Guild

An estimated 80% of low-income working adults want to attend school but cannot afford it. That’s why CEO Rachel Carlson founded Guild. As a tuition finance company, Guild helps employers pay their employees’ tuition by facilitating those payments.

The new B Corp’s impact delighted everyone.

• On average, Guild learners are 2.6x more likely to experience internal mobility compared to their colleagues who do not participate in the Guild benefit.
• On average, Learning Marketplace learners were 2.3x less likely to leave their employer in the last 12 months relative to non-members.
• 71% of surveyed Learning Marketplace learners are first-generation college students.

However, the response among low-income employees was lukewarm. Guild’s executive team struggled to square the strength of their proposition (“tuition-free education!”) with low employee participation rate.

Guild’s problem, though, was a categorical one. According to Deloitte, 71% of employers offer tuition assistance. Yet only 2% of employees use it, according to Northeastern University. “Tuition-free education,” it turns out, only matters if it’s paired with the right educator. But finding that match is expensive. It takes too much time for working adults to find the right one. And it takes too much money for educators to find the right students. This market friction, economists note, has contributed to America’s sharp decline in socio-economic mobility. (Globally, America slipped to 27th place.)

Solving the education market’s friction – not its high tuition costs – was the greatest value creation opportunity. This was a highly credible role for Guild.

Guild earns revenue when an employee completes a program. This incentivizes them to help both sides of the market find each other and improve outcomes. That’s why Guild recruits educators, builds education programs with companies, markets these programs to employees, and supports participants throughout their education journeys – improving outcomes for all three parties. Guild is what economists call a “market maker.”

Retiring its “tuition finance company” positioning and “tuition-free education” story, we reconceptualized Guild as an “education market maker” with a clear purpose: to increase the socio-economic mobility of America’s low-wage workforce. We signaled this change with a new brand identity and expression.