CU Park fellows help Challenge Industries' entrepreneurs start up

By Linda Myers

Give Cari Holcomb a pen and she'll draw you a picture. The 28-year-old Tompkins County resident and Challenge Industries service recipient has been making artwork all her life, she says, so the idea of designing and making brightly colored datebook covers and greeting cards and selling them locally appealed to her.

From left, Scott Hazlett, Cari Holcomb, Steve Lawrence, Gerry Hodnett and Anthony Moon gather at Challenge Industries' CraftAbility Collective booth in Ithaca Farmers' Market in Dewitt Park. MBA students Hazlett, Moon and classmate Jeff Nordin linked up with Lawrence, director of Challenge's Supported Self-Employment Program, to developed BizPal, a business planning module that helped Holcomb market her holiday cards and Hodnett his beaded necklaces. BizPal is one of 12 Park Leadership Service Projects at Cornell's Johnson School this year. Frank DiMeo/University Photography

You can now buy Holcomb's dinosaur datebooks for $5 apiece, and soon you will see her cards at Ithaca Farmers' Market in the CraftAbility Collective booth run by Challenge Industries. She and seven others sell their work at the market twice a week thanks to a new Challenge self-employment program, a grant from the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation and a little help from three Cornell MBA students and a local credit union.

The students, Anthony Moon, Scott Hazlett and Jeff Nordin, attend Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management through its Park Leadership Fellows Program, which views community service as a leadership trait. Chosen partly for their past commitment to volunteering, they are among the 30 students admitted each year who complete a significant Leadership Service Project with lasting value in the community as part of their program. "It's an exceptional program," said Moon. "There's nothing like it anywhere else in the country."

For their project, the students linked up with Steve Lawrence, coordinator of Challenge Industries' Supported Self-Employment Program, through Laurie Sedgwick, an assistant director in the Johnson School's Career Services Office, who knew about Lawrence's efforts to create small business opportunities for Challenge's service recipients.

"Challenge is such a fixture in the community," said Moon '92, who remembered the vocational-rehabilitation agency from his undergraduate engineering days at Cornell and wanted to find a way to assist it. Over the past year, the students developed BizPal, a business plan module that helps people with special needs and no business training, and their support teams, launch and run their own part-time small businesses.

Like most communities, Tompkins County has residents who face barriers to employment such as physical and mental disabilities, explained Moon. There are jobs for some, but not all, of these people, he said during the presentation of his team's project May 1 in Sage Hall on campus.

The students learned from Lawrence that Challenge had surveyed its service recipients and discovered many had talents and interests they wanted to develop further and perhaps earn money by doing. For example, Gerry Hodnett enjoyed making necklaces from bright-colored beads. Donna Conover-Legro crafted much-admired stained glass window-hangings. And Holcomb's drawings, featuring Randy and Rhonda reindeer and other characters, made appealing seasonal greeting cards.

"We wanted to give them a taste of the American dream, to turn their ideas and hobbies into business ventures," said Lawrence. Challenge applied for and got a three-year grant from the Kennedy foundation for the self-employment project but needed to create a business module for its service recipients that could easily be replicated in other communities -- a stipulation of the grant. That's where the Park fellows came in.

A tour of Challenge introduced them to the people they would be helping. "A constant source of inspiration for us," said Moon, "is seeing what a courageous thing these individuals are doing. It's difficult to start a business even when you're not limited by disabilities. It's a tremendous risk, and we wanted to make sure they had the right support and tools."

"We struggled through a lot of meetings and brainstorming sessions," said Hazlett. "No one had done this before, so we had no models."

Their efforts culminated in a business startup "toolkit" in the form a training workbook and step-by-step manual. The workbook outlines all the processes for starting a small business, and the manual gives details on how to go about it, via a series of key questions, such as "what type of customer will you target?" A sample marketing survey is included, as is a financial section with simplified cash-flow and projected-income statements. The books are geared to the service recipients' support team, who can coach them through the process.

"Everybody needs some kind of support in starting a business, whether it's marketing or bookkeeping," said Lawrence. The Park fellows offered "a level of expertise that we wouldn't have had on our own." In his opening letter in the manual, he states: "With the understanding that not every agency will be fortunate enough to secure the funding to devote a full-time staff person to small business development, it is our hope that this business planning guide will offer a streamlined, efficient toolkit with which to create a professional and functional business plan." BizPal manuals and workbooks will be sent to agencies around the country at no cost. The packets will include computer diskettes with the books' contents, so that multiple copies can be made.

The students hope the toolkit will be a springboard for many successful self-employed business ventures. "Ideally, I'd love it if we all got a call down the road from some agency that used the book, telling us they want to grow our toolkit into something more ambitious and asking us if we'd like to be involved," said Moon.

Challenge service recipients who put their startup funds and earnings in an Individual Development Account (IDA) at Ithaca's Alternatives Federal Credit Union get 2-to-1 matching funds from the Kennedy foundation. "IDAs help low-income people purchase assets and develop a habit of savings by creating some incentives to make that work," said Deirdre Silverman, who runs the IDA program at the credit union. Holcomb purchased desktop-publishing equipment with her funds, and Hodnett has bought an inventory of new beads, noted Silverman.

The Challenge CraftAbility Collective booth is at the Ithaca Farmers' Market in Dewitt Park on Tuesday mornings and at Steamboat Landing on Sunday mornings. Other Challenge self-employment initiatives include jewelry-making, photographs and a dog walking and pet sitting service. In the planning stages are lawn, garden and landscaping care, VCR cleaning and personal fitness training. On May 20, Lawrence will present the success story of BizPal and Challenge's Supported Self-employment Program to the Kennedy family and the rest of the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation board of trustees in Washington, D.C.

For more information on the program or to volunteer, contact Lawrence at 272-8990 or stevel@aboutchallenge.org.