LifeTuner: How AARP Came to Serve Twentysomethings

Diane Ty spent years at the over-50 organization developing a Web community for younger Americans. After much strategizing, AARP has launched LifeTuner

By Jessie Scanlon

AARP's online LifeTuner includes tools for young people to manage credit-card debt or plan for retirement.

On Oct. 27, AARP, an organization founded to promote the needs of 50-and-older Americans, turned youthful, unveiling a financial planning Web site and online community designed for 25-to-34-year-olds. Visitors to the free LifeTuner site can post questions, find advice from financial experts, and use tools to manage their credit-card debt or plan for retirement.

More than just a surprising offering from a well-known organization, LifeTuner shows that innovation is even possible within a cautious, tradition-bound group that itself is more than a half-century old. The key is to sell innovative projects internally, getting the right people on-board early, and navigating around potential roadblocks. That's what Diane Ty, AARP senior vice-president for strategic market development and a former American Express (AXP) executive, did as she led LifeTuner from concept to launch.

Taking LifeTuner as a guide, here's a look at how to navigate the organizational tides that too often sink innovative projects.

Ty, who will only say that she is fortysomething, joined AARP as a consultant in 2004. The following summer she was part of the association's "innovation strike force," a five-member team charged with reviewing social trends and advising the board of the 40-million-member group about future initiatives. "We talked about what, if anything, we could do for people under 50," says Ty, but "Project Prepare," as the team called the effort at the time, didn't make it into the top three priorities presented to the board by the strike force.

needed: direct access to AARP's CEO

The notion got a second chance at the end of 2006, after Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), expressed interest in working with the AARP on an initiative aimed at young workers. (The two organizations have common interests in health care and financial security.) The SEIU ended up creating its own nonprofit, Qvisory.org, but Ty says "the discussions helped move things along inside of AARP."

She knew that for the project to be successful, she needed to report directly to then-CEO William Novelli, cutting out the layers of management that can stymie an innovative project. "So that's when I joined the staff as senior vice-president," Ty says. Next she assembled a cross-functional team, bringing in people from strategic planning, health care, economic security, and other groups within AARP that she knew would provide the necessary sounding boards and buy-ins for the project.

Beyond that, says Ty, she tried to "fly under the radar." As the project evolved, she reached out individually to colleagues whose interests aligned with LifeTuner in one way or another. Over lunch, for instance, she told the woman behind Create the Good, AARP's campaign to encourage members to volunteer, about how financial planning professionals were offering free advice on LifeTuner.

It took Ty 18 months to build her case to the 23-member board, but in December 2007, she won them over—even getting votes from members who had argued for a stricter focus on the issues of its 50-and-older members and who perceived the problems of twentysomethings as a distraction. Ty's case for LifeTuner included quantitative data from a member survey that showed, among other things, that 69% of AARP's members were still supporting adult children—proving that LifeTuner did address members' need.

Barry Rand, who took over as CEO last April, says Ty's data made his decision to stick with the LifeTuner project "very easy." "We are first and foremost a member-driven organization," he says, "and this project fulfilled a real need."

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