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Judith Winfrey of PeachDish

Profile Summary:

  • Entrepreneur Name: Judith Winfrey
  • Venture Name: PeachDish
  • Impact Focus Area(s): Agriculture; Environment; Food Products/Organics; Green Consumer Products
  • Business Stage (Ideation, Startup, Early, Later, Mature): Early
  • Year Venture Established: 2014
  • Business Type: For Profit Social Enterprise

The Issue

Social entrepreneurship is about solving problems. Tell us about the challenge you are focused on addressing and why it is critical that we make progress.

“Supporting the small scale farmer is the ‘why’ at the center of all that we do.  Farmers make our food healthier, they create local economic impact, and are environmental stewards on the community’s behalf. 

Small farmers, like many other small businesses, don’t have the time and expertise to sell their goods online.  At PeachDish, we connect customers to the finest growers and ingredients and help small-scale farmers join the digital economy.

Food is one of the last frontiers  of e-commerce.  The way that people buy food is changing, it is really important that we stake out ground small, local farmers and help them connect with consumers in this new marketplace.  Farmers don’t have time to figure this all out and we are happy to help solve this problem.”     

Your Journey

Entrepreneurship is a journey that requires connections and support from a wide array of stakeholders across the ecosystem to help successfully identify, start, and grow a social enterprise.

“For me personally, a milestone moment early on was pitching in New York for potential investment by the 1776 Fund.  I was invited by Center for Civic Innovation in 2015 to take part in a regional competition which they hosted in Atlanta. We won and then got the chance to pitch at the finals in New York.  We didn’t receive investment, but it helped me strengthen my presentation skills and refine our message.  I came to PeachDish not as the founder, but as an operations person. Being at 1776 immersed me for the first time in the world of entrepreneurship.   

The first person in the support ecosystem I need to give credit is my husband Joe Reynolds who is also an entrepreneur and small farmer at Love is Love Farm at Gaia Gardens.  So he is my number one advisor on this journey. 

I also have a pretty robust informal board of advisors for whom I am grateful including Bill Bolling who founded the Atlanta Community Foodbank and Doug Callahan who is a long time entrepreneur.  Ellen Macht at Food Well Alliance is always there for me when I have a question or need advice. All are important sounding boards.  I also belong to the Women Presidents’ Organization which is peer-to-peer group for women leading companies in the Atlanta area which meets often and provides a place to talk about successes and challenges.  

Of course there is a special kind of problem set for food businesses. Suzi Sheffield from Beautiful Briny Sea, Mary Moore from Cook’s Warehouse, Dale DeSena from Taste of Atlanta, and Leslie Zinn from Arden’s Garden have been critical connections.   It’s nice to have someone to call that understands unique food business issues.”  

Why Georgia’s Social Impact Ecosystem Matters

Being an entrepreneur is hard and it’s even more challenging when you are a social entrepreneur as your business model and / or structure doesn’t follow the same path as traditional start-ups. 

“Network connections matter.  It’s always valuable to get someone else’s perspective- someone that doesn’t have your past experience and potential bias.  Also, the more expanded your network is the more access you get to ideas and solutions. The first time I had to move a warehouse, this network and its know-how made it easier.  Being connected to people who have had different experiences and can share diverse ideas can help you both solve problems faster and sometimes even reframe things so you don’t even see them as problems anymore.

In terms of what ecosystem needs here in Georgia, I would like to see greater access to capital to those that want to do more than just have a successful business, but also a social impact. For our business, we would like to see more investors interested in business-to-customer (B2C) businesses that not only have financial returns but other impacts. 

Additionally, more robust food manufacturing technical assistance is needed. There are a lot of promising food-based businesses in Georgia that operate under cottage food license or in shared commercial kitchen that need support to scale and grow.” 

Interested in learning more about Judith and PeachDish, please visit:

Georgia’s Social Impact Map Goes Live

ATLANTA – October 4, 2018 – Nearly two years after hatching the idea, a collaborative of community leaders announces the launch of the Georgia Social Impact Map, an interactive platform designed to connect and educate stakeholders interested in accelerating impact investing for social outcomes. Intended as a resource for communities around the state, the Map connects new forms of capital to sustaining and scaling solutions to social challenges.

The founding group, the Georgia Social Impact Collaborative (GSIC), identified the relevant players – social entrepreneurs, nonprofits, investors, intermediaries, and enablers – and asked them what they care about – education, health issues, homelessness, etc. With this, GSIC created the ecosystem map, a searchable network of organizations, partners and supporters doing good work in the various social sectors. The platform also profiles stories of social enterprises and how they use impact capital to drive their businesses and achieve greater social outcomes, as well as how investors and intermediaries are helping deploy mission-oriented money to build greater sustainability.

On October 4, nearly 140 of those stakeholders turned out for an event to learn about the launch of the ecosystem map. The year-long data collection process, run by Advantage Consulting, produced a comprehensive report based on over 250 live interviews and surveys of social enterprises (nonprofit and for-profit), investors and supporting organizations of all types. The report found that Georgians have great interest in impact investing, and social enterprises have significant need for additional capital.

According to Sam Moss, chairman of GSIC, “though great work is being done every day by nonprofits and social enterprises around this state, we found that they often don’t have adequate access to impact capital and other resources. We can change this and that’s why we created the ecosystem map.” The members of GSIC, its advisory committees and funders represent over 70 actively engaged organizations of all types, including banks, nonprofits, family and national foundations, corporate partners, the public sector, impact investors, angel and venture investors and many others.

The launch event also offered a chance to learn from a true impact investing pioneer, Antony Bugg-Levine, CEO of the Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) and co-founder of the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN). After his keynote address, Antony remarked that “if the impact investing sector is a 100-yard dash, all of us are only on the 3-yard line. So GSIC’s ecosystem map gives Georgia a real opportunity to be a leader in place-based impact investing”. And then he urged “if you haven’t already, you need to join the map!” NFF has recently invested in the expansion of several Georgia-based social enterprises, including CHRIS 180 and First Step Staffing.

The practice of using impact investing as a tool for scaling social solutions has exploded in recent decades. Defined as investing that produces both a financial as well as a social return, impact investments domestically exceeded $8.7 trillion in 2016, according to the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment (US SIF). While Georgia’s participation in the impact investing space has lagged, the GSIC map is well positioned to turn that around. Recognizing that Georgia has vast resources and growing opportunities, the founders of GSIC have established a strong foundation for the map to become a sustainable and expanding resource to serve veteran as well as new investors and enterprises searching for ways to tackle social issues of common concern. The ultimate result should be much greater social outcomes for all Georgians.

To join the Map, go to gasocialimpact.com/join-the-map/!

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About the Georgia Social Impact Collaborative
In late 2016, a group of Georgia’s community leaders, representing a diverse range of constituencies, came together to confront a shared concern that impact investing was not developing in Georgia at the pace seen elsewhere. The Georgia Social Impact Collaborative (GSIC) was formed as a collaborative effort to connect, educate and inspire stakeholders for the purpose of accelerating the development of Georgia’s impact investing ecosystem.

Nonprofit Finance Fund® (NFF®)
NFF advances missions and social progress in underserved communities through financing, consulting, partnerships, and knowledge-sharing that empower leaders, organizations, and ideas. A leading Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), NFF currently manages over $310 million. Since 1980, NFF has provided almost $700 million in financing and access to additional capital in support of over $2.3 billion in projects for thousands of organizations nationwide.

For more information, please contact Jonny Newburgh at [email protected].

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Jason Martin of Community Guilds

Profile Summary:

  • Entrepreneur Name: Jason Martin
  • Venture Name: Community Guilds [STE(A)M Truck Program]
  • Impact Focus Area(s): Education, Community Development, Work force development, Professional Development, Capacity Building
  • Business Stage (Ideation, Startup, Early, Later, Mature): Later
  • Year Venture Established: 2013
  • Business Type: Nonprofit Social Enterprise

The Issue

Social entrepreneurship is about solving problems. Tell us about the challenge you are focused on addressing and why it is critical that we make progress.

“Our mission is to close opportunity gaps and eliminate inequities by transforming teaching and learning through an experiential maker approach. 

 We do two things well:  

  1. We give kids an opportunity to get their hands dirty and make things.
  2. We empower teachers to continue this work once we drive away. 

We are best known for our STE(A)M Truck Program which deploys a growing fleet of mobile makerspaces filled with real tools and local experts and parks it where kids, and their teachers, can tackle real problems, design solutions and build things together.

We exist because zip codes too often determine access to opportunity.  We target youth most unrepresented in STEM careers and focus on 21st skills needed to thrive in the real world.  Our work begins to ensure equity and opportunity regardless of where you live or the school you attend.  Ultimately, we aim to end generational cycles of poverty as the City of Atlanta is one of the least upwardly mobile cities in the United States.  We believe that inequality means lost opportunity for all.”

Your Journey

Entrepreneurship is a journey that requires connections and support from a wide array of stakeholders across the ecosystem to help successfully identify, start, and grow a social enterprise.

“I started by asking a question… How can we eliminate inequity and catalyze transformation by leveraging the assets and expertise that exist within communities? Defining ‘how’ has evolved over time from our original apprenticeship program to the mobile makerspaces we use today.

This work was shaped and formed by many but first and foremost I think of Matt Candler at 4.0 Schools, as a true catalyst.   Early on they helped me prototype ideas while investing seed money to help me test out new possibilities.  Originally, I did not think of myself as an entrepreneur, but 4.0 Schools allowed me to reinvent myself and offered an opportunity to think outside the box.   

With a more refined idea in place, the Points of Light Civic Accelerator helped me dig deeper into the business model.  I was then selected as a finalist for Teach for America’s Social Innovation Award which offered fantastic coaching as we attempted to navigate systemic educational reform.   We then opened our first office within the Center for Civic Innovation (CCI) here in Atlanta.  CCI allowed us to set up shop, do our work, meet like-minded social entrepreneurs, and develop deeper roots across the city.      

Leadership Atlanta also played a significant role in my journey as I was a part of the 2016 class. The peers in my class were critical relationships– one classmate now serves as our board chair and others have helped our program grow including Dean Erika James at the Goizueta Business School who helped us connect to the Goizueta Impact Investors for an early stage loan. 

An important part of our journey came from the legal support of the Probono Partnership of Atlanta. They helped us with our board governance, contracts, risk management, and more. Our assigned volunteer attorneys became advocates for us in important ways

As a nonprofit, we have had several game changing investments over the years.  The first came through the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation who understood the potential of the maker movement to “light children’s imagination on fire”.  With a background as an educator, I was able to tap into support from the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement (GOSA) for an innovation grant that helped us build out a robust evaluation framework and showed that our work has measurable impact. Lastly, the Goizueta Foundation offered a significant, multi-year grant to bolster our internal infrastructure during our second year of operations, without which we would not have been able to grow.”   

Why Georgia’s Social Impact Ecosystem Matters

Being an entrepreneur is hard and it’s even more challenging when you are a social entrepreneur as your business model and / or structure doesn’t follow the same path as traditional start-ups. 

“I would like to see more places created for nonprofit social impact entrepreneurs to gather together as peers to learn from one another.  We may not always call it an ecosystem, but you would be hard pressed to find a successful business that didn’t have a strong support system surrounding it.  I think codifying what that support looks and making it easier to navigate is important and benefits us all.

From a funding standpoint, finding investments beyond the smaller seed grants for nonprofits can be challenging. I would like to see more “go big” investment opportunities for organizations that are at a later stage.

Lastly, the privilege that I have should also not be dismissed.  If I was young, poor, a woman, or a person of color, with a different educational background, my journey would have had much different challenges. As we build Georgia’s ecosystem we need to prioritize equity and opportunity for a diverse set of entrepreneurs.”         

Interested in learning more about Jason and Community Guilds, please visit:

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Jasmine Crowe of Goodr

Profile Summary:

  • Entrepreneur Name: Jasmine Crowe
  • Venture Name: Goodr
  • Impact Focus Area(s): Sustainability, Waste Reduction, Hunger Prevention
  • Business Stage (Ideation, Startup, Early, Later, Mature): Early
  • Year Venture Established: 2017
  • Business Type: For-Profit Social Enterprise

The Issue

Social entrepreneurship is about solving problems. Tell us about the challenge you are focused on addressing and why it is critical that we make progress.

“For me it started with hunger.  I had been working to feed those in our community experiencing homelessness.  I was working hard each week to gather food, cook, and serve long lines of individuals on the street- I thought there had to be a better way and that led me to do research on food waste.  I was blown away by how much perfectly good food is going to waste, while I was struggling to feed people that were hungry.  I saw two problems that were solutions to one another. 

I could have been a nonprofit, but I chose to be a for-profit with a paid staff to better meet the needs and reporting expectations that companies have in terms of recovering food waste.  We track every item that we collect specific to each item picked up- which nonprofit it goes to, the weight, along with environmental statistics.  It is critical that we succeed because we can help business reduce their waste but also help communities in greater numbers.”      

Your Journey

Entrepreneurship is a journey that requires connections and support from a wide array of stakeholders across the ecosystem to help successfully identify, start, and grow a social enterprise.

“Through Goodie Nation’s pitch competition which I entered, we were able to be introduced and have formed a relationship with the Atlanta Airport.

We are just getting started with Center for Civic Innovation (CCI) as of July as part of the SPANX CCI Innovation Fellow program.  There helping me look at ways that we can better share our model to those in the social impact community. The program comes with an investment along with self-care stipends. 

I am a member of ATDC.  Jackie Chu, one of the Catalysts there has been very helpful as someone I can run ideas by.” 

Why Georgia’s Social Impact Ecosystem Matters

Being an entrepreneur is hard and it’s even more challenging when you are a social entrepreneur as your business model and / or structure doesn’t follow the same path as traditional start-ups. 

“Funding is obviously a big thing. A number of our customers can’t afford our services and we would like to serve them, but at the same time need to ensure we can pay our employees a good, living wage.  It would be great if there were more foundations focused on reducing food waste that would be willing to fund us to serve organizations that can’t afford services for example a hospital or university.

There have definitely been a number of supporters here in Atlanta particularly individuals.  We haven’t connected with a large number of big companies as of yet. UPS recently reached out and wanted to do a working ideation session in the first quarter of next year – so I am hopeful. 

Being an African American female founder is tough. It’s really tough in the South. If we are building a social impact ecosystem around entrepreneurs in Atlanta where the population is 55% black, there has to be a conversation about how we better support people of color. Had I been of a different race, I probably would have had a lot more success in Atlanta than I had. 

Lastly, I would like to see the government and city officials do more to support social entrepreneurs. I would like to see a social impact fund set up at the State or city level to help entrepreneurs attend trainings and do other things- I think that is a big opportunity.”     

Interested in learning more about Jasmine and Goodr, please visit:

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Jeffrey Martin of honorCode

Profile Summary:

  • Entrepreneur Name: Jeffrey Martin
  • Venture Name: honorCode
  • Impact Focus Area(s): Education, Employment Generation
  • Business Stage (Ideation, Startup, Early, Later, Mature): Early
  • Year Venture Established: 2015
  • Business Type: Nonprofit Social Enterprise

The Issue

Social entrepreneurship is about solving problems. Tell us about the challenge you are focused on addressing and why it is critical that we make progress.

“The social change we are trying to impact is to make sure that all of the new businesses here in Atlanta source talent from our city instead of outsourcing it from other places. When you look at our major growing industries like film (which is $9.5B annually), fintech, IOT, and others, we have a booming technology sector.  But if you look at Georgia schools, a little less than 5% are teaching some form of computer science. 

Here in Atlanta we are focused on our most vulnerable population- black and brown students- and more specifically black students that identify as queer or gender non-conforming.  At honorCode we are working to ensure that these vulnerable populations can have a way of making a living for themselves at the end of the day.

It’s critical that we make progress on this issue because we talk about our city’s proud civil rights history, but if you look at recent trends the black folks are being pushed out of many neighborhoods they used to reside in.  We can’t keep doing this thing where we are planning for the future, when we haven’t turned to build new capacity around the things that are not working today like our models around post-secondary education attainment, workforce development, and career pipeline.  Atlanta will not ever be the city it says it is without us taking action.”       

Your Journey

Entrepreneurship is a journey that requires connections and support from a wide array of stakeholders across the ecosystem to help successfully identify, start, and grow a social enterprise.

“It’s hard for me to talk about my experience because it is a bit of unicorn journey growing up in East Lake, attending Paideia, going on to Brown and Wharton, Teach for America, and Goldman Sachs. A lot of folks won’t have the same access points because of those networks and that narrative.

Looking back, honorCode grew out of a concept paper that I wrote and sent to Carol Naughton who is the President of the Purpose Built Communities.  She knew me since I was 10 years old as I grew up in East Lake and went to Drew Charter School. Because of Carol’s feedback, which ripped my concept paper apart, honorCode changed from a model of creating and running its own school and instead became focused on providing teacher training and education to better deliver computer science across existing schools. 

Center for Civic Innovation (CCI) also played a role as I was introduced to their Fellowship program through the Penn Social Impact House Fellowship. Those networks were connected through Echoing Green which helped me to meet CCI’s founder Rohit Malhotra. So my college network has been important as well. 

I was part of CCI’s inaugural Civic Innovation Fellows class back in 2016. CCI for me was very important for relationship development as I was connected to Val Porter who connected me to leaders of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta which led to find my executive coach Kim Anderson formerly of Families First and now with Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative (AWBI). The CCI experience expedited that important relationship building.        

Additionally winning Forbes Change the World Entrepreneurship Competition catapulted us into a space where others took notice including Points of Light’s Civic Accelerator (CivicX) which we recently completed. CivicX provided a platform for us to market our work as we won an award for greatest impact.  We are hopeful that the CivicX exposure will lead to investment funding in the coming year.”

 

Why Georgia’s Social Impact Ecosystem Matters

Being an entrepreneur is hard and it’s even more challenging when you are a social entrepreneur as your business model and / or structure doesn’t follow the same path as traditional start-ups. 

“When we look at investment, very few of those dollars go to women and people of color. I have a very quintessential meritocracy path; however, because we are in the state of Georgia instead of California which doesn’t have as strong of an impact investing ecosystem, dollars have been slow to fund scalable ideas.

I would like to see our Investor and philanthropic community do some customer discover work as part of this ecosystem building effort.  We can benefit from taking some ideas from the design thinking space to create true alternative investment approaches that can get to civic entrepreneurs faster.  By investment, it’s not just about dollars, but connections to expertise to do various things like developing better program evaluation to prove our results and models.”

Interested in learning more about Jeffrey and honorCode, please visit:

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Andrew Eck of Georgia Artisan Furnishings

Profile Summary:

The Issue

Social entrepreneurship is about solving problems. Tell us about the challenge you are focused on addressing and why it is critical that we make progress.

“If you drive around Macon, you can’t help but notice that there is a lot of blight.  It’s a code term for houses that are beyond repair. They will never be remodeled and revitalized.  A $9M fund has been created to tear these homes down, which has created an increase in the number of materials heading to our landfill which is already 95% filled. The biggest cost of demolition is waste removal.  Working with a sister company of ours that does demolition, Georgia Artisan partners to reclaim wood to produce home furnishings. 

The other part of our work is the employees that we have which we source from a partnership with the local technical school and workforce development authority.  Our main goal is to make money, but at the same time attack some of the social issues here in Macon.

We also work with nonprofits and local city government to create benches and signs for pop-up parks.  We contribute items that are place-makers for downtown Macon.

On days that I don’t make money, the personal and professional growth of my employees and the pride of the community we help grow are what I take home at the end of the day.”

 Your Journey

Entrepreneurship is a journey that requires connections and support from a wide array of stakeholders across the ecosystem to help successfully identify, start, and grow a social enterprise.

“It was never one thing, but I would say the most significant experience for our businesses was going through the Velocity Accelerator in Macon which was founded by J.R. McNair. J.R. was able to find a sponsorship for me and one other company to go through the Velocity program. 

When I came in to the program we were doing 1-2 orders a month.  Truly more of a hobby level.  Over the 10 week process, we changed our name to Georgia Artisan, updated our branding, pulled together a full business plan, and hired 2 full-time employees to help design and make more products. 

It took about six months for things to come together, thanks to good online reviews our sales picked up significantly and we have been growing ever since.  Velocity represented the transformational time—it allowed me to step back, put a plan in place for the business, and build a team. 

In terms of getting plugged in to the community, I was already involved in the local entrepreneurship network as a student at Mercer University. As part of the campus maker space, I entered a competition with a music venture idea and finished in fourth place, just outside of any investment funds, and was frustrated with the judges.  Six months later, I ran in to that same judge named Rob Betzel of Infinity Network Solutions and we had lunch.

That turned in to the best mentorship relationship that I have had. Through him I got connected to everyone in town.  Now I have four or five mentors including advisors in different areas like construction, building development, and sales and try to return that same support to others.”

Why Georgia’s Social Impact Ecosystem Matters

Being an entrepreneur is hard and it’s even more challenging when you are a social entrepreneur as your business model and / or structure doesn’t follow the same path as traditional start-ups. 

“Having a similar network like I have in Macon statewide where fellow Georgia entrepreneurs can link up with one another is at the top of my wish list.

Too often it feels like Columbus and Atlanta are further away than Boston.

My network within a 30 mile radius is strong.  Linking with other networks across the state would be beneficial.”

Interested in learning more about Andrew and Georgia Artisan, please visit: