Case Study
Beacon Center’s Tennessee Together for Every Student Brand. Activating for the Education Freedom Scholarship Act.
Tennessee is no stranger to dabbling with school choice—In 2017 and 2021 the Volunteer state passed an ESA program for students with disabilities and low-income students in select locations, respectively. In 2024, First Day and The Beacon Center of Tennessee connected to discuss expanding Tennessee’s school choice opportunities to every family. We were excited to play our part.
The Beacon Center has been a staple in Tennessee politics for over two decades, empowering “Tennesseans to reclaim and protect their freedoms, so that they can freely pursue their version of the American Dream.” They considered the challenge at hand, and it became clear early in our conversation that without Tennessee families providing the tailwinds, this project wouldn’t work. After looking over the assets they already had in their Beacon Center brand, a new identity to speak to families was going to be formed.
This campaign would galvanize families to apply for their new education savings account in its first year—the Tennessee Education Freedom Scholarship program.
Approach
Our team was tasked with naming the new organization, creating the brand identity, campaign messaging, launch creative, and website.
After researching and conducting interviews, we discovered a problem that would resonate with Tennessee families—a child struggling in a school that’s not right for them. Whether that’s a report card with good grades that doesn’t tell the whole story, homeschooling without the right resources, or parents being boxed out of their children’s education, we cast the solution as education choice.
In Tennessee, parents felt their elected officials were too focused on systems, budgets, rankings, and spending formulas and weren’t talking enough about what was best for learners. Parents knew what the solution was and all we needed was to empower them with support and resources and put their voices front and center. We also knew we could leverage the power of Tennesseans’ identity as the Volunteer state to encourage families and citizens to come together for each other.
Application
When parents are delighted by the prospect of a school choice program and then given a good experience when using it, they will go to great lengths to encourage lawmakers to expand and defend it. To contribute to creating that experience for families and giving them opportunities to take action, First Day designed and developed togetherforeverystudent.org. The website would serve as a one-stop shop for community communication, parent support, action, and provider information.
We provided Tennesseans with well-crafted messaging that communicated the problem and the opportunity a universal Education Savings Account could fill in their education journey. An explainer video from Scope & Sequence using our brand and messaging was a tremendous asset to this purpose and was highlighted front and center. We used language that was friendly, accessible, neighborly, and thoroughly Tennessee.
Parents navigating the site could discover the heart behind TN Together, navigate the Education Freedom Scholarship Acts, and connect with them through one-on-one support. We’ve found with every family-focused organization that one-on-one support is a powerful element to include. One-on-one support and problem solving provided to families helps you not only build a community, but identify future super-advocates willing to go to bat for the program and further enhances program satisfaction.
To this end, a well-educated family is a capable user of school choice. When capable of navigating the program, families will see the transformative effect of a school choice program and become its defenders and promoters. That’s why we put serious focus on explaining the Education Freedom Scholarship Program, its allowable expenses, and the current application window status – in an accessible way not found on bureaucratic sites. Because this scholarship program was universal (for any Tennessee family) but limited in budget, family education was especially important. It was our mission to ensure lawmakers saw an abundance of families using (and enjoying) the program, so that The Beacon Center could push for expansions to its allocation in upcoming sessions.
We didn’t take lightly that for many families, using the Education Freedom Scholarship Program would mean rethinking their K–12 approach wholly. While TN Together couldn’t provide hands-on parent navigation services, we put tools in place to empower parents to get delighted about the education (and scholarship) options they have and find providers that fit their children.
Providers had a role to play as well—every school, tutoring center, or co-op is a pre-built audience of potentially hundreds of families. We’ve seen great success in this approach in other states empowering providers and knew it would be a win to deploy it here as well. Our website resources were just a small part of the larger story of engaging providers and provider communities.
- Problem
- Solution
- Empowerment
- Action
(It’s our winning tactic)
Lawmakers want to see delighted voters and positive press when they’re considering passing, expanding or defending a transformational universal school choice measure. Since we tapped into the needs, feelings and motivations of Tennessee families, they were eager to interact with the brand. Grateful for the support and resources TN Together offered, they were willing to do their part to promote it to more families. As TN Together keeps them engaged, they will be ready to speak up to lawmakers when their voices are needed.
When a family joined the TN Together community, they received an automated email journey that educated, excited, and brought them up to speed. Throughout the TN Together campaign, The Beacon Center collected stories that we put on the website to both cast a vision for other families and lawmakers. School choice is not a universally understood idea across America, and many of our lawmakers need to hear a story and see a family to wrap their heads around the value a program like this could deliver when The Beacon Center sought to expand and revise it.
When the campaign was launched, we contributed to the splash with a crafted social media campaign as well.
Results
This campaign wasn’t First Day’s first rodeo helping a state promote and implement their ESA. In each campaign we fit ourselves within a role which can be expansive or focused, like crafting TN Together’s campaign. We are proud of the results of our visual brand, naming and written messaging, website, and email/social media campaigns. We are even more proud of how The Beacon Center put Tennessee’s first universal ESA in front of families and what’s to come as they grow awareness and the parent movement.
Tremendous Education Freedom Scholarship Program Demand
Over 42,000 applications were received for this program, setting a new benchmark for ESA demand and setting the groundwork for future program expansions.
Award Winning Campaign
State Policy Network members (which include K–12 policymaking groups from across the nation) voted and awarded The Beacon Center 2025 Communication Excellence Award for Marketing Campaign of the Year for Tennessee Together for Every Student.
These results are just the beginning of this chapter of school choice in Tennessee and because this campaign has exceeded expectations in many ways, we are extremely optimistic about the K–12 transformation that has begun in the state.