Youth Specialties President Speaks on New Acquirement
After a nearly-30-year partnership, Youth Specialties, which serves more than 100,000 youth workers, was brought under its new owner, Zondervan, on May 1. The acquirement marks a culminating point for the communications company and youth organization which had been unstable for a while since the death of founder Mike Yaconelli. Karla, wife of Yaconelli, made the difficult decision to place Youth Specialties under the ownership of Zondervan.
Staff workers which number 35 will remain the same, along with YS’s creativity and mission. YS President Mark Oestreicher spoke with The Christian Post on the acquirement and the organization’s hopeful future with the big change.
CP: You talked about Zondervan having mentioned this idea of acquiring Youth Specialties years back. Why was the timing right at this moment? Why not then?
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Oestreicher: I think that they didn’t realize the value of the company at that time, so I think that there’s just been a shift in some things. The relationship between our two organizations has greatly improved over the last six years. There’s a lot higher level of trust and respect for the unique contributions of each organization.
Zondervan and the owners at that time of Youth Specialties just had different goals at that time and they weren’t able to get them to match up. Whereas this time, it just seemed the timing was right from the beginning that it was going to work. Everybody really wanted that to happen. Even that time, it was more of an exploratory thing. ‘Is this something that might work?’ But from the beginning this time, both sides really were hoping that it would work. So there was kind of a difference even in how it was approached.
CP: You clearly emphasized that your mission and “outside the box” attitude will remain the same. But you also welcomed changes. What kinds of changes are you looking towards? Are you anticipating much more creative avenues for your ministry?
Oestreicher: Well we’re looking forward to being able to try some new things. There’s a big variety of things we’ve been wanting to try. We’ve got a huge list of ideas that we would love to try. Some of them are internal things like our website really needs to be completely overhauled. A lot of capital to do. And other things, like we would love to try things for parents of teenagers - either events or publishing. We’d like to explore more what it might mean to do some events for teenagers like the DCLA event we’re doing this summer.
But it was difficult for us as a small family-owned company to take those financial risks because if we missed, we would be done, we’d be over. We’d cease to exist. And this gives us an opportunity to take some risks like that and to try to increase our opportunity to serve youth workers.
CP: What about Karla Yaconelli?
Oestreicher: She’s got a consulting role with us for at least a minimum of a year and we’ll potentially make it last longer than that. We’ve agreed with her on about six or seven specific things that she’s going to be involved in from making sure that we continue to embrace our nine guiding principles. She’s got such a grounding in our history that we want her to help police the fact that we need to stay on track with our mission and our values. But then also she has a role in speaking to our customers and being a pastoral presence with our staff and a variety of things like that.
CP: Is there anything new on the radar in the near future?
Oestreicher: Not really. We’ve worked together for so long. The first thing we want to consider doing is how can we streamline some things, how can Zondervan take some of the operational things that we do from us so that we’re able to really focus on the creative and how to encourage and serve youth workers without worrying about all the operational stuff. That’s kind of the first order of service. But alongside of that, we’re already starting to prioritize what are some of the new things that we want to try. We’ve got a pretty big new thing right now because we’re starting the DCLA event this summer that was already planned before we were required. But that’s taking a lot of our focus right now because it’s such an enormous new thing.
CP: Can you tell me more about DCLA?
Oestreicher: It’s the first time we’ve done it. The event has been around since 1985 and it’s been held every three years and it’s been hosted by Youth for Christ. We’ve partnered with them in the past, but they decided they could no longer do it, that it was kind of a distraction to some of the internal work that they needed to do. So we picked it up from them. So it’s the first time that it’s a YS event.
We have about 8,000 signed up for DC and about 4,000 for LA.
CP: Why the two cities – DC and LA?
Oestreicher: It was originally just in DC. They were trying to make it an event where kids would come to the capital. When they decided to add a second city, LA was kind of a natural second place. Actually, the first time they did a second city was actually in LA but now it’s really in Anaheim at the Anaheim Convention Center. Two opposite coasts make it easier for people to get to it.
CP: You sounded pretty excited on your blog announcing the acquirement news.
Oestreicher: I think it’s a good thing. I really do. We’ve been at risk for a long time. It’s just been very unstable. This is a great opportunity for us to be around for a long time and really be serving youth workers and try some new things.
CP: What’s happening with Youth Specialties right now?
Oestreicher: DCLA is our biggest new thing. At the same time, we’re wrapping up our CORE tour which is a one-day seminar that we do in 100 cities that ends this coming weekend (for the year). And then we’re getting all the plans ready for our Fall Youth Workers’ Conventions which we’re doing in four cities this fall and we expect 15,000 people at those. There’s always lots going on.
CP: Would you like to add any other comments?
Oestreicher: You mentioned how not much is changing and yet we’re excited about change. Youth Specialties has always embraced change. And in the last two years, we’ve aggressively tried to kind of reinvent who we are on the inside so that we can change the way we function and better serve youth workers. It’s not like there isn’t going to be change. I’m sure there will be. But we invite that, we like change. Just, I think what’s not going to change is the stuff that makes us unique.
