Roby Brock: Welcome to this edition of the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal Report. I'm your host, Roby Brock. Today I'll sit down with Dan Andrews. He is the CEO of Tempus Realty Partners, a real estate firm that's based in central Arkansas but does work all over the Midwest. Andrews and his real estate firm have provided a new twist on the 529 college savings plan. We'll discuss it on today's Northwest Arkansas Business Journal Report.
A little over a week ago, I toured a school in Jacksonville, Arkansas, the Merrell Taylor School. Dan Andrews, CEO and managing partner of Tempus Realty Partners, was there to make an announcement about GROW, which stands for Generational Resources and Opportunities for Well-Being. It's a 529 college savings plan with a big twist. My interview with Andrews explains more.
Brock: Well, Dan, first of all, congratulations on all of this success here at the school today. Tell me a little bit about what the GROW program is.
Dan Andrews: Sure. GROW is a program where we're adopting Jacksonville's Merrell Taylor Elementary School, and we are opening a 529 savings account for every student and teacher here at the school. And we're depositing $600 into that account and then also offering them a chance to earn some additional money over the course of the school year, as they do things like have good attendance, good classroom behavior, accomplish their reading goals and things of that nature. Continue to do that each successive year so that they can grow an account for their future.
Brock: What do you anticipate it could be for, say, a first grader or somebody like that?
Andrews: So the program starts in kindergarten, and a kindergartener that participates and hits their incentives each year going through the program could have $10,000 or more by the time they graduate high school.
Brock: Wow. That's incredible. We'll talk more about 529 plans. But you told a really powerful story at the assembly today when you guys announced this to the students about, I believe, something that your grandfather did for you. Tell me that story again.
Andrews: So my grandfather, James, grew up in South Arkansas. He grew up in a single-mother family there, very poor. Also coincided with the Great Depression and spent a number of years homeless and really just had a very difficult way of going about life, but was able to scratch out an existence and sort of together with my grandmother, they built a family, accomplished the American Dream, bought a small home and had some of those things. And, you know, never really amassed very much financially.
But what he did do was enable his son to go to college, and he had a very small amount of money that he set aside for each of his grandchildren, myself included. And just that gift there was not necessarily life changing in terms of size and scope, but it was life changing in terms of investment in future and what that really enabled in terms of a gift and a spark. Just knowing that that was going to make some new things possible and that really is kind of part of the inspiration of GROW. Sometimes just a little bit of capital makes what hard work and initiative alone just can't quite do. It really opens up a lot of doors. And so that's what we wanted to do with GROW.
Brock: This has a component to it in terms of education as well. Economics Arkansas is a partner in this project as well. These kids are going to not just have some money growing in an account thanks to your seed money and the incentives, but they're also going to get an opportunity to learn how to manage that money maybe one day. Speak to that a little bit.
Andrews: That's right. So as part of GROW we built into that a curriculum component. Economics Arkansas helped us develop specific curriculum for each grade level from kindergarten through fifth grade, where students in their classroom work would go through and learn stories about how capital is important to things, how to treat it properly, what they can do with it, how economics works—all the basic fundamentals that you need to understand how to be an owner of capital, while at the same time they are growing their own capital. So by the time they finish their education, it's a real thing to them. They have capital, they know what to do with it, and they understand how important it is.
Brock: You had some of the kids all got to write down some aspirations. They were very touching. So tell me a little bit about what that exercise was and what you take away from it.
Andrews: At its core, what we wanted to do was go to classrooms and connect with students and let them know that there are people that are invested in their dreams, people that want to know what their dreams are, want to see those dreams come true, want to be a part of that with them. And so we took a number of people who have been involved in GROW along the way and making GROW possible, and went to each of the classrooms here at Merrell Taylor this morning and spent some time visiting with each of the students there about their dreams, and had them draw those out or write them down, and then share that with us. Tell them about what they hope for, for the future and the things that they want. And then they left one of those with us and took one of those home to remind them.
That was really a great moment to hear from children that wanted to be doctors and nurses and teachers and pilots and princesses and Spider-Man and all kinds of great things. But just to be a part of sharing in that dream with children, that was amazing. And the main thing we really wanted was a connection of, hey, there are people here that care about your future, and we're going to be investing alongside you and walking alongside you to make that come true.
Brock: I think one of the other great things about this program is it does obviously benefit the students, but you guys are doing something for the teachers as well. Walk me through that side of the equation.
Andrews: That's right. Education is such an important component regardless of where you go, whether it's going to college, going to military service, going to trade school, starting a business, any of those things. Education is really important. But also as a child community is so, so important. And we wanted to create an entire community that is thinking about the future, dreaming about the future together. And the teachers are such an important part of that.
And so the teachers can use this capital too. They can use that to invest in their further education, to get their master's degree or to do other kinds of conferences and things. Or they can use that for their family and their children to grow their dreams. But what we wanted to create was a community that's all thinking about the future together and working toward that together.
Brock: You're making a big financial commitment here to this particular school, this particular school district. I'm not saying that you couldn't do it in other places, but this could be a model for other places, other companies around the state to invest in their schools in the same way that you have. This is a first-of-its-kind program. What do you hope happens in terms of igniting some other people's passion to make this happen?
Andrews: Our hope is that people will see the value in this program. We've engaged with the Clinton School to do a long-term evaluation of the program, to measure the actual impact and be able to benchmark that in a way so that others can look to this and see the effectiveness of the program and make their decisions about how they want to support it in the future.
But we did build it so that it can be replicated, so that these barriers that have been removed are not just removed for this school, they're removed for anyone who wants to adopt another school in their hometown or a group of schools or what have you. This is designed in such a way so that they can plug into what GROW has already built and do the same thing for the children in their community.
That's Dan Andrews, CEO of Tempus Realty Partners. You can catch more of our interview at businessjournal.com.
I'm Roby Brock. That's all for today's episode. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time.
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