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Introduction to this Series

This is the first of a series of blog posts related to the multi-program financial model I have built. This financial model, housed in a Google Sheet, predicts the cash flows for your institution if it were to launch up to five new online programs in the next six years. This is a complicated model; it requires that you be able to answer a series of questions about your institution and those programs...so this won’t be a short exercise. But I’ve made it easier  for you by already building the model—you just have to fill in the values. And you can always change your answers later as you learn more! 

Extension Engine has partnered with Management Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT), a nonprofit working to change racial disparity in leadership in America, to develop and scale leadership training resources, build community services, and accelerate professional development for its growing base of underrepresented students and corporate partners.

Great ideas are one thing, executing on them successfully is quite another. Your nonprofit exists to make positive changes in the world through the application of great ideas. That may include a need for online learning as a necessary support for your program. However, finding an efficient and scalable way to deliver learning can be problematic. 

Extension Engine client Harvard Business School (HBS) Online was recently honored with the Eduventures Innovation Award for its Negotiation Mastery course. The award was presented to HBS Online Executive Director Patrick Mullane at a ceremony at 2019 Eduventures Summit, hosted by ACT | NRCCUA, an educational data science, analytics, and research organization.

What happens when you tell an investor you can sell $2 bills to unsuspecting buyers for ten $1 bills and further that you can convince the buyers to sign a 10-year deal agreeing to these terms? That investor would be suitably impressed, of course, and would happily invest in your company at a high valuation. But then what would happen if you later went back to that investor and explained how these buyers you’d been selling to are gaining experience, talking to each other, and now are demanding to pay two dollars for that snazzy $2 bill?