Expand Community to
Promote Mission
LearnCollab provides learning communities with advice, tools, and a framework to explore program collaboration, co-ventures, and expansion strategies including school unification, merger, and acquisition.
School Merger & Acquisition
LearnCollab offers Certified Merger & Acquisition Advisor services from professionals with deep roots in nonprofits and independent schools. School collaboration or unification is a complex and nuanced topic with considerations as unique as each pairing of schools. A successful pairing starts with a focus on mission. Much of our work falls into these categories:
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
- Charles Darwin
Disruption Navigation Sustainability Consulting
Outsourcing
Financial Aid File Review
Collections
Out-sourced CFO
Accounts Payable
Accounts Receivable
Human Resources / Benefits
Mission
LearnCollab empowers schools and learning communities with the research, counsel, and the innovative structures they need to navigate education sector disruption. Our WHY is to ensure that independent education options are available for all that seek them. We serve and innovate via a collaborative tribe of associates, independent affiliates, and resource providers.
History
LearnCollab grew out of insights from consulting work by Tew &; Associates with independent schools on financial and enrollment sustainability. Chad Tew’s research, published in a 2013 NBOA Net Assets article, provided one of the earliest predictions of enrollment struggles and raised the specter of increased school mergers and closures.
In a Fall 2019 NBOA publication Chad writes, “Mergers and acquisitions are a cornerstone of business success. A constant refrain throughout my career, from teaching entrepreneurship at UCLA, to founding and growing independent schools, to judging new venture seed competitions is that many organizational objectives are achieved through sustainable growth. When an organization reaches market saturation, its leaders go looking for new markets. When demand dries up or a competitor undercuts you on price, you innovate and reconnect with market demand at a competitive price." This perspective and passion to help schools innovate was a leading force in the creation of LearnCollab.
About Us
North Star
We believe in independent education. Independent schools and learning communities build character as well as confidence, and for generations have prepared many of our most impactful business, social, and political leaders. Every community needs independent school options, but maybe not quite as many as it has had in the past. LearnCollab helps school leaders remember that their true allegiance is to the mission and the children, not the bricks or the name on the sign, and uses a focus on that mission to map a path for the learning community and values to evolve and continue. We have confidence that independent education will thrive as, in any healthy ecosystem, learning communities collaborate, combine, and reinvent themselves.
Who we've worked with.
