Southwestern Advantage Facts

Southwestern Advantage - A Member of Southwestern Family of Companies

Our Family of Companies features 29 brands that serve businesses and consumers through financial services, consulting, real estate, fundraising, insurance, direct sales, executive placement and more. Southwestern Advantage is the founding company (1855), providing America's oldest entrepreneurial program for university students (1868). Participants of the program regularly find career opportunities within Southwestern Advantage and our Southwestern Family of Companies.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

• 1,500+ participants from 200+ campuses and 20+ countries each year
• Winner of the CEIA Charles F. Kettering Award for Top Internship in the U.S. - presented to Southwestern Advantage and Dr. Ralph Brigham, our Global Director of Campus Relations
• Recognized by the industry experts at WayUp as one of the nation's Top 100 Internship Programs
• Recognized three years by Nashville's leading newspaper, The Tennessean, as a "Top Workplace"
• Two-time "Best In Business" award winner by Nashville Business Journal for accelerated growth and community impact

PRODUCT PARTNERSHIPS

• Product partners with National Geographic, Princeton Review, and McGraw-Hill
• Books, websites and apps designed by a national board of top educators and experts to fit the needs of public, private, and homeschool curriculums

ALUMNI

• Over 150,000 student participants from over 1,600 campuses since 1868
• Alumni have been in the Forbes 400 ,White House Cabinet, entertainment, medicine, tech, best-selling authors, and more

ETHICAL COMMERCE

• Approximately 150,000 families invest in Southwestern Advantage products each summer
• Southwestern Advantage is an accredited and charter member of the Better Business Bureau of Middle Tennessee since 1961 with an A+ rating
• Recipient of the BBB Torch Award for Ethical Commerce

DIRECT SALES AND MARKETING

• Southwestern Advantage is America's oldest single-level direct sales and marketing program
• Participants take consumers' orders and payments, company inventories and ships product orders, difference between the products' wholesale cost and retail price is the participant's profit - similar to any small business owner
• Zero sign-up costs, entry fees, or financial endorsements required
• All initial training and sales materials are provided free of charge
• Participants' parents are included in the selection process by receiving a packet of information from the company, followed by their signing of a Parent Support Letter that simply states their awareness and approval, followed further by ongoing email updates from the student's leaders
• No quotas for sales or recruitment
• Leading member of the Direct Selling Association, holding direct sales companies accountable to ethical business practices and DSA Code of Ethics
• Southwestern Advantage has testified in support of anti-pyramid scheme legislation
• Company president, Dan Moore, elected to the DSA Board of Directors
• Listed on DSA Global 100

CAMPUS PARTNERSHIPS AND MEMBERSHIPS

• Most students are eligible for 3-9 hours of transfer college credit via Trevecca Nazarene University
• Partners with Pi Sigma Epsilon (PSE)
• Member of the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE)
• Premium Partner with Handshake - the leading platform connecting campus career centers, employers and students

CAREER SERVICES

• All students that complete one or more years are provided with a Professional Career Counselor for their career path and resume at no charge

COMMUNITY IMPACT

• Southwestern Advantage Student Reps have visited and helped 27 different organizations in five international cities through our Share The Advantage donation program
• Southwestern Advantage fights human trafficking through our partnership with End Slavery Tennessee
• Active partner with the Kindness For Kids Foundation
• Corporate partners with United Way of Metro Nashville

For more information about Southwestern Advantage and our family of companies, open our online brochure, visit our Instagram & Facebook, or browse our website.

Share The Advantage: Leona Vicario

We believe in the power of serving others.

Each summer, Southwestern Advantage Reps can opt-in to participate in Service Week. The amount they choose to donate from their personal profits goes toward the service project held on their incentive trip. In 2019, over $26,000 was donated to help the Mayan village of Leona Vicario, Mexico.

For a long-term impact, a wing was added to the town library specific to children and special-needs children. On the two days Southwestern Advantage Reps went to the village, over 30 mini-service projects took place. Homes received new roofs, dirt floors were replaced with concrete floors, food, diapers and medicine were delivered to those in need, plumbing was installed in homes without, and two churches received supplies for local aid.

Reps also spent time getting to know local families, library staff, and the school children who benefited from their assistance. The Mayor, City Delegate, and townspeople said, “Southwestern Advantage is now a part of our life and town. You are now all citizens of Leona Vicario. Our home is your home!”

Photos: https://www.facebook.com/SouthwesternAdvantage/posts/3007244329285960?__tn__=-R

Special thanks to:
City Delegate Chano de Leona
Projects Coordinator Nayeli Fregoso Martinez

Learn more at https://southwesternadvantage.com/share-the-advantage

Southwestern Advantage Partners to Fight Human Trafficking

Southwestern Advantage is honored to have an official partnership with
END SLAVERY TENNESSEE. ESTN promotes the healing of human trafficking survivors and strategically confronts slavery through training, aftercare, advocacy and prevention services.

ESTN is the single point of contact for all human trafficking referrals in Middle Tennessee and provides comprehensive, holistic, trauma-informed care to every survivor in their program. We are honored to be partners with ESTN and to stand with our student reps against human trafficking.

Learn more about our Share The Advantage initiative: http://www.southwesternadvantage.com/Share-The-Advantage

Dr. Ralph Brigham & Southwestern Advantage Awarded Top Internship in U.S. for 2019

Dr. Ralph Brigham & Southwestern Advantage Awarded Top Internship in U.S. for 2019

Dr. Ralph Brigham and Southwestern Advantage have been selected as recipients of the 2019 Charles F. Kettering Award. 

Each year, Cooperative Education & Internship Association (CEIA) recognizes one recipient of the Charles F. Kettering Award for excellence in industry, business, or government internship/cooperative education programs. CEIA is the national leader in cooperative education and internship program management. 

This award comes with the distinction of being rated as the top rated internship/cooperative education employer in the nation providing outstanding resources and service to college students and the profession. Southwestern Advantage joins a prestigious group of past winners including IBM, NASA, Walt Disney, AT&T, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Bloomingdale’s, Ford, and General Motors.
For the past 17 years Dr. Brigham has served as the company’s Global Director of Campus Relations. In his role, Dr. Brigham is the liaison between universities and Southwestern Advantage in building and maintaining relationships with the more than 200 universities in North America, Europe, and Asia that have students participating in the program (over 1,600 campuses total in 151 years of continuous operation). He has been invited to speak to students at universities across the United States and in France, England, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Kazakhstan to name some recent countries. 

Dr. Brigham has served as the president of the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), which includes about 9,000 careers center professionals and campus relations directors. And, in 2013 he was inducted into the NACE Academy of Fellows. Prior to his time with Southwestern Advantage, he was the Director of Career Services at Montana State University. He is currently serving as Professional Vice President of the National Council for Pi Sigma Epsilon, the professional sales and leadership fraternity. Dr. Brigham is a certified life coach, mentoring students and professionals in topics like finance, career, and health and wellness, and developing habits to build a successful life.

“I am humbled and honored to be recognized by CEIA, and for Southwestern Advantage to also be recognized alongside some of the top companies in the world. For over 150 years, Southwestern Advantage has provided services and opportunities for college students to gain an experiential education through our entrepreneurial program. This award is a result of the principles that the company stands for and instills in the students who participate,” said Dr. Brigham.

Southwestern Advantage is the oldest entrepreneurial program in the United States. Since 1868, Southwestern Advantage has offered a sales & leadership program that gives university students a way to afford their degrees, gain entrepreneurial skills, and build character. Each summer, a sales force of nearly 1,500 independent student reps market an educational learning system to families across the US & Canada through direct sales.

In addition, Southwestern Advantage empowers university students with the tools, training, and coaching they need to build their own businesses and gain transferable life skills. The product line of early learning, homework help, and SAT/ACT resources help millions of children excel academically and feel excited about school. Student representatives meet with families for short consultative visits to discuss education and show a line of websites, apps, and books that help families reach their academic goals. 

Southwestern Advantage is a member of Southwestern Family of Companies:

Established in Nashville, Tennessee in 1855, Southwestern Family of Companies is a diversified, growing, international, and employee-owned company built on a foundation of principles and purpose. Comprised of companies with a shared mission of building people and helping others, Southwestern Family of Companies provides a large range of products and services, including educational books and websites, school fundraising efforts, healthy meal solutions, luxury travel packages, financial advising, consulting services, sales and leadership coaching and more. 

Southwestern Family of Companies has expanded beyond Southwestern Advantage to include member companies across a range of industries and continues to grow each year. For more information, visit https://southwestern.com/companies/southwestern-advantage/

Press Release

Contact: Trey Campbell, APR 

Director of Communications

615-391-2801 

tcampbell@southwestern.com

www.southwesternadvantage.com

View Press Release:
https://www.directsellingnews.com/southwestern-advantage/

Lisl & Maddie, Southwestern Advantage Student Reps, CU-Boulder

With a variety of “my experience” stories floating around out there, here are two helpful messages from CU-Boulder students who did two simple and crucially important things: they completed the entirety of their selling season, and they used their training.

Visit their Facebook business pages to see more of their experience with Southwestern Advantage:
https://www.facebook.com/LislTheEducationLadyFauke
https://www.facebook.com/MaddieTheBookgirlWhelan/


Learn more about Southwestern Advantage:
https://southwestern.com/companies/southwestern-advantage/