ENTREPRENEURS FOR SUSTAINABILITY

HEADNOTE

This peer-based Cleveland group with 4,000 people in the network shows companies how to apply the right principles by improving facilities, processes, products and markets.

A NONPROFIT economic development organization has built a powerful network

whose mission is to build a sustainable economy in northeast Ohio. Entrepreneurs for Sustainability (E4S) is the brainchild of Holly Harlan, an engineer and manufacturers' advocate who had an "a-ha moment" in 2000 that led her to create the network of more than 4,000 individuals from business, government, academia and organizations who are putting sustainability to work for their organizations and their region.

Harlan was born in Iowa and graduated from Iowa State University in 1983 with an industrial engineering degree. After graduation, she worked for seven years as an engineer with General Electric, including two years in its manufacturing management program and stints in New York, South Carolina, Georgia and Ohio. Harlan left GE in 1990 and for the next 11 years, worked for three organizations as a technology application engineer for manufacturers in the Cleveland area first with MAGNET (formerly CAMP Inc.), and then with Shorebank Enterprise Cleveland and WIRE-Net.

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Holly Harlan founded the new organization in December 2000, which has 4,000 "networkers" who work together to put sustainability principles into practice.

Harlan had what she calls her "a-ha moment" when she went to a Cleveland Green Building Coalition meeting at the Cleveland Public Library in the spring of 2000 to hear Amory Lovins talk about natural capitalism. Lovins is an experimental physicist and the cofounder and CEO of the Rocky Mountain Institute, an organization founded in 1982 to foster efficient and restorative uses of natural resources. His book, Natural Capitalism, outlines principles for increasing the productivity of resource use, and using natural and human capital to continue economic growth in an environmentally safe manner.

"Amory showed how much waste is designed into business," says Harlan. "I didn't know much about the environment at that time. I was just focused on making manufacturing more efficient and competitive. I looked at it purely as how much money we have been wasting by designing products and manufacturing processes as poorly as we have been. I thought, how can we have been so stupid? We leave a lot of money on the table when we are wasteful and it also had a lot of environmental effects. I got the idea that if businesses are designing in waste, they could save money if they design out waste. This could save manufacturing in the United States."

Harlan then made it her business to learn more about natural capitalism and how it could be applied to manufacturing for the benefit of the economy, environment and society. She went to a workshop on natural capitalism that the Rocky Mountain Institute was hosting in her hometown of Des Moines, Iowa. Harlan was working forWIRE-Netatthetime."! thought that what Amory was talking about in Natural Capitalism, I could take back to manufacturers," she recalls. When Harlan returned from the workshop, she took a summer internship at Rocky Mountain Institute's headquarters in Colorado for half the summer while keeping her WIRE-Net job in Cleveland.

"I brought back what I learned about natural capitalism to the manufacturers at WIRE-Net but only five of the 600 manufacturers there were really interested in applying sustainability principles to the way they were designing and running their businesses," she notes. That spurred Harlan to form Entrepreneurs for Sustainability. "I thought entrepreneurs might be more interested in sustainability than manufacturers," she explains. "In 2000 sustainability wasn't all the buzz and manufacturers were slower to get interested because they were focused on other things."

She founded the new organization in December 2000 with three colleagues who were interested in business and sustainability - Peter Accorti, Grant Marquit and Brian Schneiderman. Accorti is president of Talan Products, a metal stamping firm in Cleveland and had also attended Amory Lovins' talk that spring. "Peter is a good friend of mine and a member of WIRE-Net," says Harlan. "He had his 'aha moment' at the same time. I met Marquit and Schneiderman while discovering who was interested in sustainability in the region, and thought they might be interested in supporting the E4S concept." Marquit, formerly with the Weatherhead School of Management, is now an innovation and strategy consultant for mid-market sized technology firms. At the time, Schneiderman was working at Shorebank Enterprise Cleveland and is now a Special Projects Officer for the Self-Help Credit Union in North Carolina.

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Left, at the microphone during the E4S Third Tuesday Network Event April 17th The (Future) State of Sustainability in Northeast Ohio is staff member Courtney DeOreo, Network and Resource Development; with Holly Harlan; Andrew Watterson, Cleveland's Sustainability Programs Manager; David Beach, director of EcoCity; and Paul Alsenas, director of the county's Planning Commission.

Right, at their regular E4S Third Tuesday Networking Event, Nancy King Smith and Andy Pettit discuss strategies "to change the way we do business to build a new economy."

CREATING AN ORGANIZATION

Harlan started the organization in an office in her home. In December 2000 E4S held its first monthly E4S Third Tuesday Network meeting in the Tasting Room at the Great Lakes Brewing Company's brewery in Cleveland. "Great Lakes Brewery had just launched their zero waste initiatives so they were a perfect partner for the start of E4S," notes Harlan. The initial meetings focused on helping entrepreneurs launch sustainable businesses, and attracted 12 to 25 people each month. The new E4S network also took on a project devised by Gunter Pauli to sustainably grow mushrooms on coffee grounds. Pauli is the former president of the green cleaning products firm Ecover and founder of the ZERI Foundation, which advocates zero waste in the production of goods and services.

"We couldn't get the mushrooms to grow," admits Harlan, "but the project helped to build up the network and develop relationships between people. We formed packaging, organizing, and business development teams and a team to grow the mushrooms. People got more engaged than just attending a meeting, because they also got involved in making the project work."

At the end of 2001, the leadership of E4S changed the focus of the organization from helping individual start-ups to working with entrepreneurs within industries that were already putting sustainability principles into practice. These industries, what Harlan calls the 'local living economy', included local food, green building, next generation energy (energy efficiency, wind, solar and fuel cells), transportation, eco-systems services (clean air, water and soil) and recycling waste. "The E4S strategy was to create a network of all those who were implementing sustainability principles within the whole local living economy plus those implementing the principles in existing businesses who may or may not be from these industries," explains Harlan. "This strategy built a core of supporters and attracted new participants each month."

E4S began working with strategic partner organizations such as the Cleveland Green Building Coalition, EDIC (now the New Agrarian Center), Green Energy Ohio and others. In 2002, the organization also started working with state and local government agencies, nonprofits and academia. "We need everyone's participation to build a sustainable economy," Harlan points out.

THE E4S PROGRAMS: CONNECT, LEARN, DO

By 2005, the organization was defining its programs in three categories: Connect, Learn and Do. 'Connect' provides connections to customers, suppliers, funders and new ideas at network events and member roundtables. 'Learn' offers programs and resources to teach the "how to" of sustainability. Through 'Do', E4S supports both individual company projects and has begun to design and facilitate industry-specific economic development projects.

"Connect, Learn, Do is based on the cycle of change I observed at WIRENet that business leaders go through," explains Harlan. "We often make the decision to change when we are in a trusted relationship with someone who will support the change. If business owners want to try a new technology they often will ask their peers whether they have tried it, so it is important to create a community so people will have support in their change."

The first 'Learn' programs were roundtables to help start-ups and job searchers. E4S still hosts a Start-Up Roundtable that features a different speaker each month. "The focus is on financing and marketing because those are two areas that start-ups need the most help with," adds Harlan. E4S also sponsors a monthly Searchers Roundtable for people looking to be hired by businesses that practice sustainability or who want to start their own sustainable businesses.

In 2005, E4S offered a series of Nex Gen Energy Workshops that included wind, solar, energy efficiency, fuel cells and clean fuels. The first Sustainability Implementation Group (SI Group) was also formed, in which companies go through an eightmonth process to learn about sustainability and develop their own strategic plans. "Implementation groups are one strategy to help a business get a broad feel of what sustainability encompasses," notes Harlan.

The peer-based SI Group program teaches companies how to apply sustainability principles by redesigning and improving their facilities, processes, products, and markets. It also helps them develop a companywide sustainability implementation plan and shows them how to get their employees involved in the process. Some intended benefits for the participating companies are reduced energy and waste costs, new revenue streams and a healthier work environment.

Each SI Group is composed of five to seven companies, and three to five of the top managers in each company participate. The first SI group was launched in October 2005, the second group began meeting in August 2006 and the third kicked off in May 2007. So far, 117 managers from 19 companies have participated in the eightmonth SI process.

E4S offers customized half-day workshops for larger companies that want their own overview on sustainability. "It can be used as a much quicker review before they jump into the SI process, or the company may have an existing green team and want to get it up and running quickly," explains Harlan.

E4S also hosts workshops that are open to the public on a variety of energy topics. In 2007, the workshops have focused on solar topics including solar thermal water heating and solar photovoltaic technology, in support of the ASES National Solar Energy Conference held in Cleveland in July 2007.

Fifteen businesses are participating in a large economic development project, the CVI/E4S Waste = Revenue Roundtable. The project was created in January 2006 as a partnership between E4S, the Rocky Mountain Institute and the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission and is being funded by grants from Cuyahoga County and the Generation Foundation. "The goal is to take waste from one business and use it in another business," explains Harlan. Alcoa and Mittal Steel USA, a subsidiary of the steel company Arcelor Mittal, are participating in the roundtable, as well as Zaclon Inc., a manufacturer of industrial chemicals. The businesses meet monthly to learn about each others' operations, waste materials and by-products, and have already identified more than 20 potential matches.

E4S also sponsors the E4S Knowledge Network National Speaker Series, which featured Ray Anderson in 2005 and Joel Makower in 2006. Makower is an expert in sustainable business, clean technology and green business practices. He is also the founder of Greenbiz.com, which provides free resources on how businesses can be both environmentally responsible and financially successful. Anderson is founder of Interface, a manufacturer of carpet and floor coverings and a leader in environmentally responsible manufacturing. In 2007, E4S featured Paul Murray, the Environmental, Health and Sustainability Director of the furniture manufacturing company Herman Miller, Inc. A second speaker is yet to be announced.

THE NETWORK EXPANDS

E4S didn't receive outside funding for a year, Harlan didn't have any staff for three years, and the organization operated without an office for nearly five years. In spite of these obstacles, the network continued to grow, change, and offer new programs.

E4S got its first grant funding in January 2002 from the George Gund Foundation. That year, one of Harlan's former employers, ShoreBank Enterprise Cleveland, offered to incubate the E4S program. "ShoreBank managed a lot of the financial details," notes Harlan. Average monthly attendance at the E4S Third Tuesday Network events grew to 75 people a month in 2002, and E4S attracted other funding, including a grant from the Cleveland Foundation.

By 2003, more than 100 participants were attending the E4S Third Tuesday Network events. E4S launched a membership program in April 2003 and in November, awarded its first Champion of Sustainability Awards. E4S also created a contest for industrial design students at the Cleveland Institute of Art to transform wood pallets into elementary school furniture.

In 2004, Harlan hired her first two employees, meeting with them in local wireless cafes to avoid the costs of having an office. The Third Tuesday Network events were now drawing more than 120 participants a month. The organization changed its mission that year, from supporting entrepreneurs in new and existing businesses who are implementing sustainability principles to building a sustainable economy. "This change was made to recognize that those attending E4S meetings were not only interested in helping their own businesses, they also wanted to change the way we did business to build a new economy," explains Harlan.

In September 2005, E4S moved into its first office, a 2,000-square-foot space in Shorebank's Glenville Enterprise Center, which provides affordable office space and business support services for businesses and nonprofit organizations. E4S became a separate 501(c)(3) nonprofit in January 2006. E4S now has three full-time and one part-time staff, and many volunteers who help with E4S events.

This year, E4S has a budget of $400,000 which includes funding from foundations, memberships, sponsorships, an annual fund, and fee-for-service workshops. About 140 have joined E4S by paying an annual membership fee that ranges from $50 for job seekers to $350 for established businesses.

Harlan says there are now more than 4,000 people in the network. "Ninetyeight percent are from Ohio but people come from all over - Youngstown, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Ann Arbor and Chicago - to E4S events," she adds. An average of 150 people now attend the Third Tuesday Network Events in Cleveland each month. "The Tipping Point suggests that networking works best with 150 or less people so we would like to add new networking hubs to accommodate the growth in our network." As a result, E4S has recently branched into hosting regular events in Akron, Ohio.

PHENOMENAL GROWTH

"Our growth is phenomenal," says Harlan. "We're so busy that we can't even keep up." She says the growth occurred without any marketing. "It happened through word of mouth and emails and organically attracted a cross-section," she adds. "They just came. I imagine that a similar organization would start differently now because there is so much out there about sustainability."

In July 2007, E4S will go through a strategic planning process with its staff, nine board members and other stakeholders, to map out a plan for the organization through 2010. "Sustainability is changing so rapidly it might be difficult to plan much further," notes Harlan. "Some of the big challenges we are facing are how do we grow and how do we make a model of our program available?" says Harlan. "Are we sustainably funded and how do we staff up to meet demand? We need to get more people to teach our programs, and we need to figure out how to train the trainers. I'm sure it will be challenging."

In addition to running E4S, Harlan is also sought as a speaker about sustainable manufacturing and business practices. In 2006, she spoke to more than twenty groups in the Northeast Ohio Area and was a featured speaker at the BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies) conference in Vancouver, the Michigan Sustainable Business Symposium in Grand Rapids, and the Chicago Business Alliance. She is a founding member of the City of Cleveland's Sustainability Advisory Board and on Cuyahoga County's Blue Ribbon Economic Development Task Force. In May 2005, she received the first SBC Foundation Civic Entrepreneur Award which was presented by the Center for Regional Economic Issues (REI) at case Western Reserve University.

In June 2007, the Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations presented E4S with its 2007 Organization Innovation Award and in July, E4S will receive Green Energy Ohio's 2007 Nonprofit of the Year Award.

"It's been a great ride," Harlan sums up. "I've met a lot of good people who are doing pioneering work to bring triple bottom line benefits to our region."

For more information on E4S, Holly Harlan can be contacted at holly@e4s.org, or visit wuiw.e4s.org.

SIDEBAR

Fifteen business members of E4S are creating a partnership to take waste from one company and use it in another - learning about each others' operations to set up potential matches.