“The sun is shining, it’s nice, crisp weather and I’m on the right side of the grass – life is good.” Dr. Roy Church’s meteorology report can also describe the forecast for the nations’ startup community after
Lorain County Community College received a $1 million grant from the
Kauffman Foundation to take their successful
Innovation Fund program to the national stage.
“When we created our business incubator
GLIDE (Great Lakes Innovation and Development Enterprise), we discovered very early on that many of the entrepreneurs that were trying to start new companies were experiencing a financial valley of death,” explains Church, President of Lorain County Community College. “There was clearly a dearth of pre-seed capital to get them started.”
The Innovation Fund, launched by the Lorain County Community College Foundation in 2007 to support high-growth technology entrepreneurs in Northeast Ohio, was created to fill the capital gap and help small businesses generate revenue, catching the eyes of much-needed angel investors. Explains Church, “Our foundation came up with the idea of using philanthropic dollars from previously successful entrepreneurs to make those very earliest investments in companies.”
Donations to the fund are used to complete essential early tasks, such as presenting a proof of concept, finishing a prototype or creating a launch initiative. “85 companies have received about $5.6 million since 2007. These 85 companies have had a tremendous amount of success, evidenced by the private sector investment since their launch.”
Now the successful concept of philanthropic entrepreneurship behind Innovation Fund will be used in a pilot program to impact other regions across the country. “Community colleges are playing a unique role in higher education in that they are intended to be responsive to the unique needs of a local community,” says Church. “And since community colleges serve specific geographical regions, it makes sense to try to roll this model out through other community colleges in other parts of the country.”
Source: Dr. Roy Church
Writer: Joe Baur