Charter School Case Study #2: Coastal Shore Academy
Coastal Shore Academy (CSA) is a non-profit charter school headquartered in Georgetown, South Carolina. They provide a rigorous K-8 academic curriculum with a STEM focus. Caitlyn Craft, the company’s founder, was a former teacher and founded CSA this year when she was 32 years old.
In the start-up year, CSA will have 18 founding teachers in grades K-1 and 6. The school will add two grades per year (starting with 2nd and 7th) and grow until the school is fully grown in five years. When fully grown, the school will have about 65 employees.
In her research, Caitlyn found schools offering stellar employee benefits – alongside a strong school and staff culture – would be key to attracting and retaining the staff she wanted during her founding years.
Caitlyn’s first hire was a rockstar Director of Operations, Eva Green. Eva had ten years of experience working in a charter school in New York and had decided to move back to South Carolina to be closer to her family. One of Eva’s first tasks was researching the best fit for retirement plans for CSA. Here is some background:
The school had opted out of the state retirement plan.
They had money in the budget for an employee-matching contribution.
They had locked in a payroll provider, Pay-ocity-ocom, and wanted to get all the pieces of HR working as seamlessly as possible.
Their task list to get the school open was LONG and they needed the quickest and safest landing to get a retirement plan in place.
Eva reached out to Investors Asset Management (IAM) because they heard IAM specialized in retirement plans for non-profits and educational entities and had worked with several schools in South Carolina. Here is what IAM proposed:
CSA is a prime candidate for a new type of plan called a “Pooled Employer Plan” (PEP). A PEP offers economies of scale in terms of cost and investments to smaller or start-up companies, including schools.
The PEP offers automated syncing with their payroll provider, allowing Eva to focus on things more directly impactful to students and staff.
The PEP has the option to offer an employee match (or not).
The PEP plan can be off the ground within 30 days, quickly and efficiently.
IAM would provide customized employee onboarding specific to CSA.
In the conversation, IAM also let CSA know the PEP would be taking on the 3(38) liability for their company (which they didn’t even realize was on their plate, but now they would sleep better at night).
After the transition and onboarding process, employee participation was 95% and they were extremely satisfied with the convenience and cost of the PEP. They are glad they got this set up at the very beginning of their founding year and can offer this state-of-the-art benefit to their employees now and in the future.
The case study is for illustrative purposes only. IAM creates case studies to illuminate broad trends in the larger retirement plan market. The name of the school and the characters in this case study are fictional.
