Sharing ownership
Happy Friday, everyone.
I am delighted to share two exciting announcements with you today.
First, Higher Ground Education will be launching an options program for all employees, so that every one of you can participate fully in the success of our mission. And, second, Higher Ground Education will be offering (qualifying) enrolled families the opportunity to purchase shares, so that our amazing customers can also benefit from our growth as investors.
In March 2016, a group of people came together in service of a dream to mainstream and modernize the global Montessori movement, and thereby enable children world round to realize their human potential as knowledge-guided, value-oriented, joyful, and efficacious beings.
In the fall of 2016, six years ago, we had one school and less than 100 students. Today, we are well over 100 schools, along with programs serving virtual students, homeschooling families, and partner schools, and we reach more than 10,000 students. Every day, I see examples of the ways in which we are helping children transform the arc of their lives.
Nothing ventured, they say, and nothing gained. Well, Higher Ground Education is something ventured. It is the product of the risk, foresight, and conviction of those willing to place a bold bet on humanity, those who deeply believe in both the latent potential of the human child, and the manifest goodness of the adults who want to serve that potential.
What we have today is the result of the capital, talent, wisdom, and effort of so many who had the courage to place a bet on humanity. From our investors, to our entrepreneurs and educators, to the families who are our customers, to the children who so unselfconsciously work to grow, learn, and love, we are a testament to the power of Maria Montessori’s vision to educate the human potential.
As a startup, we are grounded in a belief that psychological ownership matters. The type of radical entrepreneurialism our mission demands is best served by those who have the mindset of an owner. Whether you are a guide, a school leader, a coordinator on our marketing team, an architect on our real estate team, or in one of countless other important roles—if you can see your work as fully yours, that results in greater discipline, greater commitment to continuous improvement, and more clear-eyed resource allocation. Even in the case of our customers, if enrolled families feel the school is theirs, they contribute more towards helping us help their children grow.
As a startup, we are also grounded in another belief: that psychological ownership is best when paired with literal, financial ownership. This is why startup employees are compensated partly in stock options. Options are the right to secure ownership in a company at a predetermined price. It is a way of letting employees participate in the company’s growth without having to commit any money to the venture (because they commit their time, talent, and energy). As the value of the company goes up, so does the value of being able to acquire those shares at a fixed lower amount.
Options are a way, the standard way in startups, to fully recognize the aligned interests between the mission-driven employees of a company and the company itself. It’s a way of sharing ownership with those who already take the attitude of owners, both to symbolically recognize and honor the fact that they are in it for the mission, and to actually reward them as and when the company succeeds in achieving its mission.
Higher Ground Education has benefitted from so many who have taken an ownership attitude. That is why I am so, so thrilled to announce that we are launching a stock options program for our staff. We will be designing and finalizing the scope of the program throughout January 2023 based on a number of factors, including the fact that options have never been granted to U.S. school-based employees before. This is something that we’ve wanted to do since the beginning of the company, and I am excited we are at a size where we can finally make it a reality.
I have seen so many of you in my travels, and noticed that you could not be more psychologically invested in our work. You do it because you love the children and families you serve, and because you love the idea of bringing the same education to all children around the world. You do it because your reward is the outcome you achieve in the lives of those children. That is precisely why it is proper that you are also financially invested. When we open a school halfway across the world, you already cheer the growth because you love our mission—now, fittingly, you can also cheer the possibility it will increase the value of your options.
Additional details and information about this exciting program will be coming early next year, in anticipation of a more formal rollout in April of 2023.
Relatedly, and something else you will be hearing more about soon: next week, we will, for the first time, give enrolled parents the opportunity to invest in Higher Ground.
Since its founding, Higher Ground has raised over $100 million dollars to develop its platform and open schools. This has come mostly from professional investors, but also from many smaller individual investors who champion our mission. These investors have had the clarity to understand the nature of the opportunity we have to transform education, the conviction in our ability to do it, and the foresight to appreciate the immense upside that comes from embracing the long game. We do not think in terms of months or years, but about the civilization-shaping outcomes we want to achieve over decades—and our investors appreciate the potential gains they can earn through supporting such great work.
Looking forward, as Higher Ground becomes increasingly attractive to investors motivated primarily by our financial potential, we have made the tough choice to decline investment from those who are not true believers in our mission. We have been thinking about how we keep attracting and rewarding those who understand that we want to profit by one means only: achieving our sweeping mission. While we’ll continue to seek institutional capital, and while we will always embrace our sacred obligation to generate a great return for those who believe in us, we also want to open our doors to those who are already supporting our efforts by choosing us for their children.
Parents, grandparents, extended family members and friends of enrolled and alumni students will be invited to invest, either directly, or in the trust in the name of an enrolled child. In doing so, they will be participating in ownership of our mission and vision, to educate the human potential, one child at a time.
In our work, we are anything but traditional. We seek to bring a wholly new approach to child development to parents and educators world round. Rather than pair this with a traditional approach to fundraising, we want our capital strategy to also reflect our radicalism: we like the idea of investing our customers, our dedicated families, in our success. Having parent investors also makes it easier to offer you, our staff, a more robust options program. Our parents more than anyone understand the value of our educators.
Both of these initiatives are a way of sharing ownership with people who know better than anyone the power of a Montessori education, why the world needs it, and why there is an immense commercial opportunity to deliver it. These initiatives are also, as far as I know, a unique experiment in school funding and shared ownership. Smaller organizations have tried it at the beginning of their vision, but I’m not aware of any school system of our size that has appreciated the importance of making its teachers and families into owners. I am proud that we will honor our guides and our families in the best way I know how: by seeing them, and treating them, as fellow travelers and partners in the form of ownership.
Regarding families: many independent schools operate as non-profits. They charge tuition, but cover a significant amount of their budget, including the budget for special projects, through additional fundraising campaigns from parents.
Regarding you: so many of you are here doing this great work because you love children, you love human potential, and you believe education is the only path to a better tomorrow. My hope is that twenty years from now, you’ll be able to look back at this time, and your work, with not only the pride of knowing you were at the beginning, contributing to the organization that spearheaded a massive sea change in education, but also with the satisfaction of seeing that your spiritual reward was paired with a meaningful financial reward. As I want it for the children we serve, so I want it for you and for us as an organization: not only inner serenity, but also existential success.
Again, we’ll be sharing more details about the options program early next year. For the next month, the focus is on inviting families to participate, and laying the groundwork for the great work ahead.
Ray Girn
Founder and CEO, Higher Ground Education