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Twenty years ago, Wellesley College graduate Jennifer Eplett Reilly and a few friends had an idea: help Boston’s neighborhoods by recruiting young people from diverse backgrounds to volunteer full-time. Not only would the city benefit from painted classrooms and spruced-up playgrounds, but “corps members” would be so inspired by their experiences it would trigger lifelong civic involvement.

It was a familiar concept rooted in the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Peace Corps, but what made City Year different was that its founders infused business strategy and innovation into the program’s DNA.

They had studied the market: Boston’s ignored communities needed a steady supply of volunteers. They had willing customers: Young people wanted something gratifying to do. And, the founders sensed that if they could grab—and keep—the attention of the private sector, their program would thrive and expand where other nonprofits stagnate.

It worked. When City Year launched its pilot in the summer of 1988, it had 50 young enthusiasts, meaningful service projects and a bank account of exclusively private funds. Rather than just accept checks from a revolving door of donors, Eplett Reilly and her colleagues had asked companies to sponsor teams and get to know corps members.

Employees joined in service projects, which sparked loyalty and gave staff what Eplett Reilly calls “psychic income.” Companies were not only willing to donate, but excited about following City Year’s progress.

Meanwhile, Timberland outfitted corps members in red jackets, khakis and boots, visible during numerous media appearances and public physical exercise regimes. City Year was quickly building a brand.

Within five years, the program expanded to Rhode Island. Today, there are 10,000 alumni and 18 sites, including one in Baton Rouge.

Eplett Reilly and her partners hadn’t put a label on their strategy, but they’d employed a then-fledgling movement called social entrepreneurship.

“We just believed it,” says Eplett Reilly, who relocated to Baton Rouge in 1993. “It just made sense to build our organization with traditionally private-sector values of excellence, strategy and return on investment, and combine this with our mission to change the world.”

Over the past 20 years, social entrepreneurship has gained considerable traction globally. The work of high-profile figures like 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus, whose Grameen Banks help alleviate poverty through microlending, have been replicated throughout the world. Business schools at Harvard, Duke, Stanford and others now feature curricula devoted to the field. And in recent years, high-tech gurus like Microsoft founder Bill Gates and former eBay president Jeff Skoll have left the private sector to develop solutions to social problems and to fund other social entrepreneurs.

Business Report profiles six social entrepreneurs with Baton Rouge ties who are making a difference.

“Most people trace the roots of social entrepreneurship to the work of [the global nonprofit association] Ashoka,” says Paul Bloom, senior research scholar of social entrepreneurship and marketing at the Duke University Fuqua School of Business Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship. Founded in 1980 with $50,000, Ashoka named and pioneered the movement, and has grown to support social entrepreneurs worldwide a $30 million annual budget.

Locally, pockets of social entrepreneurship have also been on the rise. The Baton Rouge Area Foundation has developed winning public-private partnerships, including the downtown master plan, the creation of the Shaw Center for the Arts and the restoration of Hilton Baton Rouge Capitol House Hotel.

In the past two years, social entrepreneurship has gathered additional momentum because of the urgency for innovation brought on by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In the fall of 2006, the lieutenant governor’s office launched the Office of Social Entrepreneurship to promote the concept and to encourage practitioners. And the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations is encouraging its members to raise funds more entrepreneurially [see sidebar].

Baton Rouge Area Foundation recently helped lure $3 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to support two new experimental schools.

“We try not to put a label on it,” BRAF President/CEO John Davies says, “but we believe in innovation, we’re incredibly impatient for change and we want to do the right thing.”

The litmus test, Bloom says, is whether or not a program or strategy breaks new ground.

“Innovation is an important element in social entrepreneurship,” he says. “There’s got to be a newness or freshness about it. It can’t be old wine in new bottles.”

A good social entrepreneur, Bloom says, is someone who figures out how to marshal resources—both public and private—and “who can’t take no for an answer.”

But social entrepreneurs also need access to capital and a winning environment, says Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter author of America the Principled: 6 Opportunities for Becoming a Can-Do Nation Once Again.

“Community leaders such as public officials can provide critical seed funding or endorsements at critical moments that will help social entrepreneurs secure the financing they need to get started, or they can offer ‘challenge’ grants, matching whatever funds are raised in the private sector,” she says.

Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu hopes his Office of Social Entrepreneurship, the first of its kind in state government in the country, will lead would-be social entrepreneurs to capital and expand awareness about how the field can address the state’s myriad challenges.

“We have found a huge amount of interest and enthusiasm for social entrepreneurship,” Landrieu says. “You’re taking the best of the business world and the best of the public policy world, and you’re creating results-driven approaches to solving tough problems.”

Landrieu’s office has hosted a series of regional meetings on the topic that have attracted 1,100 attendees so far, with meetings to come in Baton Rouge, Houma, Lafayette and Monroe. Landrieu says one of the byproducts of having a state friendly to social entrepreneurs is that it attracts big brains to the region.

“People with business backgrounds who otherwise would be on Wall Street are starting to come and work on complex social problems here,” he says.

Davies says he’s seeing social entrepreneurship affect the upcoming generation of philanthropists. Past donors may have supported the same nonprofits year after year, but younger donors are stirred by causes and issues, and some will want to take an active role in helping create solutions.

“These are people who can’t stand the status quo; they’re bothered by something and impatient for change,” he says.

Those are essential qualities to good practitioners, Moss Kanter says.

“To succeed, social entrepreneurs need, above all, passion for the cause,” she says. “Great social entrepreneurs are great collaborators; they are open to other people’s ideas and reach out to other organizations to get the work done.”

EMMET AND TONI STEPHENSON

Bastrop natives and LSU alums Emmet and Toni Stephenson had long since left Louisiana when Hurricane Katrina devastated parts of the state. Like other expatriates, they were transfixed by the news coverage and frustrated by what they perceived as a complete lack of efficiency.

“There was no plan for dealing with a disaster of that magnitude,” Emmet Stephenson says. “The city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana did not solve the problem. The most effective were the churches, LSU and, later, the military.”

Stephenson, founder of the private investment firm Stephenson and Company and the private equity firm Stephenson Ventures, saw an opportunity.

“When we saw that LSU had responded so well,” he says, “we made the decision to establish a center for research and training that companies, governments, and emergency response organizations can use to become prepared for major disasters.”

In February, the Stephensons announced a $25 million gift to LSU, $11 million of which funds the forthcoming Stephenson Disaster Management Institute at the E.J. Ourso College of Business. The program’s mission is to save human and animal life by helping communities plan better for catastrophes.

“What we realized was the same methods and processes that we used to build two companies would provide the basis for building a disaster management institute,” Stephenson says.

SDMI will employ the Japanese business principles kaizen [continuous improvement] and poka-yoke [mistake proofing] to develop easy-to-replicate, cost-effective emergency response models.

The Stephensons and their team also recruited Ronald Arjen Boin, Europe’s foremost authority on disaster preparedness, to lead the program. The author of The Politics of Crisis Management: Public Leadership Under Pressure, Boin led the Leiden University Crisis Research Center in the Netherlands.

Stephenson says SDMI is a unique hybrid that will feature both leading research and practical solutions. The couple will support the institute for the first five to 10 years, but will foster its ability to raise other funds. SDMI will eventually host fee-based trainings, workshops and certification programs for public and private organizations worldwide.

“We’ll know we’re successful,” Stephenson says, “if we save lives in the future.”

SR. MELANIE GUSTE

Sister Melanie Guste has always been bothered by poverty.

“It has a garrote-hold grip on generations of Louisianans,” Guste says. “Poverty is such a complex social problem, and many solutions that work in other places just haven’t worked in our state.”

Guste was moved by the work of Muhammad Yunus, the so-called father of microcredit, who had proved through his Grameen Bank that loaning small amounts of money could help entrepreneurs get low-cost businesses off the ground. The vast majority of its customers were women, and almost all of them repaid loans. Since 1983, Grameen Bank had meant the difference between poverty and independence for thousands.

Guste was sold. With a team of 20 other female activists, she launched the Microenterprise Development Alliance of Louisiana in 1999.

The all-volunteer group met over Subway sandwiches twice a month and began looking for existing microloan programs in the state they could partner with. There were none. They developed a long-range strategic plan, created a Microenterprise Policy Paper, formed key partnerships and advocated for microenterprise throughout the state.

Guste and Sister Georgeann Parizek also decided to learn microenterprise from the inside out and started a small microbusiness selling collectibles in Ponchatoula, which generated funding for MEDAL.

“I wanted to get a visceral, insider’s view of how to run a small business while being fully employed and how to start a business without significant start-up funds,” Guste says. “We started with business with about $350, and despite making some mistakes, like selling a case that was worth $500 for $65, it was profitable.”

MEDAL became the state’s microenterprise association, recognized nationally by the Association for Enterprise Opportunity. It’s helped a handful of entrepreneurs start businesses and has played host to a series of conferences throughout the state. It’s also promoted the concept extensively in the hope of increasing the number of microlenders in the state.

“We have a long way to go in terms of lenders,” Guste says, “but we’re hopeful that things are starting to shift.”

ANDRES CALDERON

In 2001, an earthquake hit El Salvador, the native country of Baton Rouge technology executive Andres Calderon. He returned soon after with cash donations from friends, and the desire to make a difference.

Calderon found a makeshift orphanage in the capital city of San Salvador in a small home being run by a priest. Thirty-five children were crammed in house for a family of four.

“I asked one of the children, ‘Are you afraid of earthquakes?’” Calderon says. “He said, ‘No, I’m afraid of the rats that bite me at night.’”

Calderon was stunned, and raised more money after he returned to Baton Rouge to improve the orphans’ conditions. He formed nonprofit called Children of the Streets, whose mission was to make life better for the mammoth numbers of homeless children left by civil war and continual poverty.

But Calderon didn’t like the hamster-on-a-wheel routine of fundraising, or the feeling that he was merely performing triage, so he developed a new strategy.

“I spent three years studying the problem and talking to organizations in El Salvador that were working with orphans,” he says. Calderon found one of them effective, the Fundación Hogares Providencia, and he joined forces.

Equipped with four master’s degrees, including an MBA, Calderon helped FHP establish a comprehensive residential program that would serve a small number of young people until they reached adulthood.

“We invested in homes in good neighborhoods so we could get them away from bad elements,” he says. They partnered with social workers and psychologists, and identifed children who would work well in a residential setting.

“I’m criticized sometimes for not accepting everyone, but we’re trying to build a circle of synergies.” By working with the right children long-term, Calderon believes he can create a new generation of leaders who will go on to affect change in El Salvador.

“Like a business, you close the loop more successfully and you can get where you want to go if you are able to keep friction to a minimum,” he says.

Calderon also founded a mail-order coffee company, Giving Tree, which buys high-quality beans from growers in El Salvador, grinds and packages them, and ships them direct to consumers. Net profits are donated to COTS through a fund Calderon established at the Baton Rouge Area Foundation.

“I have six or seven other ideas as well,” Calderon says. “Ultimately, I want to dedicate to my life to the nonprofit world.”

NANCY ROBERTS

They may be surrounded by people, but classroom teachers can face overwhelming isolation, says Nancy Roberts, executive director of the Louisiana Resource Center for Educators.

Until LRCE, there was almost nowhere for local teachers to turn for technical support and training. The program has morphed from a small nonprofit to a $1.6 million organization that certifies teachers, strengthens teachers’ skills, loans resources and affects 150,000 children annually.

LRCE started in 1988 when Roberts and other volunteers formed Friends of the Environment, a nonprofit that encouraged environmental awareness in the classroom. The group launched “Science Saturdays,” weekend workshops that gave teachers new strategies for teaching science.

“We knew we were on to something when 600 people showed up,” Roberts says. “I didn’t realize how desperate teachers were to talk to other teachers.”

Teachers craved technical assistance, says Roberts, and not just in science. They wanted it curriculum-wide. They also wanted to be better classroom managers. They needed to check out resource materials and sets of books for their students, many of whom lived below the poverty level.

“Nearly 70% used personal funds to buy books and supplies for their classrooms,” Roberts says.

Roberts’ vision sharpened. In 1996, Friends of the Environment morphed into LRCE, and shortly thereafter, it gained a serious toe hold. In 1997, then-Secretary of Department of Economic Development Kevin Reilly Sr. allocated the organization more than $300,000, which helped it expand.

Roberts and her team began studying top-notch education support agencies in Texas, and transformed their office into a thriving library and training center. They also inherited thousands of K-12 science titles from LSU and began loaning materials.

In 2002, LRCE received permission from the state to begin offering an alternative certification program, which helps mid-career individuals transition into teaching without enrolling in undergraduate education programs. Over the last five years, LRCE has prepared, trained and certified 215 new teachers for Louisiana classrooms.

Furthermore, LRCE’s alternative certification program and other fee-based initiatives generate more than one-quarter of the program’s budget.

“It’s a nonprofit’s dream,” she says.

Roberts, a recent cancer survivor, has big plans for the future. LRCE begins work on three new initiatives next year, including a distance learning program, an expanded alternative certification program and a charter school incubator.

JENNIFER EPLETT REILLY

Jennifer Eplett Reilly’s first career was in investment banking in New York City. By weekdays, she was a corporate finance analyst, but on weekends, she and a group of colleagues sought out every available opportunity to volunteer. Dubbing themselves “Analyst Aid,” they painted houses, worked in soup kitchens and more.

For Eplett Reilly, it satisfied a nagging itch.

“I realized that was much more in line with who I was and what was important to me,” she says.

After a call from friends Michael Brown and Alan Khazei, Eplett Reilly quit her job and packed her car. The group, along with a handful of others, decided to act on an idea they’d conceived years earlier: an urban youth corps they called City Year.

After the program launched, Eplett Reilly pursued an MBA at Harvard Business School, and was one of nine students out of 800 interested in the intersection of the public and private sectors. (Today, the school features curricula on social entrepreneurship through its Social Enterprise Initiative.)

While in school, she helped transform a software investment firm’s foundation into one of the nation’s first venture philanthropy funds, Echoing Green Foundation. Named for a William Blake poem, the foundation has funded 450 social entrepreneurs since 1987.

A standard exit question for Harvard MBAs asks graduates how they’ll use their degree. Eplett Reilly responded, “to create entrepreneurial public-private partnerships to build communities.”

She has. In Baton Rouge, Eplett Reilly has served on the board of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, helping weave the intricate public-private partnership that launched the Shaw Center. She also led the launch of Swine Palace, LSU’s former livestock judging pavilion that was transformed into a cutting-edge theater. These projects were complex and required intense cooperation, Eplett Reilly says, but she never doubted their success.

“If you have a powerful idea whose time has come and a team of dedicated people, then the resources will come to the table,” she says.

Of all of her accomplishments, Eplett Reilly says she’s most proud of City Year. Weeks after Hurricane Katrina, she called her old colleagues and worked relentlessly to bring the program to Baton Rouge and New Orleans. It takes two years to open new sites because of the fundraising and local buy-in required, but Eplett Reilly pulled it off in 90 days.

She currently serves on City Year’s national board, where she’s working on international expansion. She says the program’s greatest asset—and the thing that’s attracted her to it from the outset—is the idealism of the young people who serve.

“We envisioned City Year’s young leaders as resources that would spiral outward, and it’s worked. City Year alums are social entrepreneurs, charter school principals, business leaders, and candidates for U.S. Senate,” she says. “They’re fundamentally engaged in building communities and in making our democracy work.”

In fact, part of the charge of every City Year corps member is to “challenge cynicism where you find it.”

To Eplett Reilly, that’s no joke.

“I believe the greatest battle in our nation is between cynicism and idealism,” she says. “And idealism is winning.”