Hebrew

University of Jerusalem
Rothberg International School
M.A. Non-profit Management
Seminar: Organisation Theory for Non-profits, Dr. Eric Lankin
Participant: Oscar Santiago Vargas Guevara
Student ID: 777933631
Due: 9th December 2018

MID-TERM ASSIGNMENT
Your nonprofit group has determined that women between the ages of 55 and 75 who are
in relatively good health are an unserved population in your district and would be an
important expansion of your efforts. Describe the possible marketing mix for an
organization of your choosing, or your own invention.

AFTERSCHOOL CHILDCARE FOR LATINO COMMUNITIES IN NYC

EXPANDING ACHILDCARES ACTIVITIES TO AN UNDERSERVED POPULATION

OH GRANNY, WHERE ART THOU?

AChildCares is a registered nonprofit organization, which has been active for several years
providing childcare services for lower income working parents in several areas of New York City.
The organization mostly engages in afterschool childcare, receiving children after school, until
their parents get off work and pick them up. In the meantime, children can engage in a wide
variety of artistic activities and sports, and they can receive support for doing their homework.
Through these programs, the organization aims to keep children off the streets and to generate
a safe learning environment. While parents are charged a small monthly fee, most of the
organization’s work is funded through donations from community associations, local churches
and individual residents.
While the organization has been successful in appealing to largely a white demographic in
suburban areas, such as Long Island, there has been markedly less success in accessing other
markets, such as the Hispanic community in Queens and the Bronx. While white working parents
often need afterschool childcare, and may not always afford hiring private nannies, Latino
working parents tend to rely on alternative support networks, particularly family. In most cases,
they rely on the child’s grandparents, often unemployed or retired, to provide unpaid care work
after school. In the overwhelming majority of cases, it is a woman – the child’s grandmother –
that is given this task, likely due to deeply entrenched gender role understandings. While
grandmothers have vast childcare experience of their own, they may not always be able to keep
up with the children. Physically, they may have difficulties matching the child’s energy;
psychologically, the generational gap may make communication even more difficult, for instance,
when it comes to new technologies that children are savvy about.
AChildCares’s current strategy of advertising its activities to Latino working parents is ineffective,
because they’re not the population that needs them. Instead, our programs and advertising in
Hispanic communities should be geared towards grandmothers, women between the ages of 55
and 75 in relatively good health, who provide unpaid care work for their own children and other
close relatives. In what follows, I outline a strategy to expand AChildCares’ line of activities, in
order to access this underserved population. While this project is directly in line with our
organizational mission to provide afterschool care and keep children off the streets, it has the
added benefit of supporting and connecting older women of lower income backgrounds and
encouraging intergenerational dialogue and learning.

WHAT GRANNIES WANT.

Grandmothers in Latino communities in New York City are often tasked with caring after their
own children’s’ or close relatives’ children after school. While most perform this unpaid care work
willingly and happily, often offering it themselves, this relation is not free of problems. On the
one hand, advanced age can often make it difficult for grandmothers to physically keep up with
children, who are full of energy and often unable to measure their own strength. While this is not
always the case, this can pose an additional challenge when disciplining children, as well as a
potential health hazard, particularly among older women in this group. On the other hand, the
generational gap can make interactions with children more challenging; when they speak of
internet-based applications, videogames, or other virtual sources, for example, it may be hard
for grandmothers to follow and give appropriate guidance. One final problem relates to the time
grandmothers must invest in performing this duties, instead of other activities of their choosing,
such as socializing with other people their age, or engaging in hobbies and other activities. This
can have a negative impact on their quality of life, though once again, not necessarily.
Latino grandmothers want spaces, where they can care for their children, while receiving the
necessary support, and engaging in other activities they enjoy. AChildCares should restructure its
service centers in Latino communities to serve both children and grandmothers, by offering a
program in which both can participate and interact with one another and others. Supported by a
professional staff, grandmothers can spend quality time with their children engaging in
moderated activities, such as artistic competitions or low-impact sports. Study lessons can also
be facilitated for grandmothers to help their grandchildren with their school homework, before
enjoying light healthy snacks within the facilities. Being in together with other community
members with similar age and cultural backgrounds can also allow grandmothers to strengthen
their emotional support network in the community, while allowing children to interact with other
kids outside the school setting. This format would take some of the pressure off grandmothers,
that comes with cooking and having to clean after children, in order to focus on what they want
to do most: love and raise the youngest ones.

WHERE GRANNIES HANG.

In order for these afterschool sessions to appeal to Latino grandmothers, the facilities need to be
in immediate distance of Latino family hubs in New York City. Queens and The Bronx have the
highest percentage of Latino residents in the city, which makes them ideal locations for a pilot
project. Current service centers that are not within 500 meters of a primary school or a main
Latino residential area should consider relocating to said areas. Due to its advanced age and
driving legal restrictions, the target population may be more unwilling to walk long distances with
children in order to reach the service center than other populations, such as working parents.
Additionally, older Latino women tend to be generally more concerned about safety than others;
thus, it is crucial for our service centers to be located in safe neighborhoods, if possible directly
on main and well-lit streets in residential areas, away from public transport hubs and nightlife
areas. One last factor to consider, however, is that this policy would reduce the effective number
of children we could tend to, solely out of space concerns. Our service centers would cut its
potential number of customers by half, since both grandmother and child need to be housed.
Since our service centers in these areas are not working at full capacity, however, this might not
impact them in any major way.

WHAT GRANNIES CASH.

Gearing our programs in these areas towards older Latino women can help us reduce operational
costs in these service centers considerably. Since grandmothers would accompany each child,
and all of them would have considerable personal experience on childcare, they could help staff
supervise the children. This way, we could cut back on the staff needed to run the center on a
daily basis. Instead of having one staffer for every five children, in order to ensure a high quality
accompaniment, we could reduce this number to one staffer for every ten or fifteen
grandmothers and children. One of our centers servicing 30 grandmothers and 30 children, could
be run by two or three staffers, plus one trainer for a specific day activity, instead of the ten or
twelve required to tend to 60 children. Along these lines, we could be saving somewhere
between 60% and 75% in salaries for our everyday operations.
In terms of price, several things should be taken into consideration. On the one hand, we’re still
talking about a low-income area, and grandmothers may not be in a position to pay more than
the working parents do for their child. However, if we were to keep prices per person the same,
the personal cost of attending our sessions would at least double, since customer grandmothers
would have to pay for both themselves and their children. Even if parents contribute half the
cost, the added financial burden would weigh down on the family as a whole. For this reason, it
is advised to consider lowering prices per person even further to make up for this rise in costs for
the individual customer. While a detailed financial analysis should ensue, the lower costs for
salaries that this project would incur in, could justify lowering fees accordingly. This in order to
keep the service accessible and attractive, and avoid the risk of overshooting our target
population.

WHAT GRANNIES WATCH.

In order to reach Latino grandmothers, AChildCares needs to focus on the areas they frequent.
Virtual and online advertising should, therefore, not be a priority for our advertising campaign.
Instead, our efforts should focus on places such as supermarkets, parks, community centers and
beauty salons in the immediate vicinity of residential areas with a high number of Latino
residents. Hanging out posters might be particularly effective with this target population, since
they are more likely to not be in a rush and to take their time to read through an advertising that
catches their eye. Similarly, direct phone calls can go a long way with older women, considering
they are mostly at home and reachable, and they mostly have the time and patience to talk to an
advertiser on the phone. However, by far and large, the most important avenue of promotion
will consist of informal networks and word-of-mouth recommendations. It is thus crucial to
captivate our initial customers through augmented offers, such as free meals, concert nights or
other surprises, to encourage them to recommend us forward.
Our advertisers should place an emphasis on the positive emotions associated with relationships
between grandmothers and their children. Images should feature both child and grandparent,
doing some activity together and smiling, be it walking down the park with an ice cream, to
reading bedtime stories. Messages should focus on what makes relationships between
grandmother and grandchild unique, with slogans such as: “When you keep pouring soup on his
bowl, until he bursts…”, or “When you slip her a 20$ under the table, so that her parents don’t
see…” Grandmothers are to be portrayed as active and loving, and as having something positive
and unique to contribute to a child’s wellbeing and upbringing. Other factors can be mentioned
on the side, such as the social character of this events, and the execution of different fun
activities. Nonetheless, the main focus should remain on what the grandmothers want: a
meaningful sincere relationship with their grandchild.