Based in Carmel, Indiana, the Failure Institute is an organization dedicated to helping individuals learn from their shortcomings, as well as from those of others.
Co-founder Ron Brumbarger said the best way of looking at failures is positively.
“The group is best described as evaluations of failure,” Brumbarger said. “The goal is for members to have a place to share and learn and pull articles to learn from the lessons that others experienced.”
Brumbarger founded the online community with Isabella Penola, an 18-year-old entering her freshman year at the University of Notre Dame.
“One of those things that is really nerve-wracking to me is that fear of not living up to expectations and not succeeding,” Penola said. “So something like the Failure Institute reminds us that even the best, most successful people mess up. Because they’re so forthright and honest about it, you see that it’s okay to fail as long as you learn from it.”
Membership for the institute is private. Business memberships cost $99.99 per year, but the price drops to $19.99 per year for students. Brumbarger said the price reduction was made with student needs in mind. Brumbarger said the organization has ties to Apprentice University, an alternative online and on-the-job educational program.
“Apprentice University is predicated on mentoring,” Brumbarger said, noting the two organizations share that similarity. “The premise of mentoring is to help your students not make the same mistakes.”
Members have access to all of the articles other members have written. The articles are limited to personal experiences only and must be written in the first-person singular or first-person plural perspectives.
Brumbarger said the site has been live only since Friday, but it already has “around three dozen” members.
Steve Greenberg, one of the institute’s fellows, said he has already submitted an article about his own failure.
“I’m glad I failed,” Greenberg said. “I wouldn’t have learned otherwise.”
Greenberg said being in business has allowed him to learn from many mistakes.
"(Failure) can be empowering, it can be motivating, it can be instructional. It doesn’t have to be tragic.”
