Local Business
Entrepreneurship gets a deeper purpose
A. Thomas Loy wants to add another bottom line to business.
He calls it the double bottom line: Financial profits are definitely a goal, but so is helping the poor and underprivileged. It's a form of business with a new name, social entrepreneurship, and it's something the Oklahoma City businessman said he'll soon see a lot more of.
"I think and hope that 20 or 50 years from now 'social entrepreneurship' will be a redundant phrase," he said. "... I think double-bottom-line investing will be a public mandate."
Loy spoke about social entrepreneurship Wednesday evening at the University of Oklahoma as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week.
Loy has plenty of experience in the field as the chairman and CEO of MetaFund, a nonprofit community development fund that lends money to and buys interest in Oklahoma businesses. The businesses have to either target an underserved population group or a distressed geographic area and create or retain jobs or housing or provide other benefits, Loy said.
"We will look at any kind of industry, any kind of project, any kind of business that will meet our goals," he said. The staff of five manages $10 million in capital that was raised when the company began in 2000. For the past five years, MetaFund has made about $1 million annually in returns on their investments in businesses, Loy said.
Loy told the audience of mostly students that social entrepreneurship isn't for someone who's afraid of risk. He listed a number of deals MetaFund made that were profitable, but said many more have been flops.
Loy was brought in to talk to students because there are many people doing social entrepreneurship now, but "his model really seems to work the best," said Jim Wheeler, Stanley White executive director of the Center of Entrepreneurial Studies in the Price College of Business.
The center sponsored several panels and other events throughout the week in order to promote entrepreneurship among OU students.
"We're really trying to push that it's more than just business," Wheeler said. "It's idea driven, it's problem-solving driven -- so it's any major."
Julianna Parker Jones 366-3541 jparker@normantranscript.com
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