Tamara and Thaddaeus Prosper, Sheaux Fresh Urban Farm, 2011 SENO Fellows:
"SENO helps to provide resources to small business--resources that are only available to big companies. As part of SENO’s Fellows program, we now have a marketing team, lawyer, accounting team, and a financial team. In a small business, one or two people have to wear all the hats. As part of SENO, I feel like we have all the resources of a company that is already established. Through Paco Roberts, our SENO Consultant, and Ashley Graham, our SENO Mentor, we’ve developed relationships with restaurants, that would have taken us a long time to create.
Through Paco, we’ve gotten a much better gauge of what it takes to become financially sustainable and can better focus our energies. That kind of thing has been very helpful to us, especially since neither Thad or I likes the number crunching. Before, we’ve just done trial and error, and now, we really do understand much better what it takes to become sustainable.
Ashley Graham, former State Director of Share Our Strength and Allison Radjinovic, a former farm owner, are our SENO Mentors. Both have been a really great benefit for us—Ashley is really connected to the local food scene, has a background in food justice, and really likes what we are doing because it fits with Share Our Strength’s mission of making food accessible to everybody. She wants to help us succeed, she is willing to make introductions, and has opened up her extensive networks to us. She also has a good sense of the community and can tell us what is going on. Allison has a lot more market research experience and has been helping us get the right questions prepared for chefs, so we know what kind of food at what price points we should be growing to sell to restaurants to subsidize our community work. She asks us really good questions that make us adjust and re-think. Everyone has made themselves available to us, are gung ho about what we’re doing, glad to work with us, are excited about what we’re doing, and celebrate with us.
We love the SENO Pro Bono Professional Network program. Our lawyer Bryan [part of the SENO Pro Bono Professional Network] who works at Phelps Dunbar wrote our contract with our financier to put up the fence of our farm. He was able to get it done within a week of us being connected to him, and we had everything signed and taken care of. We’ll be reaching out to him again to transfer the property to our business. Lynn McClean [part of the Pro Bono Professional Network] is an experienced bookkeeper and payroll consultant and has been helping us with our accounting. We’ve started implementing what she suggested--saving receipts, creating a detailed list of what’s going on with each part of our business. We’ll also be working with a communications professor at Xavier [part of the Pro Bono Professional Network] to help us with our public relations and marketing plan.
Tippy Tippens, MATTER L3C // BirdProject,
Because of SENO’s Fellows program, I feel like I have a team now. Before, it was just solo. When you’re just one person, you have all these different things to tackle that can just be overwhelming—you worry about operations, making the business case, financial sustainability, accounting, etc. You can rely on your general networks, but you have to make most of your big decisions solo. When you are starting your business, you have to run solo because you can’t afford to hire anyone. It has been a huge value-add to have the team as part of SENO’s Fellow program, so now I have a team to get through some of this muddle. Everyone I’m working with now is so energetic and thoughtful.
Now, I have my own accountant, an MBA who helps develop and explain financial models to me, a marketing person, a legal person. Before, it was just me and Tonto, my dog.
Eric, an accountant at Price Waterhouse Cooper, [and part of SENO’s Pro Bono Professional Network] helped me get my taxes in. I had done them in Turbo Tax, but it was my first time doing the taxes for my company. I just didn’t feel good about how I had done them, and I had gotten an extension on them. I was considering paying someone to do them for me, but it would have cost me hundreds of dollars. It was such a burden lifted from my shoulders when he looked them over for me, and now they’re in! Taxes being done are a huge weight off my mind. Then, he helped me get the accounting software resolved. Even just getting my numbers entered each week—I was able to get caught up on that. Just having the support from the business end was significant, since that’s not my strength. I’d hack something together, but I would always be flailing. And now, I am moving forward and can get expert opinions and guidance when I need it.
Amanda Patterson [also part of SENO’s Pro Bono Professional Network] is helping me with copywriting. She’s just a powerhouse, and she had all these ideas, since she’s had a ton of experience in Public Relations, working for companies like Neiman Marcus and American Express.
John Padavan is my SENO Consultant and an MBA from Tulane. He helped me figure out what my sales targets should be and created an Excel sheet with pricing scenarios that were so easy to understand and use. He called it “Retail Mass Therapy,” since the business end of things isn’t my strength, but I need to know whether I’m on track to building a sustainable business. Also, these pricing scenarios have been invaluable as I negotiate with large nation-wide retailers on how much of a retail discount I can give. I think that John can sell these documents after the Fellows program has ended!
In addition to consulting and services SENO has provided, the program also gives you an opportunity to meet with peers. Even if they don’t have similar business plans, they have similar challenges. You’re not alone. You have a sounding board you need to test a lot of the ideas and talk the problems that you’re having. Also, the Pro Bono Professional Network gives you the tools you need in the beginning stages helps you with the random issues that come up. For example, we had a legal question, and a lawyer from Adams and Reese through the Pro Bono Professional Network was able to give us some good legal advice. I needed help with my accounting, and Sherah LeBouef from the Pro Bono Professional Network was there to help me navigate the new accounting system. There are a lot of little things that you don't know you'll need help with until you encounter the problem."
Spotlight: John Thompson, Resurrection After Exoneration
“SENO’s Fellow program was a boost in the arm at a critical time of growth for RAE… We had had early successes, but SENO helped us to develop the infrastructure we needed to take us to the next level…we will have a greater impact on our constituents because of SENO.”~John Thompson
" Resurrection After Exoneration (RAE) is a New Orleans non-profit that was founded in 2007 by exoneree John Thompson with the support of the prestigious Echoing Green fellowship. Exonerees are innocent people who were wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit. John spent 18 years in prison--and missed 7 execution dates. RAE currently provides exonerees and other formerly incarcerated individuals with a comprehensive re-entry program incorporating housing (RAE recently purchased its own building), medical and psychological assistance, and employment opportunities.
SENO Incubator Impact: When RAE initially entered the SENO Fellows program, they had two major needs—financial sustainability and a desire to increase their social impact.
In order to increase RAE’s impact on its clients, SENO’s strategy consultant assessed their programs and helped RAE to overhaul and significantly improve their case management approach by creating service protocols, which included an operations and administration manual, creating a typology, and obtaining confirmation of service relationships. Now, if a client came in needing help in a certain area, RAE would know exactly where to refer them to, and partner organizations would be ready to take in RAE’s referrals.
“The SENO Consultant provided to us as part of the SENO Fellow program was so experienced and knowledgeable and saved us hours that we could have spent looking for training, making mistakes, and still would not have ended up with the kind of result we had. She helped us recognize that we needed to solidify our infrastructure before we launched our new line of business, then proceeded to help our relatively young staff in refining our programmatic design to reflect the needs of our constituents, in revising our staffing plans, in implementing organizational processes and procedures for our organization, and re-aligning our program goals to qualify for additional streams of revenue.” –John Thompson
To help RAE become more financially sustainable, SENO’s team also helped the organization analyze and develop a staffing and office operations plan, in addition to coaching John on how to budget and create financial projections. SENO’s consultant has helped the organization identify new funding (government and private) for their service programs and has coached RAE in developing a funder’s matrix.
“Now that our infrastructure is in place, SENO connected us to pro-bono financial and marketing experts in the form of University of Michigan Ross Business School students, who are helping us with the in-depth design of our marketing and financial plans for our printing business to employ the formerly incarcerated.” ~John Thompson, Resurrection After Exoneration
Spotlight: Andreas Hoffman, Green Light New Orleans
“SENO’s Incubator Team has helped Green Light develop a strategy for their social entrepreneurship program Buy Green Give Green. SENO provides a unique service for non-profits and social entrepreneurs. You receive help from professionals who are not only interested in supporting your business development but who are also passionate about supporting your mission.” ~Andreas Hoffman
The Organization: Green Light New Orleans (GLNO) was founded in 2006 by touring rock musician Andreas Hoffmann. At GLNO the mission is to use energy efficient light bulbs to empower New Orleans residents to fight climate change as we rebuild our community. The methodology is simple: volunteers help low- and middle-income families change their traditional household lighting to energy efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), thereby lowering energy bills and CO2 emissions. Since its inception, GLNO has installed 229,719 energy-efficient light bulbs, conserved 90,509,286 kWh of electricity, saved families $10,567,074, and reduced102,684,393 lbs of CO2.
SENO Incubator Impact: Andreas knew that financial sustainability was his biggest challenge. If he could figure out a way to build a sustainable financial model, he knew that he would be able to scale up dramatically, his organization would be able to serve as a national model, and he would reach his vision of changing out the incandescent light bulbs of every low-income person’s home in New Orleans. Through discussions and research with SENO’s Incubator team, Andreas became convinced that although grants and sponsorships would always be a part of his model, he had to develop an earned revenue stream to fund his free program for low-income residents. SENO’s strategy consultants helped Andreas explore earned revenue streams, especially since he had become one of the largest importers of CFLs in the South (and hence had lower costs than even large retail stores) and discovered that middle-income families and businesses expressed interest in paying for his service.
The first goal was the design of the earned revenue model. SENO’s team partnered with Andreas to develop a business plan with pricing model, to research competitors, to conduct market analysis and focus groups, and to develop and refine his marketing materials. Andreas also accessed expert probono legal advice to work out the complicated tax structure of his new service.
The result was a program called “Buy Green Give Green,” where green-conscious middle- to upper-income New Orleanians pay for a personalized consultation, energy efficient light bulbs, and installation (optional), while at the same time sponsoring a low-income family’s participation in the free program.
What Others Say…
• “SENO has been an invaluable partner in Echoing Green’s work with social entrepreneurs in New Orleans. Frankly, it is hard to imagine how we could have been able to meet Echoing Green’s goals relative to working with emerging social entrepreneurs in New Orleans.” ~Heather McGrew, Vice President, Fellow and Alumni Programs, Echoing Green
• “Dr. John Elstrott, our Executive Mentor, [Whole Foods Market Board Member, Tulane Entrepreneurship] studied our business model and stressed the fact that by decreasing our cost of goods and logistics cost that our margins could be sizeably healthier…I have kept in touch with both of my SENO Mentors, and I have approached them to this day in seeking advice or connections.” ~Kyle Berner, Feelgoodz Flip Flops
• “We received a treasure trove of mentors from SENO’s program. For example, we needed really expert advice on how to structure our finances…and the SENO team connected us to an accountant who was a godsend for us at a critical moment…SENO has been great. Let us hold on to organizations that we know actually produce things.” ~Jane Wholey, Executive Director, Kids Rethink New Orleans Schools
Be the Change 2010 was to convene all those with great ideas for making New Orleans an amazing city and to connect them to potential mentors, supporters, funders, partners, experts, and collaborators.
"I met woman who works with another after school program in the city, and we were able to work out a partnership for sharing transportation that will allow my organization to work in a school that we otherwise would not have the resources to serve."
"We strengthened a partnership with a company who is in line with out services. We are working on developing that partnership..."
We "coordinated a work day with Grow Dat staff at Crescent City Cafe....[We] met with Job One staff about becoming a Job One site."
We "made a connection regarding [a] potential public health program with Tulane School of Medicine students and a community food access development project."