Kyle Psaty

Boston World Partnerships Business Development Non-Profit Announces New Funding

Kyle Psaty | July 26th, 2010

BWP logoA year and a half ago, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and a team of collaborators officially formed Boston World Partnerships (BWP), a local non-profit powering a network of executives and innovators to work together encouraging business growth in the region. Today at 11:00am, Mayor Menino is expected to announce that the 501-(c)3 has raised additional funds through the demonstrated success of BWP’s creative, forward-thinking business model.

BWP consists of a three-person staff, led by Executive Director David McLaughlin, who act in concert as the core of a vast network of business professionals in the Boston area, called “Connectors.” These Connectors are dedicated to working with the BWP staff to foster economic growth through introductions and communication. The idea is to help companies expand into Boston and work with already-existing companies to remain rooted in the Boston community by helping them find new business in the region.

State Street Logo

State Street: $100k to Boston World Partnerships

Today’s press conference will be held at the Mullen advertising agency offices — the local ad agency is just one new partner BWP is announcing.

State Street Corporation Chairman Ronald Logue will join Menino to announce the donation of a $100,000 grant from the banking giant.

“The Boston World Partnerships Connectors are changing the way business gets done in Greater Boston,” said Menino in the release. “We couldn’t be more proud to have this group as our ambassadors, sharing their expertise and contacts to help other businesses grow. The BWP formula is simple, but effective.”

BWP has conducted a sort of trial run in their first year in existence thanks to a $1M grant from the Boston Redevelopment Authority and $400,000 in seed funding from Proctor & Gamble. According to McLaughlin, The organization now boasts 175+ Connectors, all of whom receive nothing but social capital in return for their efforts. Additionally, BWP has been able to cull the herd in their first year, releasing some 40 Connectors for a lack of involvement.

The organization, it seems, has been able to convince nine new investors of its viability and ROI value by way of a series of case studies BWP conducted over the course of its first year, all of which will be detailed at today’s presser.

One case study focused on Rue La La, a local members-only Internet shopping network owned by Network Convergence, Inc., that’s grown in popularity incredibly of late. Apparently Rue La La executives were considering relocating the business outside of Boston, but with the help of BPW and the Boston Redevelopment Authority, were able to secure a new office space and stay in town. Since relocating in the city, Rue La La hired 100 new employees and anticipates the addition of 100 more in the near future. According to BWP, this single-case scenario will mean $14M in immediate salary for Bostonians employed by Rue La La.

As of right now, BWP estimates that the organization has created 362 jobs — 2.4 per Connector — through similar work so far.

Additionally, BWP reports aiding businesses in the United Kingdom and Turkey to bring new business to Boston, as well as guiding a Harvard University innovation curriculum into Boston’s public schools when the institution was considering launching the program outside of the region.

Boston World Partnerships operates on an annual budget of $500,000. We at BostInnovation hope the announcements made today will further catalyze other local businesses to invest in the project so it might continue to expand its efforts and reach within the city and abroad. As a publication dedicated to spreading news about the great emerging and established businesses in the region, we have seen the impact of BWP first-hand: One of our own contributing writers, Alexis Schroeder, is a BWP Connector, and her efforts to facilitate communication among businesses have been readily apparent to the rest of our team.

What do you think of Boston World Partnerships and its efforts to generate business for the city through direct social connections? Please share your thoughts on the organization and the new funding in the comments section below.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 26th, 2010 at 7:30 am and is filed under Around the Hub. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Dave McLaughlin
    Kyle,

    thanks for featuring this. One slight correction - most of the funding partners announced today were not making CHARITABLE donations. Mostly, they were investing biz dev/marketing dollars to use BWP as a vehicle for driving their own growth strategies. It's an important distinction from our point of view. The State Street Foundation donation was charitable in nature, based on their sense of BWP's value in strengthening Greater Boston and growing the regional economy. We welcome both kinds of funding partners, but we really envision our growth being funded by businesses that are investing out of self-interest.

    Dave Mclaughlin
    @connectorsRus
  • KylePs80
    Interesting Dave,
    This is a distinction I believe I understood, but may not have reflected in the writing. I'll revisit that language now... I think my point of confusion hinges on the idea that investments made in BWP do translate into biz dev and marketing for the companies involved, but that those investments are also charitable in that they're tax deductible... Am I wrong in my understanding?

    Kyle Psaty
    Editor
    BostInnovation.com
  • Dave McLaughlin
    It's up to companies to get the guidance of their CPA as to whether or not they can take the tax deduction and to what extent. We are a 501(c)3, so contributions are tax-deductible if they are charitable in nature (as with the State Street Foundation contribution). But if they are not charitable in nature, then it gets into a more gray area for the company that is considering the deduction, and that's where they should refer to their own team for counsel.

    The reason the distinction is meaningful to me is because businesses need to understand that BWP is offering something of DIRECT value for the business funding partner, unrelated to the general good will / enlightened self interest that a charitable funding partner might expect. We're seeing business funding partners making these investments in BWP out of their biz dev, marketing, strategy or government affairs budgets, which are the activities where we deliver the value to them.
  • KylePs80
    Dave,
    Forgive me for misunderstanding the gray area, and for not taking time to fully understand the way this works for business funding partners.

    The way you described this distinction above makes me realize that BWP is more of a biz dev & marketing service provider that also supplies the city as a whole with a great support, rather than what I originally thought -- namely, that it's a charitable organization that can also provide valuable biz dev & marketing to contributors. (I think it was the 501-(c)3 status that threw me off.)

    This is awesome for a few reasons:

    1) BWP is proof that social entrepreneurship is possible on a regional corporate level -- It's a business model that provides greater value to the ecosystem each time a business funding partner invests with their own interests in mind.

    2) BWP is evidence that natural networkers -- Connectors -- can grow their own social capital while providing an initially less-tangible but nonetheless valuable return to the companies investing in BWP. This is something the community here should be better "educated" on, and it certainly will be with the case studies BWP has undertaken. After all, who doesn't like the idea of building a better network for their business in a way that's transparent and beneficial to the ecosystem as a whole?

    3) BWP shows that there's still a very real value for a modern city in today's Information Age in better facilitating so-called "real life" connections. We can Tweet at one another all day long, but there's something to be said for the real world network of the city's best and brightest growing more robust through efforts like that of the BWP. Which is to say, it IS a small world, after all, and digital communication can be seen as additive, not potentially threatening, to the "old systems."

    4) BWP stands as an example that some of the most exciting and potentially impactful business models are ones that longtime business people might initially see as "non-traditional."

    Very cool. We look forward to continuing to follow BWP and become further involved with your group. From our perspective, BWP is something that's easy to get behind.

    -Kyle

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