Intro to Social Enterprises (Webinar 1 18 12)
•Download as PPT, PDF•
2 likes•1,943 views
Intro to Social Enterprises Webinar for people/programs offering services to ex-offenders. Social Policy Research Associates team: Vinz Koller, Haydee Cuza, Kristin Wolff, David Mitnick, Chandra Larsen, Annie Nyborg, Nancy Box, Jan DeYoung
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (9)
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (17)
Similar to Intro to Social Enterprises (Webinar 1 18 12)
Similar to Intro to Social Enterprises (Webinar 1 18 12) (20)
More from Kristin Wolff
More from Kristin Wolff (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Intro to Social Enterprises (Webinar 1 18 12)
- 1. RExO Webinar Social Policy Research Associates January 18, 2012 Social Enterprise as a Strategy to Help Sustain Your Program
- 2. Welcome! Haydée Cuza Training and Technical Assistance Specialist Social Policy Research Associates Oakland, CA
- 6. Agenda
- 7. Presenter Kristin Wolff Thinker, Doer, Aspiring Rainmaker Social Policy Research Associates Oakland, CA
- 8. What is a Social Enterprise? Not for Profit For Profit Social Enterprise
- 9. Examples of Social Enterprises
- 11. Three Reasons Community Leaders Might Start a Social Enterprise
- 12. Why does this matter for our programs? To overcome employment challenges
- 14. Poll
- 16. More Choices for Social Enterprises Today than ever Before
- 18. Social Enterprise at St. Patrick Center
- 20. St. Patrick Center St. Louis, MO
- 21. McMurphy’s
- 22. McMurphy’s Grill
- 23. Challenges
- 24. McMurphy ’s Training Program
- 29. BEGIN New Venture Center Small Business Incubator
- 31. Incubator
- 32. What We Do & Why BEGIN New Venture Center offers start-up and early-stage companies and nonprofits:
- 33. What the research says…
- 34. Our Businesses
- 35. Our Impact
- 36. What We Learned
- 37. Q & A
Editor's Notes
- Poll opening "I joined this webinar mostly because... “ We ’re launching a social enterprise We ’re considering a social enterprise strategy We ’re curious Other (enter answer into the chat box) No Vote
- Haydee ’s introduction slide Welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us today. On today ’s webinar we have four voices you will hear throughout the 90 minutes. The first is mine. My name is Haydee Cuza and I am a training and technical assistance specialist at SPR and will serve as the moderator. Next there will be Kristin Wolff who will give us a history and talk about Social Enterprise in a broad sense and finally we will hear from two more presenters who will speak specifically about successful social enterprise programs. Now I will move on to talk about your participation on the webinar.
- So, now that we know who is here I will let you know what to expect from today ’s webinar. First, Kristin will take us through what a social enterprise is at the big picture level and information that may be useful for you as you explore starting a social enterprise. We will also talk about why this is relevant for organizations and people who serve those who have been previously incarcerated and the growing interest of social enterprises. Next we will hear from, Nancy and Jan, who have been leaders in social enterprise ventures And finally we will have Q & A, it is important to note that we encourage questions and conversation throughout this webinar – so please feel free to type in questions and comments into the chat box on the left of the slides at any time! We will also use the chat box below to ask you a couple of questions during the webinar.
- Our first presenter Kristin Wolff will be discussing social enterprise. Kristin is a student of social innovation, collaborative technologies, and public policy, who also serves as an adjunct researcher at Social Policy Research and owns a small business. She has helped launch two incubators and currently serves on the board of an emerging third. She lives in Portland, OR, and, like most Portlanders, composts and drinks amazing coffee.
- What is a social enterprise? A social enterprise is a sort hybrid between a business and social purpose organization or initiative. Social enterprises use business to achieve their primary social or environmental mission. Social enterprises are business ventures that seek to achieve social good. They have aspects of traditional businesses: they aim to make a profit (or earn revenue) they deliver products and services the market demands they require all the infrastructure (technology, human resources, marketing, sales, operations, etc.) that a regular business requires they might even pay taxes (depending upon how they are constituted) And they have characteristics more common to nonprofit orgs: funders might include government, foundations, private donors, in addition to revenue from sales products and services advance a social mission, not just “sales” human resources (training, development, supportive services) also often advance a social mission – and often cost more than those in comparable businesses the entire enterprise is purpose-driven – staff answers to a board interested in mission and not just money.
- Social Enterprises operating at many different sizes and scales for as many different purposes, and can operate in almost any sector. A school auction or bakesale is a kind of social enterprise, but usually we do mean something larger and more formal. The ReBuilding Center in Portland, Oregon is a de-construction business and retail operation owned by a non-profit. It employs over 30 people including ex-offenders, people with disabilities, immigrants and others who have a hard time finding and keeping good jobs, and had since launched additional related enterprises, like Re-Find, a business that re-purposes materials from deconstruction, turning them into home furnishings and accessories. Goodwill Industries employs tens of thousand of people, many with special needs, in over 2,500 retail second-hand clothing and homegoods stores in US and Canada. It also provides job training and assistance to another 2.4 M people who need skills, work experience, and jobs. Goodwill is one of the largest social enterprises in the country. Ben & Jerry’s has launched a small number of “ Partnershops ” to provide job training for young people with barriers to employment – these are social enterprises. Today, Ben & Jerry ’ s is looking not to replicate the model, but to provide more of these kinds of opportunities in its regular retail shops across the country.
- Why might we start a social enterprise? There are three main reasons: money, jobs, market need. Taking money first. Social cause organizations usually have to work hard to raise money. But they can also earn money – or generate revenue. This is often called an “earned income strategy” – it generally means launching a social enterprise. For example, a charitable organization might start a business selling products or services at a profit, using the profit to support charitable activities that do not generate revenue. Sometimes, the business is thematically linked to the mission it supports – a profitable organic food market that supports community wellness programs, for example. But it doesn’t have to be – such as profitable gift shop that supports activities for developmentally disabled children, or I bet many of you have purchases honey, cookies, cheese, or M&Ms to support music or arts programs for young people in your lives. A second reason community leaders or social purpose organizations might want to start a social enterprise, especially in today’s economic context, is to create job opportunities for unemployed individuals, especially those with unique needs. This is Goodwill’s approach. Goodwill operates stores all over the country that take in donations, and clean, sort and resell useful items, creating tends of thousands jobs in the process. A third reason to start a social enterprise is to address a market failure – a need the traditional market is simply not meeting. For example, many urban communities in this country have what we call “food deserts” – neighborhoods in which access to fresh food is limited. Typically, the reasons are complex – everything from zoning issues to liability insurance. In such cases, a grocery store or farmers market in the form of a social enterprise (possibly seeded with private foundation dollars but aiming to become a profitable enterprise over time) can be a good solution.
- There are two key reason programs that serve formerly incarcerated individuals in particular might be attracted to social enterprises. The first is the employment challenge. Employment is a particular difficulty for our ex-offender clients for reasons all of you are familiar with. Social enterprises can help: By employing our clients directly and helping them to build positive employment histories By helping out clients to launch their own ventures And by setting an example – normalizing the employment of formerly incarcerated people and demonstrating that they can be productive and responsible members of a community.
- The second reasons social enterprises might appeal to our programs is because it’s so hard to raise money for services to ex-offenders. There are many worthy causes with which our programs must compete to raise needed funds. Typical donors to such programs have a personal connection – they or a family-member or close friend found success through a particular program, for example. But this makes for a small donor pool, and one that can be difficult to locate and to cultivate. On the foundation and government grant side, ex-offender programs tend not to attract sustained investment, which is what is most needed. As a result, funds to support needed programs can be hard to come by. Social enterprises can offer a solution (though not an easy one) – - They can generate needed revenue. - They can also help diversify base funding for programs and reduce wild swings in revenue based on success in accessing grants and donations. - They can also help our orgs become more entrepreneurial themselves and run more efficiently, saving needed resources.
- POLL QUESTION What social enterprise industries are you interested in launching? Food Retail Service Other
- Social Enterprises have probably been around since the dawn of markets, but we began recognizing them formally in the mid-1800s, when “Cooperatives” (businesses owned and managed by the people they serve) emerged as vehicles for advancing social and economic good in the UK. 100 years later, Oxfam opened the first “charity shop” and was credited with launching what was to become a field of retail meets social good enterprises. Goodwill Industries may want to quibble with this as it launched in 1902 as an industrial program and repaired and re-sold donated goods. By the 1960, US nonprofits were beginning to experiment with enterprises as alternatives to traditional employment, community development corporations emerged as major property developers in disadvantaged communities, and Muhammad Yunus, who would earn a Nobel Peace Prize four decades on, began experimenting with micro-credit-supported enterprise as an anti-poverty strategy. Only in the last 15-20 years has social enterprise emerged as a kind of field, as academic began studying them, practitioners began organizing and sharing information, and funders began developing strategies around them. Books, foundations, prizes, reports, policy apparatus, money, associations, global, centers Ashoka 1981 Echoing Green 1987 Omidyar Network 1995 REDF 1996 Bill Strickland (Manchester Bidwell Corp) receives MacArthur Genius Award Policy Makers (national UK, American Mayors and thinktanks, academics) become interested 1998 First Convening around Social E-ship (led to SE Alliance) 1999 Skoll Foundation 2003 Yale-Goldman Sachs Prize 2003 SSIR launches Social Edge (global) (Toronto 2004) Center for Social Innovation 2006 tipping point, more book published since than before that year 2008 SOCAP 2010 #socent (social media) Conferences!
- As the field has evolved, the lines between business and social purpose organizations have blurred, new kinds of legal entities have emerged, giving social enterprises more choices than ever about the kind of business they want to be. These new choices mean that emerging social enterprises are more likely to find a vehicle that meets their needs than those long established. But it can be difficult to navigate through the many options and their specific pros and cons – and since laws governing them vary from state to state, even the same kind of entity might afford different opportunities in some states compared to others. We have barely scratched the surface of the field of social enterprise, so we developed a resource guide to accompany this webinar that will be available for download at the end of the webinar. It includes a list of 210 funding source for social entrepreneurs – evidence of the field dramatic growth.
- The next portion of the webinar will include people who are running successful social enterprises at St. Patrick’s Center in St. Louis, MO: Nancy Box, Senior Director of Employment Services and Jan De Young, Director of BEGIN New Venture at St. Patrick’s Center which is an incubator and training program
- Nancy Box is the Senior Director of Employment Services for St. Patrick Center in St. Louis. She is responsible for 10 employment/training programs, designed to prepare individuals for employment. She has presented at conferences on the national level (and webinars) for DOL and at the Social Enterprise Alliance Summit in Chicago. Nancy is also an Adjunct Professor at Maryville University in St. Louis and holds a Masters in Rehabilitation Counseling and is a Certified Rehabilitation Counselor.
- “ St. Patrick Center is the largest provider of homeless services in Missouri, with 28 housing, employment and mental health programs assisting more than 9.000 persons annually who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. We help individuals and families move from homelessness to independence in a measurable, cost-effective manner.” Question for Nancy: Do you want to say anything about the role social enterprise now plays in your org? (small or large relative to org? central to org or nice add-on? impact on culture of org?)
- Nancy: “ We started our first social enterprise to create employment opportunities for our clients. In 1989, our Director of mental health programs heard about a restaurant in Illinois that was training people with mental illness to work in food service. She had been looking for a way to improve outcomes for her clients with mental illness and knew that employment was certainly a way to improve self-esteem and mental health. She and our CEO visited the Illinois program and came back on fire to do something similar in St. Louis. The difference was that our population was also homeless. Our CEO at the time could get blood from a turnip as they say. So she contacted the owners of the Pasta House Company in the hopes that they would fund the start up of the program. They weren’t interested at the time, but she must have made an impression on them because not long afterwards they came back to her with an idea: they would convince a local bar owner to share his space with us. The bar was open at night and we only wanted to serve lunch. So it began. By day, we would go in and take down all the nude pictures at the bar and replace them with our Catholic Charities pictures and restaurant related pictures. Then after we closed the nudes would go back on the wall. This is funny to me because our Director of mental health is a former nun so I can just imagine her pulling down those nudes and putting them back up everyday. Sometimes you have to do whatever it takes to get started.”
- “ This is McMurphy’s Grill today. It opened in 1990 and was the first-in-the nation full-service restaurant for training clients struggling with homelessness and mental illness. Pasta House company provided start up support to our new venture including a chef, our first manager, some equipment and administrative help – at no cost. They also helped us make the connections to get our current building donated and connected us with Boeing who provided all the start up funding for the new restaurant. Pasta House Company and Boeing have been supporters of ours since the beginning.
- Anytime you start something new you have to work out the kinks. If you’ve started a program before you know that what you start with and what you end with are not the same. There will be challenges and successes and both will impact what your program turns into. Some of our initial challenges were: Financial – we had to find start up funding – already talked about that Defining who is our client – can’t help everyone, limited program space, where is the need/potential impact the greatest? Neighbors didn’t want us – educate the public, eliminate fear Board and donors – how much and what for? Is it a mission or a business Start-up support – new to us, admin support, staff training Transporting clients – original location was not near our main building Finding new location closer to services On-going challenges: Economy Location Parking Market: Too many restaurants downtown”
- “ Over the years McMurphy’s has gone from a program that specifically served individuals who are homeless and mentally to a program that serves clients who are homeless who have an interest in working in food service. That includes clients with criminal backgrounds, low education levels, poor work history, etc. - those with multiple barriers to employment. What we learned from serving only clients who are homeless with mental illness was that they tended to get comfortable in the training and did not want to leave and that when they did leave, they did not go to work. So we concentrated our efforts on those who want to go to work. There are some unique features of our program compared to others like it: 1. We pay our clients minimum wage during training from the first day – Some programs don’t pay at all and some pay after a certain period of time. Not saying the others are wrong, just saying this is a difference between programs. We find that it is difficult for people to commit to a 1gram without any source of income coming in. And, let’s face it. We are a business and we have to have people working to maintain the business. 2. We offer access to services (28 programs) in mental health, employment, skills training and certification, and housing 1 block away. That includes a health clinic on site.”
- “ In November 2010, we opened our second location, but our motivation was different. We had been working with an organization called FareStart out of Seattle to expand our training program to incorporate all of our food centers in the agency (restaurant, casserole program, urban farm, and incubator kitchen). At the same time, we were approached by the City of St. Louis to apply to offer breakfast and lunch service in a city office building with 400 employees. They already supported our work and wanted to give us this opportunity. They provided us the space for which we pay $100 a month. We found a Mrs. Fields Cookie kiosk on Craigslist in Chicago. Our Facilities manager rented a truck and picked it, delivered it and set it up in the lobby of the City building.The McMurphy’s Express kiosk was born. We hired one new staff member to manage the kiosk. We incorporated the training at the kiosk into our already existing McMurphy’s Grill training so that clients now spend 2 weeks at McMurphy’s Express as part of their training. We did not increase the number of clients we train as that would’ve been an added expense. So we had very little start up cost and good location. Challenges for McMurphy’s Express: Limited (electric) power in lobby location – limited what we can serve Transporting food from McMurphy’s to Express Keeping menu costs low enough for city employees to purchase Getting the word out Security in the lobby
- The thing we struggle with at both locations is the battle between mission and money. Are we a mission with a social enterprise or a social enterprise that happens to be a business. The experts say you have to put the business first to support the mission. You’ve heard the statement “no money, no mission”….but you’ve also heard, “you’ve got to spend money to make money”. We are not in a position to spend money at this point we do what we can with what we have. We do not cover all of our costs and depend on fundraising for the balance. That is something you need to be prepared to do as well.”
- Jan is the Director of BEGIN New Venture Center at St. Patrick ’s Place. He has 37 years of business experience. Jan has provided leadership for business, community, and economic development initiatives at the local, regional, and national levels and has facilitated many public/private partnerships providing resources to the small business community.
- [ Note what acronym stands for and how it reflects values.] BEGIN focuses on two things: Helping start-up and early stage businesses launch and grow successfully. Using training as a business support strategy for firms and employment strategy for people who need work. I’m going to focus on the incubator, but it’s important to understand that there are many linkages between our training and employment programs and support for the businesses we help launch through BEGIN.
- We launched the incubator to meet three needs widely recognized not just by us, but also by downtown St. Louis community, including human service organizations, economic and workforce development agencies, businesses, and community leaders. New generation of downtown businesses needed services. The downtown business area which had gone through significant economic transitions – with larger firms downsizing, relocating, even closing, was starting to see new businesses moving in – but the kinds of services these new businesses needed (from eateries to janitorial services) were no longer there to provide services. Jobless individuals with employment barriers needed options. St. Patrick’s own clients and others in need of jobs but who faced employment barriers—including formerly incarcerated individuals—had skills. For some, self-employment or business ownership is a viable option. Unemployed, skilled professionals needed work. Our region had experienced tremendous economic upheaval – leading to job loss for large numbers of skilled professionals who were just not able to find new jobs. Starting a business was a viable option for many. But the existing business support systems and incubators were all high-end, focusing on new economy industries (rather than bread and butter businesses) and not located in the downtown core. We needed something different.
- We put a plan together, with the support of the community, and won a $25K grant in a Social Enterprise competition launched by the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurship at Washington University St. Louis. That helped us find support. We went to the Department of Labor, who encouraged us to visit the Department of Commerce. We received $3.5 million from the Economic Development Administration to fund the build out and start of this venture. It was the first faith based investment that EDA ever made. In this slide, you see the actual incubator – it’s two floors of our office building (lower left) we converted into office space, a conference center, a commercial kitchen – an attractive, supportive environment for the companies we work with.
- We opened in 2008. We serve microenterprises ranging from self-employment to up to 10 employees. Some companies will grow much larger and others are seasonal. We have two staff and a host of community resource partners including: SCORE, St. Louis Community Credit Union, Justine Peterson—the nation’s 4 th largest micro-enterprise lender, and Washington University. We are like a one-stop for bread-and-butter start-ups. As you can see from the slide, we offer a wide-range of services—some of these we offer directly and others through our extensive community partnerships.
- We provide these services – in a focused, attentive, and mission-sensitive way because we know that 4 in 5 businesses fail in the first five years of operation, but incubator support can reverse that ratio so that 4 in 5 succeed. That’s what we’re after.
- Jan: We have: 2 firms in the barbeque-sauce business Another that offers training in reuses and recycling and green waste management services One that does lawn & landscape Others runs food trucks or carts. [If time, Jan will cite Heaven Sent Building & Maintenance] These people are doing work they’ve always wanted to do and making our community better for it. They inspire us everyday.
- We serve 19 culinary companies, leveraging our expertise in that sector (McMurphy’s). In 2011, we were home to 25 companies in all and we graduated our first two companies (graduation = profitable and sustainable) Since inception, the companies we’ve incubated have generated 36 FT jobs and 44 PT jobs. Our businesses are good businesses: We give preference to proposed ventures that are sensitive to helping achieve SPC ’s mission of creating permanent, positive change in people’s lives. We don’t mandate that our businesses maintain a social mission or environmental mission, but nearly all of them do. We strive to foster a set of positive social values and create economic impact. We want our companies to do the same.
- We proved a new model—a successful incubator as part of a faith-based social service organization—could work. Our mission is about three legs of a stool: mental health, employment, and housing, with housing first. Self-employment and business ownership can offer viable employment options for a wide variety of people, and positively contribute to the economic, social, and cultural revitalization of our city and region. One you launch a social enterprise or start to experiment with entrepreneurial ventures, one thing leads to another. Many social enterprise organizations start out thinking they will launch one, and wind up with many – we are no exception. Community engagement matters hugely to the success of the venture, so does engaging customers in the design of your solution – in our case the programs and services we offer to businesses.
- To audience: Please continue to type questions into the chat box on the left hand side of the screen. This next portion of the webinar will be focused on your questions and experiences.