It’s not the first time I’ve tried and failed at this, but it’s definitely the biggest failure I’ve had. This might be the final nail in the coffin for this venture. Achieving real, tangible, impactful success is so much harder than I had thought.
An Idea is Born 🔗
When I was an undergrad at Wisconsin I struggled and ultimately wasn’t admitted to my program - mechanical engineering. I wasn’t accepted into the Engineering School at all, even after strategically applying to whichever specific program had the highest acceptance rate. A semester later I was still struggling in the easier College of Letters and Science computer science program, but I loved the material and knew I’d have to make some serious mistakes to graduate without a job. I felt lucky to discover such an amazing field even after getting rejected by the Engineering School.
In my Junior year, I took a Service Learning course. It revolved around teaching computer science basics to middle school students in the Madison area. The college students would lead after school programs and be responsible for teaching concepts through the block-based Scratch programming language. I found myself wishing the kids in my hometown had this as an option.
I put together a plan that would work for Ashland Middle School. I presented it to the School Board and was approved. I tried to organize, but ultimately couldn’t get enough students to participate. I gave up on the idea of a Scratch club for Ashland Middle School students, but I didn’t give up on the idea of bringing computer science to Ashland students.
The Resources to Make things Happen 🔗
My first job hop as a software engineer was for a 50% salary increase and that sense of good fortune I felt in college was reinvigorated. That - and the fact I now had some more disposable income - inspired me to try bringing computer science to Ashland again.
This time we would give it our all. This time I had the money and experience to really have a serious shot at success. Since we attributed our failure with the Scratch club to low participation, we had to incentivize participation. I figured that a scholarship would be a good medium - you don’t have to twist any arms to give away money.
While it’s straightforward for an aspiring college student to accept money, there are some challenges with how that money is originally acquired, especially if you want contributions to the fund to be tax-free. We would need to create an organization and obtain tax exempt status. Luckily, my girlfriend, Giovanna, was a law student and paralegal with the skills to obtain this.
Giovanna and I created bylaws, recruited directors, and submitted forms. We created a vision for this company, a mission, a strategy and assigned positions. Our mission was “to empower the people of Ashland, WI to thrive in the technology-driven economy.” Donations rolled in from friends and family, as well as us directors. People we talked to were excited that there was an organization trying to bring technology to Ashland. Off the bat we raised almost $1000 and by the end of our fundraising, Ashland’s Technology Future, Inc. had raised enough for two awards.
In summer 2020, 18 months after our organization had formed, we awarded two scholarships. We built our own application form, recruited volunteers to judge essays, and anonymously selected our winners based on a rubric. We felt so much pride in our winners on Ashland High School’s Award night when they were presented with their scholarships from Ashland’s Technology Future, Inc.
The scholarship was not our only offering as an organization, however. We wanted a more sustainable funding mechanism that could further our mission. By offering web services to small businesses in the community, we thought we could achieve this. I was familiar with hosting, domain names, and basic web design and development.The plan was to meet with small businesses, determine a website or set of web services that worked for them, and build and sell them the product or services at a price that worked for their budget. We priced our basic website at $50 one-time and $5 per month to cover hosting.
This offering followed the pattern of our fundraising efforts, with us first selling to friends and family. We built websites for family members who owned small businesses and a Facebook page for a family friend. To reach a wider audience, we created facebook ads marketing our $5/month website service. The ad had great reach and engagement, but converted no customers.
I had built a very feature-rich website for the township I grew up in on a volunteer basis. When they came to me later asking for more features and support I was pretty busy with Ashland’s Technology Future. This seemed like a great opportunity to gain a new customer and offer them a hosting and support package as a customer. However, this never materialized and their website is now abandoned. Actually, none of our leads outside family and friends ever materialized.
When we awarded our next round of scholarships in summer 2021, we knew this might be our last. At the award night, we noticed another troubling sign that we had suspected at the first award night. We were offering scholarships to students that were winning all of the other scholarships. Instead of awarding the students that furthered our mission, we were awarding the students that could write a good essay regardless of prompt. After suspecting this in 2020, we adjusted our rubric to account for students that might struggle with traditional essay writing, but it did not solve the problem.
With this realization, and the stalling of our web services business, we decided to dissolve the corporation. By summer 2022 the corporation was dissolved and we donated the remaining assets to fund computer purchases in the high school. We had failed at our mission and it was time to give up.
Don’t Trust Outsiders 🔗
Succeeding in social change is really hard. Resistance to it is natural, and those that might benefit most can be those that are most comfortable maintaining the status quo. If your small business and its customers have been content without a website for the decades you’ve been operating, you won’t feel compelled to create new expenses for having one. If the top students have always had success pursuing MD’s, JD’s, and DDS’s, you won’t think they need to consider software engineering. When the Walmarts take over and competition for professional degrees pushes small-town students out, it will be too late.
This is the perspective of an outsider, though. In our group-oriented society, outsider perspectives don’t carry the same weight as those in our group - they shouldn’t. Outsiders don’t understand the problems our group deals with and don’t have to deal with any potentially negative outcomes of their solutions. Maybe adding digital, internet-integrated features into our businesses would make us vulnerable to hacking attacks. Maybe a generation of students that goes into software engineering instead of healthcare leaves a void in a community in desperate need of doctors with a connection to the community.
I lived in Ashland, but that was almost a decade ago, and I was only a child at the time. I don’t understand their problems today in the same way that its residents do. Beware of people like me when they come asking for money to further a well-intentioned mission.