Social Enterprise

MODELS & BEST PRACTICES

Belay Enterprises (Denver, CO)
www.belay.org
Belay Enterprises was started in 1995 by a group of local businessmen, community leaders and pastors who wanted to make a difference for the urban community. They believed that by recycling materials that were previously thrown away they could change lives and provide opportunity for the disadvantaged. Out of this vision grew Bud’s Warehouse, a career and life-skills training program for individuals rebuilding lives from addiction, homelessness, or prison. Over the last nine years, Bud’s has grown to be a successful and popular home improvement stores in the country and has been able to fund the start-up of three additional enterprises.

Broad Street Studio (Providence, RI)
www.as220.org/as220/weblog/access/bss.html?seemore=y
Broad Street Studios provides space for combined arts and business training with six youth-run, arts-related businesses that employ a total of 24 people.

Chrysalis (Los Angeles, CA)
www.changelives.org
Chrysalis helps economically disadvantaged and homeless individuals become self-sufficient through employment opportunities. To this end, Chrysalis runs two businesses, Labor connections, which serves as a full-service staffing agency, and StreetWorks, which has contracts to clean over 100 city blocks with the city of Los Angeles and nearby Santa Monica.

Bobby Dodd Institute (Atlanta, GA)
www.bobbydodd.org
Bobby Dodd aims to create employment opportunities for people with disabilities and obtains over half of its revenue through business income. Business services provided include data entry, switchboard operation, janitorial services, and toner cartridge manufacturing.

Clovernook Center for the Blind and Disabled (Cincinnati, OH and Memphis, TN)
www.clovernook.org
Clovernook Manufacturing Centers in Cincinnati, Ohio and Memphis, Tennessee, employ more than 140 people who are blind or visually impaired. These employees contribute 75 percent of the total direct labor at the two production facilities. Clovernook’s business operations, which annually generate more than $6.7 million in revenue, are categorized into three departments – Braille Printing, Paper Products and Contract Manufacturing.

Esperanza Unida (Milwaukee, WI)
www.esperanzaunida.org
Esperanza Unida was founded in 1971 to represent Latino workers in unemployment compensation hearings. Over the years, however, the nonprofit found that by creating “training business,” it could provide job training, actual jobs, and help fund its operations. Today, the group operates six businesses, which combined provide between 50 and 70% of the organization’s total revenues.

Fare Start (Seattle, WA)
http://www.farestart.org
Since 1992, FareStart in Seattle has provided nutritious meals to those in need while helping the homeless and disadvantaged gain work skills running its social enterprise restaurant. Proceeds from the restaurant cover roughly 40% of the group's budget. FareStart produces over 2,500 meals daily and has helped transformed over 1,500 lives through its 16-week job training and placement program. Nearly half of the students involved in its training program are placed directly into jobs in the food-service industry.

Fresh Start Catering (DC Central Kitchen, Washington, DC)
www.dccentralkitchen.org/menus
This social enterprise venture, founded in 1996, has rapidly grown to serve over 400 clients a year, including The Smithsonian Institution, The Washington Ballet, The Washington Business Journal, the Meyer Foundation, the Department of Commerce, Fannie Mae Foundation and Georgetown University. Proceeds from the business fund DC Central Kitchen’s anti-hunger and job training programs.

Green Institute (Minneapolis, MN)
www.greeninstitute.org
Founded in 1993, the Green Institute operates a ReUse Center and DeConstruction Services business, which generates $1.1 million in revenue -- a third of the nonprofit's annual budget, while selling reusable building materials to about 60,000 customers and providing 18 living-wage jobs to community residents. Combined with other initiatives, including an environmental energy program, a storm-water management program, and a green building design program, the Green Institute has had a net impact of over $10 million on its neighborhood.

Greyston Bakery (Yonkers, NY)
www.greystonbakery.com
Founded in 1982, Greyston has grown to employ and provide job training to 55 people, most of who had previously been chronically unemployed. The bakery currently generates $3.5 million in annual sales. Clients for its brownies, cakes, and baked goods include Ben and Jerry’s and many upscale New York specialty stores.

Harlem Textile Works (New York, NY)
http://harlemtextileworks.org
Harlem Textile Works creates career opportunities for underserved students and artists interested in urban-based textile arts and fabric design by providing arts education, professional internships and entrepreneurial experience. HTW earns revenue from a variety of activities, including custom printing work, design sales to corporate customers, and retail sale of clothing and other items.

Homeboy Industries (Los Angeles, CA)
www.homeboy-industries.org
Founded by Father Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest, in 1992 in response to the civil unrest in Los Angeles, as a means of providing employment training for former gang members, Homeboy Industries has since grown to include a bakery, silkscreen, maintenance, and landscaping businesses. All told the enterprises generate nearly $1 million a year in revenue while providing employment to over 60 at-risk youth while providing job placements for hundreds a year more.

Housing Works (New York, NY)
www.housingworks.org
Housing Works was founded in June 1990 to provide supportive housing for homeless New Yorkers with AIDS and HIV. In its first 15 years, it has housed and/or provided services to over 15,000 people. Housing Works also operates a job training and placement program, which uses social enterprises, including supportive housing apartment rentals, a bookstore and a thrift shop, to underwrite the group's programs and help clients achieve self-sufficiency. In 2005, Housing Works earned over 25 percent of its revenues (more than $10 million) from its businesses.

Independent Transportation Network (Portland, ME)
www.itnportland.org
Founded in 1995, ITN provides door-to-door, on-demand rides for seniors, aiming to preserve senior mobility while avoiding the stigma of vanpool services. The organization charges an average fee of $8 per ride. Seniors may pay cash, have family members or others pay on their behalf, or donate time or cars for ride credit. The group supplements the cash with the labor of volunteer drivers. Earned income provides about 58 percent of revenues, with donated funds covering the balance. In 2005 the group provided 15,250 trips, using four donated cars, and served 600 riders. ITN is now beginning to franchise its model throughout the United States.

La Mujer Obrera (El Paso, TX)
www.mujerobrera.org
La Mujer Obrera has worked to transform the conditions of Mexican immigrant women on the U.S.-Mexico border since the organization’s founding in 1981. The nonprofit has developed an integrated strategy of community empowerment, part of which involves the operation of social purpose businesses, including an on-line retail store, a restaurant, and a “mercado”-style shopping center.

Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild (Pittsburgh, PA)
www.manchesterguild.org
Led by social entrepreneur Bill Strikland, MCG and its partner organization, the Bidwell Training Center, have provided job training and arts education, while also developing a for-profit catering business, real estate lease income, and a jazz record label. Regarding MCG, see also this 1998 Fast Company article at www.fastcompany.com/online/17/genius.html

Melwood (Upper Marlboro, MD)
www.melwood.com
Founded in 1963, Melwood is a non-profit service provider that assists people with development disabilities, in part through operating its own businesses. From humble beginnings in the 1960s (in 1966, the organization had a total budget of $31,000), Melwood has grown into a $72 million organization (with earned income contributing 85 percent of its overall budget) that provides job training, employment, housing, and recreation to more than 2,100 people with disabilities.

Minnesota Diversified Industries
www.mdi.org
Over the past four decades, St. Paul-based Minnesota Diversified Industries has employed a social enterprise model to assist people with disabilities and disadvantages by offering progressive development and job opportunities. As of the end of 2005, the firm, which provides packaging services and manufactures plastics, employed 610 workers in 3 cities (58 percent of whom were disabled and 14 percent of whom were disadvantaged) while enjoying gross sales of $40.3 million. The average wage of the workers exceeded $9 an hour at its two satellite locations and $11 an hour at its St. Paul headquarters site. Business sales provided 98 percent of all nonprofit revenues.

National Industries for the Blind (Alexandria, VA)
www.nib.org
National Industries for the Blind (NIB) enhances the opportunities for economic and personal independence of persons who are blind, primarily through creating, sustaining and improving employment. The group employs almost 5,000 people who are blind per year, pays over 60 million dollars per year in wages and benefits for full- and part-time employees, offers rehabilitative services to about 125,000 children and adults, and delivers millions of dollars worth of products and services to federal, state and commercial markets per year.

NativeEnergy (Charlotte, VT)
www.nativeenergy.com
NativeEnergy is a privately held company, but functions much like a nonprofit social enterprise, since its majority owner is a nonprofit organization, the Intertribal Council on Utility Policy—a council of Great Plains-area tribes in the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Iowa. Native Energy markets renewable energy credits or “green tags,” giving individuals and organization a means to purchase “offsets” to compensate for their global warming pollution. Proceeds are used to finance wind turbine or other renewable forms of energy production.

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New Door Ventures (San Francisco, CA)
www.ggci.org
Founded in 1981 to provide social services to at-risk youth, New Door Ventures (formerly Golden Gate Community, Inc.) began its social enterprise operations in 1990 as a means to provide job training and jobs to the at-risk population it serves. The nonprofit currently operates a bike shop (Pedal Revolution) and a print shop (Ashbury Images). During the period between 1998 and 2005, New Doors employed a total of more than 200 at-risk youth and young adults. Its social enterprises raise roughly $4 million or roughly 80 percent of its $5 million budget.

NPower New York (New York, NY)
www.npowerny.org
NPower NY began offering services in the spring of 2001 and is the second oldest and the largest affiliate in the NPower Network, a national network of local nonprofits that help other nonprofits use technology to better serve their communities. In addition to training disadvantaged workers to provide computer services to other charities, N-Power fulfills a second mission of giving the workers job skills and paid employment through its information technology service social enterprise business.

*NEW*
Office of Social Entrepreneurship (Baton Rouge, LA)
www.crt.state.la.us/ltgovernor/socialentrepreneurship
Founded in 2007, Louisiana’s Office of Social Entrepreneurship marks the first example of a state agency being established to support social enterprise. Operating out of the Office of the Lieutenant Governor, it acts primarily as a clearinghouse to connect aspiring social entrepreneurs with support organizations, such as private foundations, that can lend expertise and resources.

Pioneer Human Services (Seattle, WA)
www.pioneerhumanserv.com
Pioneer Human Services, founded in 1962, employs 700 people in its businesses, most of who come from its target population of ex-offenders and former drug abusers. Among its business is Pioneer Industries, a metal fabricator business that supplies Boeing. Its annual budget of $55 million is primarily funded through Pioneer’s business income. Watch the video »

Portland Habilitation Center (Portland, OR)
www.phcnw.com
Founded in 1951, PHC operates a number of businesses, including janitorial services, a manufacturing business, and others that employ a total of 1,100 people with disabilities and provide the organization with 96% of its operating budget.

*NEW*
PRIDE Industries (Roseville, CA)
www.prideindustries.com
In 1966, a group of parents founded PRIDE Industries in the basement of a church to provide better lives and futures for their own children with disabilities. Today, PRIDE employs a workforce of 3,100 — 2,500 of whom are disabled—generates $95 million in annual revenue, and is the third largest manufacturing and service company in the greater Sacramento region. More than 99% of the nonprofit group’s revenue comes from service and product sales.

Social Enterprise Group (Seattle, WA)
www.socialenterprisegroup.com
The Social Enterprise Group is a consulting firms that works with nonprofit, business, government and philanthropic in the Seattle metropolitan area on all aspects of social enterprise development, from initial readiness assessments to feasibility studies to business planning and concept development.

Social Innovation Accelerator (Pittsburgh, PA)
www.acceleratenow.org
The Social Innovation Accelerator is a private operating foundation that provides free educational services to help nonprofit groups in southwestern Pennsylvania develop and launch social enterprises. These ventures generate unrestricted revenue that reduces reliance on contributed income from government, foundations and donors, improving sustainability and social impact. The group is currently assisting over a dozen area social enterprises.

Triangle Residential Options for Substance Abusers (Durham, NC)
www.trosainc.com
Founded in 1994, TROSA, the largest drug rehabilitation program in the state, runs seven business enterprises, which include a moving company, a brick masonry company, a lawn care maintenance company, a catering business, a paint company, and a picture frame shop. A large part of the staffing comes from drug rehabilitation program residents. Part of TROSA’s two-year resident program requires that residents work in one of the businesses. As of 2002, business gross revenues were $2.25 million, covering over a third of the group’s $6 million budget.

Transformative Action Institute (Los Angeles, CA)
www.transformativeaction.org
The Transformative Action Institute is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to develop a new generation of social entrepreneurs and problem-solvers. Through its Transform America initiative, the group aims to train 1,000 university students a year in method of social innovation and enterprise. The program also includes a national competition to select the 20 best projects, with each of the winning projects receiving seed money of $50,000 to launch their organizations.

Women’s Bean Project (Denver, CO)
www.womensbeanproject.com
Founded in 1989, the Women's Bean Project is a non-profit business dedicated to helping women break the cycle of poverty and unemployment. The nonprofit aims to provide participants with a safe, accepting work environment where each can learn to identify and build upon their talents and gain the skills needed to get and keep mainstream employment. Employment training is provided through working in the group’s gourmet food production business.

Women’s Rural Entrepreneurship Network (WREN) (Bethlehem, NH)
www.wrencommunity.org
Founded in 1994, WREN is a nonprofit organization dedicated to better lives and livelihoods for rural women and men. To support their small business support program, the group operates a number of social enterprises including an artisan retail store, art gallery, an on-line store and a quarterly magazine. These enterprises both help support the nonprofit’s operations and, importantly, help to market the goods made by many of the small businesses that the nonprofit supports.