Buy 1 Give 1: A Path Forward

Minna Taylor is the founder of Energize Your Voice, a New York City based communication consultancy, specializing in public speaking, presentation skills, and storytelling. She earned her BFA from NYU Tisch and an MFA in perfrormance with a concentration in speech and vocal production. She evolved her theater training into an innovative approach to professional development. She has activated programs all over the world for companies like Uber, E&Y, Instacart, and Citi along with numerous startups and nonprofits. She believes that engagement and high performance are possible when people are supported to discover their full voice to unlock their full potential.

There is gross over expenditure on corporate employee development, with little data to backup the impact or justify that investment. An average spend per employee for each offsite program is $10,000! With such an abundance of funds, it is remarkable how little goes toward empowering the community in which these corporations reside. In large urban cities, historically underserved communities - largely composed of black, POC, and immigrant populations - do not have access to professional development training that would grant individuals the skills required for financial empowerment and upward mobility. We will bring these entities together through a corporate gift model, where every program purchased by a corporate partner will result in a gifted program for a hyper-local nonprofit and the community that they serve. Therefore leveling the playing field of professional readiness between corporate employees and members of the community.

Education is a key factor in building confidence. According to Don Moore of Carnegie Mellon University, “being confident can be more important to getting the job done than competence.” The future of education is one of individual agency and democratized access to high quality programs and credible certifications. We see the four year education model becoming quickly outdated, opening doors for those who were previously barred from entry because they could not financially participate in the traditional system of higher education. This opens an opportunity to revolutionize to whom and how educational programming is delivered and the level of confidence fostered within those communities. Currently there is an enormous opportunity gap when it comes to continuing education, soft skills training, and professional development. Corporate employees gain access as a perk of employment, while community members do not have equal access or even knowledge that such programming exists. The annual spend for corporate training is 47 Billion dollars. Our programs demonstrate an average increase of confidence at 70%. If annual spending was invested in proven programming and matched for nonprofits and their communities who often struggle to gain access to any discretionary development budget, imagine the impact that could be realized. 

We are the TOMS shoes of corporate training. For every corporate partner who enrolls in our custom communication programming, we will give a custom half day training to a hyper-local nonprofit and the community that they serve at no cost to the nonprofit. We work closely with vetted nonprofits to design a bespoke training that aligns to the acute needs of their people. The corporate partners choose from our curated “menu” of nonprofits, we activate the program for that nonprofit, and provide the corporate sponsor with an impact report to validate their gift.

Our primary focus is to provide professional development opportunities to those who have not previously had access or understanding that these types of programs exist and their potential to impact their employability, job security, or career advancement.  The populations of the targeted local communities are historically disenfranchised and living in a cyclical pattern of poverty or financial insecurity. By providing tools for leadership, self-advocacy, confidence, and empowerment, we will open the door to a vision for a life of amplified potential. We will work with the nonprofit as our primary thread into the lives of these underserved communities to determine the exact needs of the people who will receive the training. One nonprofit in Brownsville Brooklyn takes members of the community to Albany to fight for fair housing legislation. Imagine if each person had polished tools for presentation, engaging in challenging conversations, and overcoming objections. How would that shift their engagement and success rate? We are limiting our nonprofit enrollment to five organizations, thereby reinforcing tools through multiple training opportunities over the course of a year. The ultimate vision is to scale this program nationally to include cities that have a long history of redlining, discrimination, or gross inequity.

Our model includes training for three distinct populations: corporate employees, nonprofit employees, and members of underserved communities. These underserved communities exist in survival mode rather than thrive mode, so the notion of luxury or unnecessary spending is irrational. We understand that food scarcity, unemployment, and housing crises take precedence. It is our mission to provide them with training that they would not otherwise prioritize or have access to, but will serve to elevate all aspects of their lives.

We have always gifted local nonprofits with trainings, aware that their meager budgets don’t prioritize employee development. In the most recent eruption for support around Black Lives Matter, Energize Your Voice knew that we had the opportunity to contribute in a meaningful and powerful way. We had a team brainstorm, considering what programs we could offer free to certain communities. I was sensitive to a white savior perception. I didn’t want to run the risk of alienating the communities we sought to serve. Although we have a diverse team, I am the founder and a white woman. Then we realized we already had an access point to the communities we saw suffering all around us in NYC and that was through our local ecosystem of nonprofits. We have also witnessed several of our target corporate clients committing to greater investment in DE&I work and empowering their communities. It was an obvious solution to align all avenues. The companies invest in programs anyway, so why not have them double their impact without doubling their investment. We offer them an opportunity to get involved with the nonprofit and the nonprofit gains a corporate ally, which could result in future funding. 

I believe that each individual has the ability to reach their full potential through tools for an authentic expression of the essential self. Fear drives so much ineffective communication - an inability to speak up, an overcompensation when feeling threatened, a resistance to failure, and an aversion to risk. This is not only a socially conditioned phenomenon, it is largely based on unconscious behavior patterns that have been ingrained through historical repetition of ineffective physical patterns - diminishing of physical space, poor breathing, lack of vocal presence, low embodiment of emotional intelligence, etc. Fear is at the root of this. Vulnerability, rejection, and humiliation are all the catalysts. The communities we are seeking to serve live this everyday. I have worked with teens in Ocean Hill Brooklyn who are afraid to own their worth and pursue their dreams because they are living amidst socially conditioned frameworks of scarcity and limitation. Once I offer them the power of play, risk taking, and creative thinking, they come alive and their perspective opens. I witness a physical shift in their presence. I have seen this work and the impact it has. I feel a sense of urgency to bring it to all people.

I have been working as a communication coach and consultant for over a decade. I have worked with fortune 500 companies, small startups, large international nonprofits, and local community nonprofits. I have lived in NYC for nearly 20 years and visited almost every corner. I know the communities in all areas of the city and have an ability to engage and impact anyone I seek to serve. I come from a family committed to giving. Volunteerism was a strong value and has been a commitment of mine throughout my professional career. I have designed curriculum and facilitated hundreds of trainings for all types of populations. I have worked one on one and in large groups. I have co-facilitated numerous trainings, project managed large scale activations with multiple stakeholders, and even worked with translators - which may be a condition for certain communities within NYC. I am a natural relationship builder and have a powerful network of facilitators to bring additional skills training, should we determine the communities require something outside the direct scope of what is taught through Energize Your Voice. 

I have to preface this with the acknowledgement that adversity is quite subjective. I have lived a privileged life, by all accounts, and my experience with adversity has always been with the knowledge that I had a strong system of support should true failure occur. This gave me an undercurrent of bravery and boldness to take risk and build resilience, knowing that should adversity win, I never really stood to lose. With that being said, I have always chosen to build my own path and adversity was not scarce. I built a company with no understanding of how to do so. I was experiencing a deep sense of purpose without a clear path. I had to make a number of mistakes in how I built products, how I considered revenue and growth, how to talk to business people. My experience of adversity was a completely blank vision for how to proceed. I had to literally  take one step at a time. There were months where I would make no money and had to return to cleaning houses and walking dogs just to make ends meet. I will do what is necessary to bring my vision to life.

A nonprofit organization, with whom I volunteer outside of the auspices of Energize Your Voice, seeks to serve homeless mothers and their children through providing access to housing, education, and employment training. I have volunteered at their galas to serve food, their block parties at the craft table, their annual fun run as a hype woman. But where I feel like I really stepped into leadership, was by encouraging them to organize a university type setting for the moms around hard skills, soft skills, and empowerment. The nonprofit was lost on how to organize it or create a flow for the accelerated program. I worked closely with their internal team to direct what skills should be included, classes to incorporate, and how to build a logical flow for the moms to really excel. They had had this vision for quite some time and I took the initiative to bring it to life. These moms are exiting the shelter system and many have no employment record. It was a nuanced negotiation for how, what, and when to teach certain skills, but we did it.

The buy one give one model for corporate training does not currently exist. This would very simply marry corporate spending with community action using a model of professional development training and corporate gift that already exists. 

Current: 5,000

One year: 8,000

Five years: 20,000

We are looking to prove the model for Buy one Give one within the next year, while creating clear impact reports. 

Within the next five years, we expect to scale this to multiple cities - LA, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta - and create partnerships with content companies to create robust PR packets for our nonprofit and corporate partners based on the work they are doing for the community.

In order to accomplish the entire vision, I will need a board of advisors along with a small data team and resources to train facilitators across the country. The largest barrier of entry is gaining buy-in for programming from corporation considering the unprecedented uncertainty many organizations are facing from a financial and personnel perspective.   

I have already enrolled a nonprofit advisor to assist in creating compelling narratives for corporate benefits. I plan to onboard a marketing director and have recently brought on a COO to assist in our organizational development to set us up to scale for larger enterprise engagements, making it more financially sustainable to give without internal loss of revenue. I am currently working closely with my team of facilitators (2 women and 1 man) to ensure they are not only excelling in their own work, but can train facilitators virtually as we scale.

We operate independently of any outside financial support. Our partnerships with corporations and nonprofits are solely based on the need for training and our delivery of that training. 

We deliver experiential trainings for public speaking, presentation skills, and storytelling. We elevate employee engagement, team performance, and leadership and executive presence. At the root of our work, which utilizes improv and acting principles as foundational methodologies, is the practice of building confidence. 

Organizations come to us to create greater influence in their internal job performance, on potential buyers, for the public, or donors. 

Prior to Covid, we would conduct trainings in person in large group settings, ranging from half day to 3 month engagements. The trainings are a strong balance of play and practicality. Playful engagement with practical reflection of skills and real life application.

We still maintain a strong playful component via virtual trainings, but the experiential aspect has shifted to include more small group interaction with focused role play and thoughtful reflection along with large group movement work that focuses on embodied learning and voice activation.

We sell professional development service. We are creating infrastructure to allow us a more sustainable and predictable revenue stream. We are setting sales goals, implementing a CRM, training our team to sell, and shifting our sales processes to more directly respond to enterprise level and retainer buy-in. We have traditionally operated with low overhead and consistent revenue. Our goal is to significantly increase revenue through longer term engagements and increased number of corporate contracts. This will allow us to thrive financially, while allowing us to provide consistent training to our nonprofit partners and their community.

Average monthly expenses including all software, contractor payout, marketing tools, and miscellaneous items - printing, team meals, travel - comes to approximately $5,000/month.

The visibility and advisors offered through this prize will provide remarkable support. Enrolling nonprofits and selling corporate product are two development streams that take active education on behalf of our audience and continuous acquisition of new corporate partnerships. 

Having visibility on the impact we are striving to create through this simple corporate gift model, would relieve some of the burden of constantly seeking, vetting, and onboarding new leads. We would be sought after, rather than always seeking; allowing us to focus the majority of our development efforts on supporting the nonprofits and the communities they serve. 

The advisory network is priceless. As a self-taught entrepreneur with no formal business training, the vision of scale for this project seems mentally out of reach in terms of simple logistics, strategic partnerships, and capacity to implement the vision with precision and high quality. Having advisors to assist in refining and executing the vision, would be enormously powerful.

In a broader sense, the adoption of this model on behalf of corporations will challenge the system of employee development and encourage all companies to consider the opportunity to make authentic impact on the communities they serve. There is a lot of talk about impact and commitment of money and revision of mission to become equitable. This is a model that challenges corporations to integrate that promise into this traditionally overlooked aspect of their corporate culture.