Building a better state, one entrepreneur at a time

Social Enterprise Greenhouse – a social venture itself – may be explained best as the fuel for other startup efforts that promote positive change in Rhode Island and beyond. And while there are other organizations helping social entrepreneurs, SEG is the only one of its kind in Rhode Island.
“Our approach is pretty unique. [We provide] comprehensive systems to support social entrepreneurs,” said CEO Kelly Ramirez. “Entrepreneurs have a whole set of needs at the various stages of their life cycles, and we want to be able to respond to those needs.”
In 2010, the Providence nonprofit began assisting 10 ventures. That number has expanded to 150 by 2014. According to SEG, its programs have helped create more than 750 jobs in the region. It’s also provided $300,000 in grant money and capital to high-potential ventures.
The organization helps these social entrepreneurs – also known as impact entrepreneurs – with everything from helping them determine what legal structure to use, to how to handle bookkeeping.
“The situation in Rhode Island right now really lends itself to a solution like social enterprise,” Ramirez said, citing the state’s high unemployment rate, “coupled with lots of community and social challenges.”
SEG champions social change by assisting efforts such as a fair-trade coffee company that helps fund grassroots efforts; a job-training program that also beautifies neighborhoods; and a group that raises funds to help underserved women get mammograms, for example.
Michael Brown is CEO of Packaging 2.0, a 12-year-old Providence company that designs and produces food containers made of 100 percent recycled plastic. Brown began as a mentor for new entrepreneurs.
Separately, because ocean conservation had always been a passion, Brown visited what is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a vortex of marine debris made up of litter in the Pacific Ocean.
“I guess that was the ‘ah-ha!’ moment,” he said. “I didn’t see how it could become such a big part of the business … and then, through this idea of the benefit corporation [something Ramirez brought up], I came up with this idea.” (Benefit corporations are for-profit enterprises that are allowed to take larger societal goods into account when making decisions, as opposed to just maximizing shareholder value.)
That idea was Mission 2.Ocean, Packaging 2.0’s environmental initiative to raise awareness of ocean pollution, to fund cleanup efforts, to connect activists, educators and scientists to the plastics industry, and to encourage recycling.
Brown said working with SEG helped him see the connections between ocean conservation, recycling and his plastics business.
The effort to meet all of a new entrepreneur’s needs has meant expanding programs and constantly evolving, which Ramirez says has helped drive SEG’s success.
A testament to SEG’s quick reaction and willingness to change is the way it adjusted its Accelerator program to be more accessible to new entrepreneurs. In SEG programs, the Accelerator falls between the 101 Workshops (formerly the Incubator) and The Huddle, which is for late-stage entrepreneurs.
The Accelerator traditionally had been all in-person, with entrepreneurs attending two classes a week for three months. But entrepreneurs are busy. So SEG teamed up with Brown University to offer half of the course through the school’s online-learning platform. Now, entrepreneurs spend their face-to-face workshop time applying the material they learned online.
The Huddle, meanwhile, was created after a venture participated in the Accelerator and returned to SEG, seeking more help. Ramirez said SEG felt the company had a good point about ventures needing more assistance after “graduating” from the Accelerator.
So in January of this year, The Huddle was launched. At a Huddle session, seven or eight volunteers from the Harvard Business School Alumni Association, a Wharton Club of Rhode Island alumni group and SEG mentors work with entrepreneurs’ business issues over a three-hour session.
“We try to give them as much feedback and information as we can right there on the spot, but the idea is, hopefully, there’s enough of a connection made between the entrepreneur and adviser that two or three of them will continue on a pro-bono basis to help implement the things we talked about,” said Rob Panoff, an SEG board member who also leads Harvard Business School Alumni Association of Southeastern New England’s social enterprise efforts.
Partnerships such as the one with the alumni association and Brown University have been invaluable to SEG. Since 2010, the organization has forged bonds with nine colleges and universities to recruit students who want to launch social ventures, to work with faculty who teach about social enterprise and to link students with internships and jobs within ventures in SEG’s portfolio.
The partnership with Brown is particularly strong and extends beyond the online training. After partnering with Bryant University for two years for its annual conference, SEG began working with Brown for its Social Enterprise Ecosystem for Economic Development Summit. The annual SEEED conference has grown from a statewide summit with 300 attendees in 2010 to a national conference of more than 600 in 2014. Participants include social entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers, educators and students.
As SEG expands its programming, agency leaders have found it needs more room. The organization is constructing a new co-working and community space to open early next year. It will feature six offices – four rented by SEG clients and two used by SEG – and an open space where impact entrepreneurs can rent desks.
Ramirez hopes that the prominent, 3,800-square-foot space on the first floor of 10 Davol Square in the city’s Knowledge District will help drive awareness of SEG and its mission.
“I’m optimistic that we’ll continue to experience growth and that the pipeline of these types of individuals that want to start these types of companies will grow, and we’ll improve our services in ways that will help them,” Ramirez said. “We’re working with just absolutely incredible people. The entrepreneurs that we work with are so committed – passionate – to the issues that they’re trying to solve. It’s an inspiration. •

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