Hartford’s Social Enterprise Hub Preps Startups for Business, Community Impact
By: MATTHEW BRODERICK
Hartford Business Journal
Kate Emery’s latest venture — the establishment of a social enterprise incubator and co-working space in downtown Hartford — traces its roots to a simple question she asked herself in the late 1990s.
“We were seeing the impact of corporate greed with the Enron and Tyco financial scandals,” recalls Emery, CEO of Farmington IT firm, The Walker Group. “And I asked myself: what does our company stand for?”
Emery’s answer led her to fundamentally restructure her business. Today The Walker Group divides any distributed profits evenly between shareholders, employees, and the community. Over the past 15 years, that formula has meant hundreds of thousands of dollars for social and environmental causes in Connecticut. Since 2010, Emery explained, the lion’s share of her company’s community investment has been pooled into getting reSET off the ground, establishing its new space at 99 Pratt St. in Hartford and launching the reSET accelerator program, a 14-week, curriculum-based training program designed to foster the creation of more socially-conscious businesses.
Such social enterprise businesses are on the rise in Connecticut and across the nation. According to a 2012 Great Social Enterprise Census, socially conscious companies collectively account for more than $300 million in revenue and employ an estimated 14,000 people in 28 states.
Those numbers don’t surprise Emery who contends that many young entrepreneurs from Generation Y have witnessed the trauma caused by “business as usual” and want a different career experience. “Young adults in particular today have watched their parents and themselves cut out of the job market, as jobs are automated or moved overseas,” she said. “More people want to do something on their own; it’s part of a movement.”
It’s a movement that Leslie Krumholz, founder of Guilford social enterprise startup Good Streets, connects with. “I had spent my whole career in the nonprofit sector,” she said. “But I didn’t want to be dependent on philanthropy to make an impact; I want to rely on market forces to do social good.”
Krumholz has taken some bold steps to accomplish that, including quitting her job in 2012 to launch the company she co-founded. Good Streets, Krumholz explained, is an online review site designed to build a better feedback loop between businesses and consumers.
“I wanted a site where consumers can give honest feedback, but are accountable for what they say,” she said. “Oftentimes, small business owners are vulnerable and voiceless when consumers give inaccurate reviews online.” The site also includes a privacy center to educate users about consumer privacy — an issue that Krumholz is passionate about.
It’s that passion that Michelle Cote, reSET’s program director, looks for in selecting accelerator candidates. “One of the first things we want to understand from applicants is what they’re passionate about and how they plan to help strengthen the community,” Cote said. ReSET’s program also looks at business challenges, areas for growth and current capabilities, and then assembles classes with complementary skills and similar challenges.
Since 2013, 20 social entrepreneurs have graduated from the accelerator, which runs twice per year, from January to May and September to December. In addition to the program’s curriculum, Cote said, accelerator participants benefit from the organization’s pro-bono mentor network, which includes business input from accountants, attorneys, marketers, insurance brokers and human resources professionals.
“Our volunteers help participants apply the concepts they learn through the accelerator to advance their business goals,” she said.
ReSET is also looking to make it easier to create social enterprises in Connecticut and is a vocal advocate for Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s legislative proposal that gives key legal protections for these types of business entities. Currently, 20 states have passed similar legislation, including New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont. Connecticut has failed to pass the bill for the past two years.
Emery thinks that will change. “Legislators now understand how social enterprise works,” she said. “It has broad bipartisan support and support from entrepreneurs, educators, nonprofits, and state agencies.”
Emery, however, is not simply bringing her message to legislators, but college campuses too, to grow the next generation of social entrepreneurs. Her organization currently works with Central Connecticut State University, Quinnipiac, UConn, Trinity, Yale and Wesleyan. “We have interest from business school students and more mission-driven students from the schools of social work,” Emery noted.
It is that interest — and the growing number of applicants to the accelerator program — that keeps Emery motivated and hopeful that more social enterprises will take hold in Connecticut. She says reSET is looking to help provide seed loans to some of the program’s more promising businesses from a growing pool of almost $100,000 currently available.
