The Albany Business Review reported that New York continues to be among the three least entrepreneur-friendly states, according to a new report by the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council.
New York ranked No. 48 in 2009, followed by California and New Jersey. The District of Columbia ranked last as a region.
The council’s 14th annual “Small Business Survival Index,” released Tuesday, considers 36 costs to small businesses that are imposed by or reported by the government. Most factors are taxes, including personal income taxes, corporate income taxes, property taxes, unemployment taxes and health insurance taxes.
Also factored in are energy costs and crime rate.
The top five most entrepreneur-friendly states are South Dakota, Nevada, Texas, Wyoming and Washington.
The Oakton, Va.-based Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council is a nonpartisan, nonprofit small-business and entrepreneurship advocacy group.
To read the study, click here.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Recession Brings Out Entrepreneurial Spirit
The NY Times offered an article about the recent entrepreneurial focus in Detroit. As the article related:
With $6,000 and some Hollywood-style spunk, four friends opened this city’s only independent foreign movie house three months ago in an abandoned school auditorium on an unlighted stretch of the Cass Corridor near downtown.
After the unlikely hoopla of an opening night, red-carpet-style event in an area known for drugs and prostitution, exactly four customers showed up to see a film.
Since then, the Burton Theater has had a few profitable nights. But, the owners say, this adventure in entrepreneurship was never completely about making money. It was also about creating a more livable community.
“Nobody could comprehend why we’d start a theater,” said an investor, Nathan Faustyn, 25. “But when you live in Detroit, you ask, ‘What can I do for the city?’ We needed this. And we had nothing to lose. When you’re at the bottom of the economic ladder, you have nowhere to look but up.”
Despite the recession — and in some cases because of it — small businesses are budding around Detroit in one of the more surprising twists of the downturn. Some new businesses like the Burton are scratching by. Others have already grown beyond the initial scope of their business plans, juggling hundreds of customers and expanding into new sites.
Across from the Burton, for instance, Jennifer Willemsen just celebrated the first anniversary of her shop, Curl Up and Dye, a retro-themed hair salon serving 1,500 clients. Not far away, Torya Blanchard, a former French teacher, recently opened the second location of Good Girls Go to Paris, a creperie. Next door, Greg Lenhoff, also a former teacher, opened a bookstore in August called Leopold’s.
And just down the street from Leopold’s, on Woodward Avenue, Victor Both runs Breezecab, a company he started with a severance package after a layoff from Wayne State University. He uses rickshaws to ferry workers and conventioneers around downtown. “This filled a transportation void,” said Mr. Both, 34, who picked up the pedicab idea while touring Las Vegas before his layoff. “I haven’t made much money, but the experience has been priceless. I had no idea Detroit had so much love.”
It is not an uncommon instinct to start an enterprise in bad times and seize on weakened competition, lower overhead costs and perhaps more free time. Nor is it limited to Detroit. But the trend is particularly striking here, in a city that was suffering long before the rest of the nation fell into recession and where hard times, business closings and abandonment became routine generations ago. Read more here.
With $6,000 and some Hollywood-style spunk, four friends opened this city’s only independent foreign movie house three months ago in an abandoned school auditorium on an unlighted stretch of the Cass Corridor near downtown.
After the unlikely hoopla of an opening night, red-carpet-style event in an area known for drugs and prostitution, exactly four customers showed up to see a film.
Since then, the Burton Theater has had a few profitable nights. But, the owners say, this adventure in entrepreneurship was never completely about making money. It was also about creating a more livable community.
“Nobody could comprehend why we’d start a theater,” said an investor, Nathan Faustyn, 25. “But when you live in Detroit, you ask, ‘What can I do for the city?’ We needed this. And we had nothing to lose. When you’re at the bottom of the economic ladder, you have nowhere to look but up.”
Despite the recession — and in some cases because of it — small businesses are budding around Detroit in one of the more surprising twists of the downturn. Some new businesses like the Burton are scratching by. Others have already grown beyond the initial scope of their business plans, juggling hundreds of customers and expanding into new sites.
Across from the Burton, for instance, Jennifer Willemsen just celebrated the first anniversary of her shop, Curl Up and Dye, a retro-themed hair salon serving 1,500 clients. Not far away, Torya Blanchard, a former French teacher, recently opened the second location of Good Girls Go to Paris, a creperie. Next door, Greg Lenhoff, also a former teacher, opened a bookstore in August called Leopold’s.
And just down the street from Leopold’s, on Woodward Avenue, Victor Both runs Breezecab, a company he started with a severance package after a layoff from Wayne State University. He uses rickshaws to ferry workers and conventioneers around downtown. “This filled a transportation void,” said Mr. Both, 34, who picked up the pedicab idea while touring Las Vegas before his layoff. “I haven’t made much money, but the experience has been priceless. I had no idea Detroit had so much love.”
It is not an uncommon instinct to start an enterprise in bad times and seize on weakened competition, lower overhead costs and perhaps more free time. Nor is it limited to Detroit. But the trend is particularly striking here, in a city that was suffering long before the rest of the nation fell into recession and where hard times, business closings and abandonment became routine generations ago. Read more here.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
In the Arts, Bigger Buildings May Not Be Better
A recent blog, The Data Stream (offered by the National Association of Artists Organizations), discussed the "Bilbao effect," which resulted in an overexpansion of arts and cultural organizations. As the post relates:
Within months of its opening in 1997, Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao had given the language a new term and the world a new way of looking at culture. The “Bilbao effect,” many came to believe, was the answer to what ailed cities everywhere — it was a way to lure tourists and economic development — and a potential boon to cultural institutions.
Municipal governments and arts groups were soon pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into larger, flashier exhibition spaces and performance halls.
Now the economic downturn has reined in a lot of these big dreams and has also led to questions about whether ambitious building projects from Buffalo to Berkeley ever made sense to begin with. Some are arguing that arts administrators and their patrons succumbed to an irrational exuberance that rivaled the stock market’s in the boom years.
Organizations were “blinded by the excitement of what it would be like to have this great new facility,” said D. Carroll Joynes, a senior fellow at the University of Chicago’s Cultural Policy Center.
The recession, he said he believed, is not solely to blame for a recent wave of projects that have been delayed (like additions to the St. Louis Art Museum and the Cincinnati Art Museum); scaled back (like the new building of the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, N.Y.); put into question (the new Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center and the renovation of the New York Public Library’s main Fifth Avenue branch); or abandoned altogether (the expansion of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo).
In Mr. Joynes’s view, “The recession is exposing the weakness of a lot of institutions that were seriously overstretched” before it began.
“It’s exposing poor management and poor planning,” said Mr. Joynes, who is collaborating on a study of 50 cultural building projects completed from 1994 to 2008 and their planning processes. These were situations, he added, in which “nobody actually asked: ‘Is there a need here? If they build it, will they come?’ ”
Read more here.
Within months of its opening in 1997, Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao had given the language a new term and the world a new way of looking at culture. The “Bilbao effect,” many came to believe, was the answer to what ailed cities everywhere — it was a way to lure tourists and economic development — and a potential boon to cultural institutions.
Municipal governments and arts groups were soon pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into larger, flashier exhibition spaces and performance halls.
Now the economic downturn has reined in a lot of these big dreams and has also led to questions about whether ambitious building projects from Buffalo to Berkeley ever made sense to begin with. Some are arguing that arts administrators and their patrons succumbed to an irrational exuberance that rivaled the stock market’s in the boom years.
Organizations were “blinded by the excitement of what it would be like to have this great new facility,” said D. Carroll Joynes, a senior fellow at the University of Chicago’s Cultural Policy Center.
The recession, he said he believed, is not solely to blame for a recent wave of projects that have been delayed (like additions to the St. Louis Art Museum and the Cincinnati Art Museum); scaled back (like the new building of the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, N.Y.); put into question (the new Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center and the renovation of the New York Public Library’s main Fifth Avenue branch); or abandoned altogether (the expansion of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo).
In Mr. Joynes’s view, “The recession is exposing the weakness of a lot of institutions that were seriously overstretched” before it began.
“It’s exposing poor management and poor planning,” said Mr. Joynes, who is collaborating on a study of 50 cultural building projects completed from 1994 to 2008 and their planning processes. These were situations, he added, in which “nobody actually asked: ‘Is there a need here? If they build it, will they come?’ ”
Read more here.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
New place for R.I. culture
The following article relates a newly opened arts center that is a for profit enterprise. Is this a new trend? Share you thoughts. As the article relates:
The name is sure to grab the attention of would-be theatergoers. It’s catchy, it’s ambitious, it emphasizes a sense of place.
And yet, when the Rhode Island Center for Performing Arts at the Historic Park Theatre hosts its first stage production next weekend, the people who enter the state’s newest live entertainment venue will find more than just a theater.
In its new incarnation, the building that once housed the Park Cinema is also home to a café, a nightclub and a 200-seat all-purpose area that can serve as a restaurant for theatergoers, a comedy club and a room for receptions and business functions.
The extras are part of owner Piyush Patel’s plan to make sure the new theater at the corner of Park and Pontiac avenues does what any business sets out to do: make money.
That will not be easy. Even in good times, it’s hard for theaters to make money, industry people say. And with the economy in tatters, it will be that much harder.
There’s also the issue of size. With 1,050 seats, the new theater is relatively small in the world of live entertainment.
Patel, 69, a native of India whose business interests include real estate, hotels and personal care products, says that is why he has cast such as wide net.
“Every business plan has some kind of escape strategy, you know, what happens if it doesn’t work,” he said. “That’s why I came up with the idea, a total entertainment complex.”
This is not to say that Patel won’t be trying to make money from the theater end of the business.
He has hired Jack Nicholson, a New Englander with a long history in managing sporting and entertainment venues, to oversee the theater operation. And Nicholson, like Patel, is casting a wide net.
For patrons who think theater means plays and musicals, the new venue will be working with the Stoneham Theatre, in Stoneham, Mass., which has been producing its own shows since it — like the Park — reopened in a historic former cinema. The Park will help subsidize those productions — this year’s list includes “My Fair Lady,” “Gaslight,” “Always … Patsy Cline,” and “Hockey Mom, Hockey Dad” — and will host perhaps four or five shows a year.
Dates for those performances are still being determined, in part because Nicholson is also working to book live acts. Three will come to the Park during the late-winter/spring, though those dates are not set either: The Moscow Circus, the Rat Pack and the Glenn Miller Orchestra.
The live theater and live entertainment represent the jewels that the new theater plans to offer. Rounding out those offerings will be large-screen, high-definition broadcasts of sporting events — the Super Bowl, the World Series, World Cup soccer — and independent movies. Read more here.
The name is sure to grab the attention of would-be theatergoers. It’s catchy, it’s ambitious, it emphasizes a sense of place.
And yet, when the Rhode Island Center for Performing Arts at the Historic Park Theatre hosts its first stage production next weekend, the people who enter the state’s newest live entertainment venue will find more than just a theater.
In its new incarnation, the building that once housed the Park Cinema is also home to a café, a nightclub and a 200-seat all-purpose area that can serve as a restaurant for theatergoers, a comedy club and a room for receptions and business functions.
The extras are part of owner Piyush Patel’s plan to make sure the new theater at the corner of Park and Pontiac avenues does what any business sets out to do: make money.
That will not be easy. Even in good times, it’s hard for theaters to make money, industry people say. And with the economy in tatters, it will be that much harder.
There’s also the issue of size. With 1,050 seats, the new theater is relatively small in the world of live entertainment.
Patel, 69, a native of India whose business interests include real estate, hotels and personal care products, says that is why he has cast such as wide net.
“Every business plan has some kind of escape strategy, you know, what happens if it doesn’t work,” he said. “That’s why I came up with the idea, a total entertainment complex.”
This is not to say that Patel won’t be trying to make money from the theater end of the business.
He has hired Jack Nicholson, a New Englander with a long history in managing sporting and entertainment venues, to oversee the theater operation. And Nicholson, like Patel, is casting a wide net.
For patrons who think theater means plays and musicals, the new venue will be working with the Stoneham Theatre, in Stoneham, Mass., which has been producing its own shows since it — like the Park — reopened in a historic former cinema. The Park will help subsidize those productions — this year’s list includes “My Fair Lady,” “Gaslight,” “Always … Patsy Cline,” and “Hockey Mom, Hockey Dad” — and will host perhaps four or five shows a year.
Dates for those performances are still being determined, in part because Nicholson is also working to book live acts. Three will come to the Park during the late-winter/spring, though those dates are not set either: The Moscow Circus, the Rat Pack and the Glenn Miller Orchestra.
The live theater and live entertainment represent the jewels that the new theater plans to offer. Rounding out those offerings will be large-screen, high-definition broadcasts of sporting events — the Super Bowl, the World Series, World Cup soccer — and independent movies. Read more here.
Build a Stronger America: Join the Entrepreneur' Movement
The Kauffman: The Foundation for Entreprenuership offers this new resource and website:
If you are like 80 percent of Americans, you believe that the U.S. economy has been, and will continue to be, built by entrepreneurs like you. Accordingly, if the U.S. economy is going to have a sustained recovery, it will be up to its entrepreneurs to lead the way.
But entrepreneurs cannot create jobs and growth without a level playing field. Federal and state governments cannot continue to favor large, established businesses at the expense of startups and entrepreneurs. Here are five things that entrepreneurs need now:
If you are like 80 percent of Americans, you believe that the U.S. economy has been, and will continue to be, built by entrepreneurs like you. Accordingly, if the U.S. economy is going to have a sustained recovery, it will be up to its entrepreneurs to lead the way.
But entrepreneurs cannot create jobs and growth without a level playing field. Federal and state governments cannot continue to favor large, established businesses at the expense of startups and entrepreneurs. Here are five things that entrepreneurs need now:
- Health care reform
- Better access to credit
- Cut payroll taxes to create and save jobs
- Tax reform
- "Entrepreneur's Visas" that enable non-U.S. native college and university graduates to create new jobs now
Kauffman believes that entrepreneurs' voices need to be heard in Washington, DC, and will work to educate government officials about the important role entrepreneurs play in our economy.
Join the Entrepreneurs' Movement today.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Social Entrepreneurship Resources
Craigslist Foundation has a helpful resource section on Social Entrepreneurship from their Nonprofit Boot Camp. A couple examples are listed below. The section includes presentations for most programs and some audio recordings too.
Nonprofit vs. For-profit: Which way to go? (NY08)
Moderator: Jeffrey Robinson, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Management & Global Business, Rutgers Business School
Presenters: Jessamin Waldman, Founder, Hot Bread Kitchen;
N. Taylor Thompson, Co-Founder, PharmaSecure
Tales from the Trenches: Resource Review and Top Five Lessons Learned (NY08)
Moderator: Lara Galinsky, VP of Strategy, Echoing Green
Presenters: Andrew Bucko, Founder/Managing Director, The Reciprocity Foundation;
Nandini Narula, Co-Founder, GreenMango;
Toni Blackman, Musical Ambassador, Performer & Writer, Artist Development, Consultant
The Art and Science of Business Development for the Public Good (NY08)
Presenter: David Jordan, Entrepreneur-In-Residence, Clark University's Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program and President & CEO, Seven Hills Foundation
Nonprofit vs. For-profit: Which way to go? (NY08)
Moderator: Jeffrey Robinson, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Management & Global Business, Rutgers Business School
Presenters: Jessamin Waldman, Founder, Hot Bread Kitchen;
N. Taylor Thompson, Co-Founder, PharmaSecure
Tales from the Trenches: Resource Review and Top Five Lessons Learned (NY08)
Moderator: Lara Galinsky, VP of Strategy, Echoing Green
Presenters: Andrew Bucko, Founder/Managing Director, The Reciprocity Foundation;
Nandini Narula, Co-Founder, GreenMango;
Toni Blackman, Musical Ambassador, Performer & Writer, Artist Development, Consultant
The Art and Science of Business Development for the Public Good (NY08)
Presenter: David Jordan, Entrepreneur-In-Residence, Clark University's Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program and President & CEO, Seven Hills Foundation
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Nonprofits rethinking business model
Buffalo's Business First featured an article about how nonprofits are developing new ways of generating unrestricited operating dollars: Entrepreneurial Ventures! As the article relates:
The region’s nonprofit service providers are faced with the toughest of challenges: How to deal with increased demand while facing declining revenues.
Small agencies are dealing with it. So are the largest.
Even the millionaire agencies – those with at least a million dollars in revenues that have made it onto the Business First Million Dollar Nonprofits list – say the situation doesn’t appear to be getting easier. They had collective revenues of $1.92 billion in fiscal 2007, but individually many are struggling and seeking ways to stay solvent. Many are exploring new funding options from foundations and contract opportunities as well as earned income through for-profit social enterprises.
Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute will start one such venture Jan. 1 when it begins a management contract with the Industrial Macromolecular Crystallography Association (IMCA), a consortium of nine of the nation’s largest pharmaceutical companies. The five-year contract calls for Hauptman-Woodward to manage IMCA’s Advanced Photon Source near Chicago, where X-rays used for X-ray crystallography are produced.
In addition to the $1 million management fee over a five-year period, the real value of the venture comes in the form of future possibilities, says Eaton “Ed” Lattman, CEO and executive director at HWI, a $7 million organization.
“We earn some money out of it, but we also get on the radar screens of these nine companies,” he says. “It’s at least equally important that we might get them, for example, to be customers of the high output crystallography lab here at the institute, or we might develop intellectual property with one of these firms.”
The agency is not alone. Nonprofits are increasingly investing in social enterprises despite the economic downturn, according to a survey by Community Wealth Ventures Inc. and the Social Enterprise Alliance of Washington, D.C. More than half of the 848 social sector organizations surveyed already operate a social enterprise, while 60 percent indicated they plan to launch another in the next few years.
Those considering their first enterprise cite a motivation to increase revenues and to extend the mission of their organization.
Mark Foley, president and CEO of Community Services for the Developmentally Disabled, says he’s been focusing on better business practices to avoid cutting programs or making layoffs at the $21 million agency. Now he’s beginning to explore the possibility of social enterprise.
“I don’t know that I’ve come up with anything that’s rocket science here,” he says. “Nonprofits have to be more business-like when funding support from donors and government start shrinking.”
The sale of reproduced rare prints and artwork is the newest venture for the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, which already earns dollars through Fables Cafe in the central library. Bridget Quinn-Carey, executive director, says the library is exploring a variety of opportunities for new revenues.
“We’re rethinking what we’re doing in our retail store too, thinking how can we better take advantage of this great real estate in there,” she says.
A cafe is also bringing in new revenue at the Buffalo Museum of Science. First opened this summer during the run of the popular Body Worlds exhibit, the museum is continuing the venture along with an increased emphasis on facilities rentals such as weddings and events in the main hall as well as the auditorium.
CEO Mark Mortenson says the nearly $3.3 million organization is looking at expanding those opportunities, as well as overnight programming for families.
“We always want to make sure it’s a unique experience every time an individual comes here,” he says. “We have a three-year approved strategic plan now aimed at identifying funding opportunities to change experiences throughout the museum.”
Habitat for Humanity Buffalo, with overall revenues of $1.5 million, has found better than expected success through its Restore, a retail shop that sells donated goods including building supplies, appliances, furniture and housewares. Over the four years since it opened in North Buffalo, the store has generated $500,000 in income, enough funds to build 12 houses.
David Zablotny, executive director, says the venture is working.
“It’s been much better than anyone has expected,” he says, adding that the agency is looking at whether it would make sense to add a second outlet, as other Habitat chapters have done. “That money we brought in through the Restore last year Is about 12 percent of our revenues, so we’re looking to find ways to increase that number.”
The YWCA of Niagara began a social enterprise last year with the creation of The Catering Crew, a catering company/culinary training program for the women living at its Carolyn’s House shelter in Niagara Falls. In this case, the venture serves a dual purpose: providing women with both training and a paycheck, and with additional revenues funneled back into the program.
Read more here.
The region’s nonprofit service providers are faced with the toughest of challenges: How to deal with increased demand while facing declining revenues.
Small agencies are dealing with it. So are the largest.
Even the millionaire agencies – those with at least a million dollars in revenues that have made it onto the Business First Million Dollar Nonprofits list – say the situation doesn’t appear to be getting easier. They had collective revenues of $1.92 billion in fiscal 2007, but individually many are struggling and seeking ways to stay solvent. Many are exploring new funding options from foundations and contract opportunities as well as earned income through for-profit social enterprises.
Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute will start one such venture Jan. 1 when it begins a management contract with the Industrial Macromolecular Crystallography Association (IMCA), a consortium of nine of the nation’s largest pharmaceutical companies. The five-year contract calls for Hauptman-Woodward to manage IMCA’s Advanced Photon Source near Chicago, where X-rays used for X-ray crystallography are produced.
In addition to the $1 million management fee over a five-year period, the real value of the venture comes in the form of future possibilities, says Eaton “Ed” Lattman, CEO and executive director at HWI, a $7 million organization.
“We earn some money out of it, but we also get on the radar screens of these nine companies,” he says. “It’s at least equally important that we might get them, for example, to be customers of the high output crystallography lab here at the institute, or we might develop intellectual property with one of these firms.”
The agency is not alone. Nonprofits are increasingly investing in social enterprises despite the economic downturn, according to a survey by Community Wealth Ventures Inc. and the Social Enterprise Alliance of Washington, D.C. More than half of the 848 social sector organizations surveyed already operate a social enterprise, while 60 percent indicated they plan to launch another in the next few years.
Those considering their first enterprise cite a motivation to increase revenues and to extend the mission of their organization.
Mark Foley, president and CEO of Community Services for the Developmentally Disabled, says he’s been focusing on better business practices to avoid cutting programs or making layoffs at the $21 million agency. Now he’s beginning to explore the possibility of social enterprise.
“I don’t know that I’ve come up with anything that’s rocket science here,” he says. “Nonprofits have to be more business-like when funding support from donors and government start shrinking.”
The sale of reproduced rare prints and artwork is the newest venture for the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, which already earns dollars through Fables Cafe in the central library. Bridget Quinn-Carey, executive director, says the library is exploring a variety of opportunities for new revenues.
“We’re rethinking what we’re doing in our retail store too, thinking how can we better take advantage of this great real estate in there,” she says.
A cafe is also bringing in new revenue at the Buffalo Museum of Science. First opened this summer during the run of the popular Body Worlds exhibit, the museum is continuing the venture along with an increased emphasis on facilities rentals such as weddings and events in the main hall as well as the auditorium.
CEO Mark Mortenson says the nearly $3.3 million organization is looking at expanding those opportunities, as well as overnight programming for families.
“We always want to make sure it’s a unique experience every time an individual comes here,” he says. “We have a three-year approved strategic plan now aimed at identifying funding opportunities to change experiences throughout the museum.”
Habitat for Humanity Buffalo, with overall revenues of $1.5 million, has found better than expected success through its Restore, a retail shop that sells donated goods including building supplies, appliances, furniture and housewares. Over the four years since it opened in North Buffalo, the store has generated $500,000 in income, enough funds to build 12 houses.
David Zablotny, executive director, says the venture is working.
“It’s been much better than anyone has expected,” he says, adding that the agency is looking at whether it would make sense to add a second outlet, as other Habitat chapters have done. “That money we brought in through the Restore last year Is about 12 percent of our revenues, so we’re looking to find ways to increase that number.”
The YWCA of Niagara began a social enterprise last year with the creation of The Catering Crew, a catering company/culinary training program for the women living at its Carolyn’s House shelter in Niagara Falls. In this case, the venture serves a dual purpose: providing women with both training and a paycheck, and with additional revenues funneled back into the program.
Read more here.
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