Making the Case One More Time
By Gary Trauner
Suddenly, here we are. My last day leading Silicon Couloir is this coming Friday. Five years of hard work, rapid growth, unadulterated joy (most of the time), and – hopefully – impactful service to our incredible community.
And yet, I still sense that there is a sizable segment of our community that doesn’t understand what we do or why a non-profit is needed to serve the private sector. FULL DISCLOSURE: some of this column includes points I made over 2 years ago in a previous Visionary Ventures piece, and which I believe deserve to be re-emphasized as my parting effort.
Let’s look at the latter point first. Non-profits in our community that provide food, shelter, medical services and other social services do incredible, vital, and necessary work. They need and deserve our community’s full support. I am endlessly appreciative of the difference they make for so many who need their aid. However, much of the work they do is immediate (and critical) relief, instead of solving the root cause of the demand for their respective services.
This is where the 3-sector model of every community, and Silicon Couloir, come into the picture. As I wrote about 2 years ago, every community is essentially divided into 3-sectors: the public sector, the non-profit sector and the private sector.
The public sector - what we know as government - obviously has significant impact in our community and on our lives. Yes, government can do good things; yet this sector tends to be reactive, subject to changing priorities and slow to effect policy (how many public hearings did that zoning change or land protection take?).
The non-profit sector serves a vital function, generally filling the gap where there is a perceived community need that is not being adequately addressed by the public or private sectors. Non-profits are necessary, but not sufficient, to ensure a healthy and thriving community.
That leaves the private sector. The 800-lb. gorilla on the block. The sector in which most of a community’s financial capital, and much of its intellectual capital, resides. It’s also the sector which, in aggregate, generally provides the vast majority of jobs. Historically, in the Tetons region, the private sector was dominated by tourism, agriculture, and a bit farther afield, resource extraction. As our region changes, wealth disparity and the resulting lack of living affordability have become major issues. Therefore, creating meaningful year-round work with living wages is more important than ever.
In addition, the private sector isn’t going away. It is, after all, the foundation of our entire free-market economy. To me, the challenge is thus very clear: how to ensure the private sector succeeds while channeling a portion of its resources in the direction of aligning entrepreneurship with community vision to promote a diverse economy and healthy environment for current and future generations.
Here is what I wrote two years ago, and it is just as applicable today:
“A successful private sector that provides meaningful, well-paying jobs with appropriate benefits can lift community members and alleviate, to some extent, the non-profit and public sector’s social program burden, allowing these sectors to do more and have a greater impact with their resources. The private sector clearly influences public policy (think comp plan, zoning, development approval, etc.). Just as obviously, all one needs to do is look at private sector sponsorship of charitable organizations in our valley to gauge the symbiotic relationship between those two sectors.”
Now let’s be realistic. The private sector will always have at least one eye focused on profits. To state the obvious, private enterprises must be profitable to, well, stay in business, and entrepreneurs generally are looking to be rewarded for their risk-taking efforts with personal financial success. Yet, with proper oversight and guidance, the private sector can - and I would argue must – be a positive force in ensuring our region is one where people, flora and fauna can thrive in coexistence.
It takes all three sectors working together to meet the community’s vision and needs. Helping the private sector use its financial, intellectual and community clout to lift up members of the local community while taking some of the burden off of the public and non-profit sectors is a win-win for everyone: growing ventures, individuals, government, non-profits and, perhaps most importantly, the community as a whole. The private sector can do well (financially) by doing good (communally) and do good by doing well.
To answer the former point in the 2nd paragraph of this column, supporting and incubating one of the engines of our local economy through a values-based, community-oriented lens is what Silicon Couloir does, and why a non-profit that supports the private sector makes sense. We do this through discrete programs that serve entrepreneurs wherever they are in their journey: providing physical coworking space, education, networking events, mentoring, a pitch competition, and capital access through angel investing and investor networking.
The proof is in the pudding: based on the continually increased demand to participate in Silicon Couloir programs, we must be meeting a critical community need.
Finally, I want to take the opportunity to thank everyone in the Silicon Couloir ecosystem for being part of this wonderful journey with me: the board, volunteers, financial supporters and community members who engage in our programming. But most of all, I want to thank my incredible teammates - Rebecca, Britt, Kristine and Thomas - for their support, dedication, hard work, constructive criticism, honesty, integrity and occasionally appropriate skepticism. Without you, I’m just a guy with a title.
See you around town.