On September 3, the Edward Lowe Foundation will celebrate 40 years of championing the entrepreneurial spirit. This is a pretty remarkable milestone, particularly when one considers that more than 30% of nonprofits fail within 10 years.* We’ve come a long way over the past four decades, and I like to describe our evolution as characterized by five phases.
Exploring the entrepreneurial frontier — Believing that entrepreneurs didn’t get the support and resources they deserved, in 1985 Ed and Darlene Lowe launched the Edward Lowe Foundation. Although we spent our early years as a grantmaking institution, in 1991 we transitioned into a 501(c)(3) operating structure. This was important to our founders, who wanted to be able to conduct programs at Big Rock Valley, our headquarters property in southwest Michigan. During the early years, there was a great deal of experimentation, much like any startup. Programs ranged from working with college students to establishing publishing ventures to opening a startup incubator in Ed’s hometown of Cassopolis, Michigan.
Second-stage focus — Around 2000, the foundation started to concentrate on growth-oriented second-stage companies. Not only did we coin the term “second stage,” we also put some metrics around this group, defining second-stage companies as those generating between $1 million and $50 million in annual revenue with 10-99 employees. On the programming front, we developed leadership retreats at Big Rock Valley, the PeerSpectives Roundtable System® and Companies to Watch,® a recognition program that debuted in Michigan in 2005 and is now conducted in Florida and Colorado as well.
Beating the drum — A few years later, we began to put considerable energy and resources into educating economic developers (a group historically focused on recruiting large corporations) about the significance of second-stage companies. We joined the International Economic Development Council, spoke at national conferences and brought economic developers from around the country to Big Rock Valley. This created advocates who picked up the flag and began to serve second-stage entrepreneurs — sometimes with our help; and, in other cases, on their own. An important development during this period was the 2008 launch of YourEconomy.org, an online time series that tracks U.S. business activity at the national, state and metro level. ** YourEconomy.org validated what we inherently believed to be true: That when it comes to job creation, second-stage companies consistently punch above their weight. For example, second-stagers only represented 18% of U.S. companies in 2023, but they generated almost 40% of all jobs.
Climbing the BRV mountain — About eight years ago, we recognized that accelerating growth for second-stagers is not a one-and-done type of assistance, but rather a process that takes time. In response, we dramatically broadened our suite of services. This resulted in the System for Integrated Growth,® which helps business owners with operational issues and challenges outside the walls of their company. We also introduced programs for mentoring and succession planning and new types of retreats — and we began to use a mountain metaphor to describe how second-stagers move through our programs. At about the same time, we began to focus on a few strategic partners, instead of trying to deliver our programs in every state. This has made us quite a bit more efficient and effective.
For entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs — Our most recent phase was sparked by a new initiative, Entrepreneur Emeritus (E2), in which we collaborate with highly experienced entrepreneurs to improve existing programs and create new ones. E2s are not only instrumental in developing and participating in our programs, they’re also assisting with fundraising concepts. In a related development, Dave Galbenski and Dan Ducoté, two of our inaugural E2s, are creating a for-profit company that will share some of its profits with the foundation. Through its coaching, consulting and operational systems, Big Rock Leaders will be able to help business owners in ways we can’t because of our nonprofit status.
To recap, these five phases have been complementary, building upon each other to get us where we are today. We now have deeper relationships with our partners and our entrepreneurs, and I’m excited to see what we can achieve together in the next 40 years!
*National Center for Charitable Statistics.
**In 2015 we transitioned ownership of YourEconomy.org to the University of Wisconsin, where it continues to reside and evolve.