Outstanding Outcomes from Long-standing Nonprofit: Project Success
Adrienne Diercks loves looking back on her 1994 trip to Cairo, where she came up with the idea of creating nonprofit Project Success while riding a camel.
“What did I really want to do with my life?” she recalls asking herself on that trip.
The clear answer: preparing kids for their futures. Thirty-two years later, she’s still excited to be the executive director of Project Success.
Since its founding, the mission for Project Success hasn’t changed—inspiring young students to find their interests and purpose. The staff wants to help Minneapolis public school students in grades six through 12 to dream big, ignite possibilities, and grow exponentially. That’s achieved by exposing students to theater, experiential learning, and career workshops.
Among the programs Project Success offers are field trips to a dozen local theaters and access to free tickets to over 50 local theater partners. The nonprofit also produces musicals at middle schools.
“Arts have always been a [central] part of what we do from day one,” says Tanner Curl, Project Success senior director of advancement.
In her Minneapolis office near the Walker Art Center, Diercks talks about helping students take steps toward their short- and long-term goals. The underlying aim is to help students develop the mindsets, skills, and tools they can use for the rest of their lives.
In a mid-September email to Project Success supporters, Diercks wrote about the partnership that Project Success has with teachers and administrators. She also reflected on the different ways over time in which young people recognize they have many life options.
Diercks wrote: “A conversation in a classroom. A teacher who knows a student well. A new place they’ve never been. Something they try for the first time. A relationship that grows year after year. All of these moments become part of how a young person discovers who they are, imagines what they want for their future, and takes the first steps toward getting there.”
In addition to its theater offerings, Project Success provides programming in three other areas: in-class workshops, expeditions (including trips to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness), and institute sessions (such as cooking classes and filmmaking skills training).
Project Success has been committed to offering valuable opportunities to students at no cost, but some of its offerings are more expensive for the nonprofit. Consequently, for out-of-state college tours or expeditions to the Boundary Waters, Diercks says students are asked to pay what they can. But students aren’t turned away if they can’t contribute, she adds.
When the Covid-19 pandemic arrived in early 2020, Project Success continued serving students.
Minneapolis Public Schools shifted to online classes, and Project Success coordinated with teachers so its programming could be livestreamed into the virtual classroom sessions.
After more than three decades, Project Success has a proven approach that enhances academic performance and helps young people fuel their aspirations and develop skills for their futures after high school.
About 90% of students say the programming helps them set goals and create a plan for after graduation, while 96% of teachers report its opportunities assist students in setting goals. Since 1994, Project Success has worked with more than 225,000 students.
Mankato Area Public Schools affiliated with Project Success in 2024. The nonprofit launched the program in middle schools.
For the 2026–27 school year, 10th-grade Mankato students were added to Project Success. The nonprofit said the “10th-grade curriculum asks students to slow down and think about how they make choices.”
