ThinkQuest

Launching a New Kind of Nonprofit

Founded in 1996 by Allan Weis, the president and CEO of Advanced Network and Services, ThinkQuest was to be an international, project-based learning challenge, in which students age 12 to 18 competed to create the most innovative educational websites. Along the way, they would acquire important new skills.

Makovsky was engaged to create an identity and visibility for the nonprofit—and we had just eight months to do it. An intensive campaign that included online teacher workshops, direct marketing, focused advertising in educational publications and aggressive editorial outreach—both before and after the launch—generated over 42 million impressions and more than 3,000 proposals from students from 49 states. The program and its founder won praise from the White House. And the ThinkQuest website received more than a million hits a week for several weeks after the competition.