the job. It was super cool. It was her first summer job between her junior and senior year of high school man.

Joel: 21:40

That's awesome. So on the impact side, you're increasing that social capital for a student and also you're making a more convenient and more really approachable way for people who do want to volunteer and give back to be able to do that that fits with their busy schedule and with their lifestyle. And then, on the business side, your clients are the companies that would like to see more young people educated in the skills that they need in order to fulfill the roles that they have, and the schools that want to help promote and give back better to their high-performing students. And so that's kind of like how I want to wrap this up here a little bit. Because, coming back to that idea of you using your business not just to solve a market problem but really to solve a social problem at the same time, with the last minute-ish we have here left, do you have any advice that you would give to someone who is interested in also being a social entrepreneur in any way?

Andy: 22:45

Yes, I mean what you just touched upon there is exactly right we, the research is pretty clear of the impact of social and financial capital on academic outcomes, and so, of course, our schools are some of our primary customers. Moving forward, our businesses will be some of our primary customers as well, and so we are kind of a two-sided marketplace in many respects here, right between between the young people and the adults, and we also kind of play within the ed tech space as well as the workforce development space. I will say one thing that I'm really proud of in our team is really proud of that we did early on. That has very much impacted the social impact and the social entrepreneurship work that we're doing is talking with our young people. I mean, the importance of talking with stakeholders at the beginning and not as time, not later on, is so absolutely essential in not just getting their feedback but understanding what matters most to them. And so many aspects of our model have actually borne out based on those early conversations with our students.

Andy: 23:55

And part of what we wanted to do differently here and this is certainly like the entrepreneurship side of it is we. You know there's no shortage of mentoring organizations in the country. In fact there's close to like four or 5,000 of them and lots of them are, you know, serving 20 students here, 100 kids there. We're thinking about tens of thousands and potentially even millions down the road, and it's super important to us that we understand what is most useful and important to our young people. You know, my one kind of big picture piece of advice here is very, very early on, talking to your end users, your primary stakeholders, about what is most important to them and develop with them, not for them or to them.

Joel: 24:39

Yep, absolutely. Find out what they actually need, not just what you think they need. I think that's brilliant, that's great. Thank you so much, andy, for your time today. Thank you all for listening and for watching here today. Make sure to join us on bizradious, follow us on all of the podcast streaming platforms and, you know, give us a review, give us a like and check out backers. That's B-A-C-K-R, no E S, not a Z. And thanks, andy, so much for your time today and for all of you out there. Take care of yourself and take care of someone else.