Incubator Graduation Launches Entrepreneurs to Their Next Phase

The NYWSE Incubator Program celebrated the graduation of its six women social entrepreneurs and their venture teams at its finale on June 29, 2009 in a skylight corporate lounge at Baruch College. Incubator social entrepreneurs presented their ventures to a panel of distinguished experts hailing from diverse fields of social enterprise, such as venture capital, venture philanthropy, women’s and children’s initiatives, and business development, including women’s enterprises. The event was a unique opportunity for Incubator Program participants to showcase their achievements and to receive critical feedback in a supportive environment to help chart the post-Incubator phase of their businesses.

Among the accomplishments shared by the Incubator participants were securing the first financings of their ventures ranging from several hundred dollars to $50,000; piloting the first program of a new organization; introducing an expanded set of services to existing ventures; developing boards of directors; attracting new staff, volunteers, and partners; completing a business plan; and creating two first demo websites for Internet-based ventures. Other results included acceptance into follow on support programs, such as the GoodCompany Ventures VC Incubator Program and securing fiscal sponsorship for ongoing development, building upon the extensive personal, professional and organizational growth achieved over the past six months.

The expert panel was comprised of some of New York City’s strongest thought leaders in social innovation as listed below, and was guided by Angela Jia Kim, founder of Savor the Success(.com) and Om Aroma(.com), master of ceremonies of the event.

• Ana Oliviera, Executive Director, New York Women's Foundation (www.nywf.org)

• Cheryl Campbell, Manager-Business Grant Program, Eileen Fisher  (http://www.eileenfisher.com/ourcompany/cons/commitment.asp)

• Elmira Bayrasli, Vice President, Partnerships, Policy, and Outreach, Endeavor (www.endeavor.org)

• LaTeisha Moore, Founding Member of the Board, New York Venture Philanthropy Fund (www.nycvpf.org)

• Monica Dean, A. Director, Field Center for Entrepreneurship, Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College (http://zicklin.baruch.cuny.edu/centers/field/)

• Rob Delman, Managing Director, Golden Seeds (www.goldenseeds.com)   

In addition to the generous contribution of their time and expertise of all experts, Elmira Bayrasli of Endeavor also offered individual presentation coaching to all entrepreneurs to benefit their future pitches based on video shot by Scott McClure.

The graduation event was also an important moment to celebrate the contribution of Incubator Program mentors and apprentices and acknowledged them for their vital role in enabling the social entrepreneurs to realize their visions. Mentors and apprentices (or junior partners) volunteered their time and expertise over six months to empower a woman to realize her dream to improve our communities and our lives. The Incubator Program is grateful and indebted to them for their generosity of spirit and time.

In conclusion, Incubator Program Founder and Manager Allison Lynch adapted the famous words of Margaret Mead to encapsulate the essence and intent of the Incubator Program: "Never doubt that a small group of (women) can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has." And so the Incubator Program did and will continue.

Many thanks are owed to Baruch College’s Field Center of Entrepreneurship for their support which made the Incubator Program and its graduation event so special, and to Program Coordinator Melissa Osborne and NYWSE Director Natalia Oberti Noguera for their dedication to the Incubator Program.

Incubator Friendraiser & Silent Auction

by A. Lauren Abele, NYWSE Mastermind-Mentoring Initiative (MMI) graduate

The New York Women Social Entrepreneurs (NYWSE) held their first ever Incubator Friendraiser last month. The private event was held at the Bowery Wine Company and was a fundraiser and silent auction for NYWSE's Incubator Program for budding women social entrepreneurs. The 2009 Incubator Participants were:

•  Early Earners – Online education destination for youth and families promoting positive financial habits
• Girl Guides USA – Outdoor program that develops girls’ environmentalism, leadership and teamwork
• Illume – Online mentoring and career resource for young women from illiterate families in India
• Out Against Abuse – Online resource to stop domestic violence in the South Asian community
• Public Stuff – Software to connect government and citizens to improve services and community life
• Start Your Engine – Exercise, nutrition, stress and time management program for low-income women 

The event featured a keynote speech by Diana Ayton-Shenker, Founder & CEO of Fast Forward Fund (FFF), a youth-investing-in-youth social venture fund, who spoke of the importance of investing in young social entrepreneurs who will become tomorrow's leaders.

The venue was a-buzz with interesting conversations and was a great opportunity to meet other faces in the world of NYC social entrepreneurship. And, in addition to the great company, the Bowery Wine Company staff was fabulous!

I had the pleasure of helping organize the event and had the opportunity to work with some really fabulous women including Natalia Oberti Noguera (NYWSE Director) and Melissa Osborne (who is off to graduate school this fall! Congrats!).

If you are a woman interested in social entrepreneurship and considering applying for next year's Friendraiser, check the NYWSE Incubator section for the 2010 Program Applications.

 

By day, I am an economic development program assistant at a community development nonprofit in Brooklyn. By night, I volunteer with other nonprofits helping them with fund development, strategic planning, and social media. I am one of the 2009 NYWSE Mastermind Mentorship Initiative (MMI) participants (love it!) and big-time NYWSE advocate. Find me at: www.alaurenabele.com.

NYWSE Incubator Friendraiser - July 7, 2009

Save the Date!

NYWSE Incubator Friendraiser @ Bowery Wine Company

featured speaker, silent auction, jazz trio, open bar

July 7, 2009

7-10 P.M.

The NYWSE Incubator Friendraiser marks the successful conclusion of the NYWSE Incubator program.  Join us in celebrating the first co-hort of NYWSE Incubator participants, including the selected social entrepreneurs, their apprentices, and their mentors.

Diana Ayton-Shenker, Founder & CEO of Fast Forward Fund (FFF), a youth-investing-in-youth social venture fund, will speak on the importance of investing in young social entrepreneurs--particularly women.  The NYWSE Incubator is an FFF Pipeline Partner. 

Six budding women social entrepreneurs were selected from a competitive pool of applicants to participate in the NYWSE Incubator.  The entrepreneurs were assigned a female mentor and a female apprentice.  The teams worked for six months to realize the entrepreneurs' social ventures with the support of workshops, resources, classes, coaching, and pitch opportunities.  How did they fare?  Come find out!

2009 NYWSE Incubator Selections

• Early Earners – Online education destination for youth and families promoting positive financial habits
• Girl Guides USA – Outdoor program that develops girls’ environmentalism, leadership and teamwork
• Illume – Online mentoring and career resource for young women from illiterate families in India
• Out Against Abuse – Online resource to stop domestic violence in the South Asian community
• Public Stuff – Software to connect government and citizens to improve services and community life
• Start Your Engine – Exercise, nutrition, stress and time management program for low-income women

If you would like to learn more about applying to the NYWSE Incubator, make sure to meet NYWSE Incubator Founder & Manager Allison Lynch at the Friendraiser.

Interested in volunteering?  Email Melissa Osborne at: melissa@ywse.org

Margaret Prusan Inspires the NYWSE Incubator Participants to go from "Eclipsed to Extraordinary"

Saturday June 6, 2009 Margaret Prusan of Ilumin led the NYWSE Incubator entrepreneurs workshop called “From Eclipsed to Extraordinary”. Illumin’s mission is to help extraordinary women entrepreneurs realize their potential. She says, “For me, the greatest joy of this business is seeing the ‘aha!” moment on the client’s face. The moment when all her talents and experiences are fully illuminated, and she truly gets just how amazing she already is!” Margaret’s pension for working with starting, growing or evolving women-owned businesses comes from her own soul searching to find a career that fit her interests and passions. Mrs. Prusan’s background is in business development and marketing communication. She has worked on many high profile projects, as well, like the Kerry-Edwards 2004 presidential campaign. She explained that it took a conversation with close friend to help reveal her own greatest strength: acting as other peoples’ north star to help them build businesses that reflect their real assets and interests. Realizing that she can help identify and define the purpose of other peoples’ businesses, Illumin was born.

NYWSE Incubator Venture “PublicStuff” Selected for $50,000 Investment by the Fast Forward Fund

NYWSE Incubator Venture “PublicStuff” Selected for $50,000 Investment by the Fast Forward Fund First Round of Youth-to-Youth Investment in Social Enterprise Field PublicStuff to move into prototype development to improve government services and community life

June 2, 2009 (NY, NY):  New York Women Social Entrepreneurs (NYWSE) announced today that one of its Incubator Program companies, PublicStuff (www.publicstuff.org), was selected for a $50,000+ investment over two years by the Fast Forward Fund (FFF) in its first investment round.

PublicStuff is an online portal that connects people with their local governments to improve public services and community life.  PublicStuff is a low-cost system which meets the needs and budgets of the small and mid-sized local government market. 

NYWSE Incubator Social Entrepreneurs Master Image Management

The Stylist blogger Busting Diva says: “Style is absolutely essential in developing a personal brand. It often affects the rise or fall of a model, movie star, designer or performing artist.” Skillful image management of entrepreneurs is also a reality of the social media age. And social entrepreneurs are not immune.

On Saturday April 4, The New York Women Social Entrepreneurs (NYWSE) Incubator Program held its first photo-shoot at Baruch College, helping to give participants a competitive advantage when representing their brand and pitching to potential partners and funders. Seven women participated, including Keren Perry-Shamir, Ami Desai, Caitlin Dean, Morena Vattuone, Jacqueline Muna Musiitwa, and Lily Liu. Staff and models all had a blast but could not have done it without our friends Jacques Cornell and Steve Hart of Happening Photos and stylist Tijana Beca.  The results, below, speak for themselves.

Incubator Training Partner – Geri Stengel (Ventureneer.com, Stengel Solutions, and the New School)

On March 21st, Geri Stengel, former director of Dow Jones Information Services, talked to the New York Women Social Entrepreneurs (NYWSE) Incubator participants about everything under the sun related to marketing and market research. She said that she has the uncommon interest of writing business plans and when she realized this, she knew she had a potential career as a consultant. It seems that her tenacity to “figure it all out” accounts for her multi-faceted success ranging from quantitative strategy to the creative aspects of marketing.

Ms. Stengel’s business strategy and marketing firm ’Stengel Solutions” reflects her broad interests in a suite of service offerings that include individualized marketing expertise and business strategy implementation.

Another dimension of Ms. Stengel’s character and professional career is her philanthropic penchant for developing and growing other fledgling entrepreneurs. For example, she is a mentor with the New York Women Social Entrepreneurs Incubator program, where she coaches a start-up organization, and she is part of the advisory board with the National Association of Women’s Business Owners-NYC. A natural educator, she is also an adjunct professor of Entrepreneurship at The New School in New York City.

April 23: NYWSE Incubator Participants Present Ventures at 1st Fast Forward Fund Investor Pitch Session

   

Launching a new era of youth activism, youth social entrepreneurs from New York Women Social Entrepreneurs (NYWSE) pitched their ventures for philanthropic investment before the Student Directors of the Fast Forward Fund (FFF) in the first youth-to-youth social investment pitch for investments up to $25,000.  While Generation Y is often most recognized for its affinity to Facebook, this generation is redefining philanthropy in two ways.  First, through innovative funding practices like youth-to-youth investing, and second by supporting social entrepreneurship, or mission-driven enterprises.

 

Thirteen Student Directors of FFF from Bard College’s Globalization and International Affairs Program reviewed investment pitches presented by participants of NYWSE’s Incubator Program at the Levin Institute in New York City.  FFF is at the forefront of innovative social investment, enabling young people to leverage relatively small individual donations to make a large-scale impact.  Its mission is to harness this generation’s financial resources, passion, and energy to advance global sustainability and human dignity.  Their portfolios invest in the areas of climate change and energy; poverty alleviation; public health; and human rights and peace.  One Bard College student declared after the April 23 FFF pitch: “To me the pitch session was a meeting for youth to inspire other youth... Funding should not be the reason we should sit down, but the reason we would stand up and fight.”

 

Potential investments are youth-led and proposed by pipeline nominating institutions such as the NYWSE Incubator Program, the Clinton Global Initiative University, Teach for America’s Social Entrepreneurship Institute, and the Global Engagement Summit.  Next year they will be joined by others like Acumen, Ashoka, and Echoing Green.

 

Six NYWSE Incubator entrepreneurs pitched their diverse social ventures. The NYWSE Incubator develops new female-led social ventures through an intensive six-month support program. These female-run social ventures are a mix of not-for-profit and for-profit businesses with a triple bottom line (people, planet, and profit), including:
• Early Earners – Online education destination for youth and families promoting positive financial habits
• Girl Guides USA – Outdoor program that develops girls’ environmentalism, leadership and teamwork
• Illume – Online mentoring and career resource for young women from illiterate families in India
• Out Against Abuse – Online resource to stop domestic violence in the South Asian community
• Public Stuff – Software to connect government and citizens to improve services and community life
• Start Your Engine – Exercise, nutrition, stress and time management program for low-income women

Incubator Training Partner – Baruch College’s Field Center for Entrepreneurship

The second phase of the NYWSE Incubator Program is designed to develop competence in the fundamentals of designing and operating a socially oriented business. Through partnering with the Field Center for Entrepreneurship, part of the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College, the participants benefit from the school’s overarching principles of research, teaching, and service. Since its inception in 1993, the Center has worked with 10,000 clients and has created 2,000 jobs. The well-respected faculty regularly gives back to the community to launch small start-ups and is genuinely committed to helping to launch the Incubator Program ventures.

 The Incubator and Field Center partnership includes five half-day class sessions taught by faculty on subjects like writing a business plan, fundraising, financial management, legal issues associated with start-up ventures, and various social enterprise models, coordinated by Coordinating Business Advisor Lendynette Pacheco. The professors have so much passion and for their subject matter that it makes learning an engaging, fun process.

Incubator Training Partner - Savor the Success/Angela Jia Kim

The NYWSE Incubator program began in January 2009, launched in the supportive and safe environment created by training partner Savor the Success (“Savor”) and its CEO Angela Jia Kim. “You need to surround yourself with positive and successful people not only to pull you up but also to meet key people that can change the course of your business and life.” Angela Jia Kim, also the founder of Savor, says the power of a strong female network is delivered by her boutique online destination for female entrepreneurs. Savor goes beyond being another social media site by actually providing participants with the necessary tools for developing concrete business competencies.

With Angela, the Incubator Program participants bonded as a group in a version of the “My Phenomenal Year” program tailed for social enterprises, exploring topics like goal setting, personal and venture branding, and developing and communicating an elevator pitch. The exchange of ideas, support, and inspiration was a great take away from the integrated four-week program that met on Saturday mornings. Several months later, the Incubator Program participants still work from six-month work plans that were refined in the course to achieve their goals and still participate in diverse Savor programs.

Savor is growing and continuing to develop women’s entrepreneurial ventures this spring both on-line and off-line with chapters in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, and DC. Savor’s seminal event this spring will be in New York Wednesday May 6^th, the Women Entrepreneurs Rock the World Event, and will include speakers on topics like the advantages of launching businesses in this economy, developing a personal story about your business, and secrets to growing your sales.  For more information on this event, please see www.savorthesuccess.com/rock-the-world. The deadline for reduced ticket prices is Wednesday April 22, 2009.