Background of the Case Study

Background of the Case Study

SLP was meant to be just [the structure] to plan this trip. Like for awhile we didn’t even want an organization: we just wanted to plan this trip. We were young and foolish, and we just thought we could plan this trip and not have anything official and not think about it, just go on a trip. We found a few people that had a common unified goal and vision…and then we wanted to create SLP as the organization…and right away we thought it would just be about the trip. After the trip is when we figured well there is a whole lot more to this. People were fired up and we wanted to do things year around. And it was not just about the nine days of the trip and making it part of our lives, and that is when we created SLP and everything else that goes with it.

The “everything else that goes with it” is part of the purpose of this research study. Much of what the students went through during their college career is reflected in this study. The leadership characteristics and experiences they had coming into and during college impacted the program model formation. The four students founded an organization that has grown from 43 individual participants going on a trip to a national organization with 3,056 total participants as of mid-2008, just five years later. The mission of the Student Leadership Program (SLP) is to reveal leadership through service, relationships, and action (SLP, 2007).

SLP has created a lot of national attention both from educational institutions, social entrepreneurs and popular media. Time magazine interviewed the Student Leadership Program for an article on “VolunTourism”, staff from The Tyra Banks Show called to inquire about the group and what they were doing, and a PhD student in Kinesiology is studying the group participants in relationship to wisdom. MSNBC just featured the group in a story on volunteerism. Three colleges are using the MAD trip as the lab portion of courses in business, education and an honors English program. Four alternative schools are working with SLP in service learning projects and a service trip. The group received a $25,000 grant from Social Venture Partners from a competitive applicant pool of 40 other organizations, many very well established in the field of service learning. Social Venture Partners is an entrepreneurial organization that leverages money from its members. The group was selected as the youngest to receive the Charities Review Council endorsement. MAD service trips for high school students from opposite parts of the country including Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, North Dakota, Idaho and Oregon have been held, and more interest is being generated daily. What is it about this group that has captured such interest?

SLP carries out much of its leadership development through the “Make a Difference Tours” (MAD). There are college, high school and middle school tours. There have been 78 MAD tours adding up to 38,500 hours of service. During the first few months of 2008 alone approximately 730 participants performed 14,700 hours of service, equivalent to the work a single person could accomplish over seven years. This is based on a 40 hour week for 52 weeks which equals 2,080 hours a year. On the MAD college tours each bus takes a different route conducting service projects along the way, eventually coming together as a large group in one of four celebration cities. Examples of service might be working at a Ronald McDonald house, assisting elders at a nursing home, or painting at a homeless shelter. The projects are planned in response to the needs of the communities being served.

Each college trip has an established “bus core” made up of student volunteers that meet to make decisions prior to the trip. This includes planning the route and the projects, housing, meals, and then acting as facilitators for the various leadership exercises, teambuilding activities and reflection that happens during the tour. Another leadership role is serving on the Celebration City Core (CCC). This is a leadership role for students who have already been bus core leaders and they plan the large group event and all of the logistics in the celebration city for the buses that end their tour there. Initially the trips all ended in Washington, D.C., with the growth of SLP other “Celebration Cities” now include: San Antonio, Texas; Denver, Colorado; and New Orleans, Louisiana. Figure 1 gives a visual image of the MAD tours and the cities impacted by the service. The concentric circles represent the celebration cities. The diamonds represent the various chapters. The numbers correspond with bus routes and year of college & high school MAD Tours--2004-1^st year- stars, 2005-2^nd year-stars (the same cites were visited), 2006-3rd year – number 3, 2007-4th year – number 4, 2008-5th year –number 5.

Figure 1. Make a Difference map by all cities.

What started as a single community service trip quickly caught on and SLP now has chapters on 15 college campuses and 12 high school affiliates and recently held its first service trip for middle school children. SLP also holds summer camps for high school students and has been hired by a university to run weeklong leadership camps for students of color. All of this expansion led to SLP becoming a 501(c) (3) non-profit group in 2006. This non-profit status allows the group to accept charitable donations and allows donors to use this as a tax write off. It also permits the group to be exempt from taxes for expenses involved with their program. Three of the four founders, Roy, Pete and Mackenzie are now working full time for SLP and are referred to as the National Core. Nickers volunteers an average of five to ten hours a week and serves on the SLP board of directors. More detailed information about the founders will be shared in chapter four.