BOSTON PARTNERS UNVEILS NEW BRAND WITH INCREASED FOCUS ON SOCIO-EMOTIONAL SUPPORT
Designed by student and mentors, the updated brand emphasizes the importance of connecting community to the classroom
BOSTON, MA – Boston Partners in Education (BPIE), the longest continuous nonprofit partner of the Boston Public Schools, announced the launch of a new brand aimed at emphasizing the link between community support and student growth.
For over 50 years, BPIE has worked to help close the opportunity and achievement gaps that exist within the Boston Public Schools by matching students with volunteer academic mentors. The launch of their new brand marks BPIE’s first visual identity shift in over 30 years – one that is intended to reposition the organization as a source of both academic and socio-emotional support for students.
“If we’ve learned one thing from the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s that students’ socio-emotional well-being is often overlooked yet deeply critical to their motivation and success,” said Erin McGrath, BPIE Executive Director. “Our goal has always been to help students build the skills to succeed in school and in life. Promoting socio-emotional success and helping students build confidence are just as much a part of our mission as academic improvement, and we wanted our new brand to reflect that.”
The brand update, including new colors, messaging, and a new logo, is part of a multi-year plan to deepen engagement with BPS students and their families, and recruit more mentors from traditionally underserved neighborhoods.
“A shift to online learning this year allowed us to connect directly with students, parents, and families for really the first time,” said McGrath. “Continuing to build these relationships directly within the community will be an integral part of our future. We need families to know about our services – we need them to know their children have access to free tutoring and mentoring support regardless of where they live or what schools they attend.”
Research with focus groups of mentors, educators, and students suggested that the previous BPIE brand positioned the organization as a source of educational support but failed to communicate the scope of its impact or how that work was accomplished.
“We often hear the phrase, ‘It takes a village,’ from our BPS school partners,” said Chris Cotrone, BPIE Director of Marketing. “Our new logo alludes to this idea – it tells the story of how learning is the result of many factors all working together towards the same goal. Education, relationship-building, imagination, and community all coalesce to form the mentoring experiences that we’re proud to create.”
In designing their new brand, BPIE partnered with Artists For Humanity, a fellow nonprofit in Boston that employs student artists from the Boston Public Schools and pairs them with mentors on design projects. For many years, students at Artists For Humanity have been matched with mentors from BPIE.
“For us, a rebrand is much more than an updated look,” said Cotrone. “It’s an exercise in re-evaluating our values and mission – all of which were challenged by the pandemic. Most importantly, we wanted our brand to reflect the students and the communities we support – and we decided the best way to do that was to go directly to students themselves. We’re proud to say that we’re a mentoring organization whose foundation has been built through mentorship – and as we look to the future, we’ll have our students to thank for that vision.”
To learn more about BPIE’s new brand and logo, or how you can get involved with their mentoring programs, visit bostonpartners.org.