Foundations of Music provided music education to underserved children in Chicago, sparking creativity and passion, teaching critical thinking, supporting academic achievement and enriching young lives.
How we helped
In 2010, Laura and Mac did strategic planning with Rock For Kids, a nonprofit that provides music education to underserved children in Chicago, sparking creativity and passion, teaching critical thinking, supporting academic achievement and enriching young lives. Seizing the opportunity to work with an arts-focused group, Mac made her first major foray into strategic planning with Rock For Kids. She and Laura helped the organization update their mission and create their five-year plan for the future, the process which Maria Mowbray, Executive Director, describes below. After the strategic planning process ended, Mac joined the organizations Junior Board, and Laura still works with Rock For Kids, providing leadership coaching.
Laura McAlpine and McAlpine Consulting for Growth helped Rock For Kids to meet the challenges of a transitional period head on during the financial uncertainty of the recent global recession. Rock For Kids is an organization with a grassroots past. Initiated as a fundraiser in 1988 by volunteers, Rock For Kids began offering music lessons in 2000. By 2008 the organization was testing out its new music education curriculum in partnership with Chicago Public Schools but was also facing a changing fundraising climate and a growing demand for services.
Enter McAlpine Consulting For Growth. Laura and her team facilitated a staff board retreat for Rock For Kids in August of 2008. Laura’s calm and professional approach helped to quell the staff and board members’ butterflies without downplaying the serious nature and urgency of the topics at hand. In 2010, McAlpine Consulting For Growth led Rock For Kids through a Strategic Planning Process that resulted in a Five-Year Strategic Plan and a mission rewrite.
McAlpine and her team taught Rock For Kids board members to harness the passion and dedication to community that had drawn them to the organization, and that had in the past resulted in the organization’s organic growth and focus it on the kind of long term problem solving and planning that leads to strong strategic growth. Laura helped Rock For Kids to embrace logical and sequential thinking and planning as an integral function of running a successful organization. These values were fundamental in empowering Rock For Kids to navigate the rocky waters of change during a financial crisis, and the results speak for themselves.
Rock For Kids has successfully focused its programming exclusively on music education in Chicago Public Schools and is on track with the goals outlined in its Five-Year Strategic Plan. Rock For Kids continues to work with Laura and is currently engaged in Executive Coaching and is looking forward to its annual staff board retreat.
– Maria Mowbray, Executive Director, Rock For Kids
