ENTREPRENEURS FOUNDATION LINKS SMALL FIRMS WANTING TO DO GOOD WORKS

07:37 AM CST on Thursday, January 24, 2008

By ANGELA SHAH / The Dallas Morning News

With 55 employees in its South Dallas facility, Primesource Food Service Equipment can't really afford to staff a corporate community development department.

But like its larger counterparts, it wants to give back to the community. That's why it joined the Entrepreneurs Foundation of North Texas shortly after opening its doors in 2000.

"We can leverage their staff ... to get help with setting up community service projects," said Wes Blair, the company's chief operating officer. "We can focus on providing the service."

The Entrepreneurs Foundation's mission is to help smaller companies organize volunteer activities.

Essentially, it's "an outsourced community development department," said executive director Pam Gerber.

"The bottom line is that [corporate philanthropy is] good for business," she said. "When you've got your employees engaged in their community, either with money or hours, they are more committed to that company because the company is committed to the community."

Companies can become members in one of three ways: making an annual contribution, donating stock options to the foundation or agreeing to give stock should the firm go public or be acquired by a public concern.

The stock options alternative is a reflection of the foundation's roots in Silicon Valley, where it was founded by cash-poor start-ups flush with stock options.

The Dallas branch of the foundation, which has 64 member companies, was established two years after the foundation began in 1998.

"When we got started, it was more like two guys in a Starbucks with a cellphone," Ms. Gerber said.

Now there are foundation offshoots in seven other cities across the United States, including Portland, Ore., and Boston, as well as in Tel Aviv, Israel.

New companies fill out a survey to identify the sorts of philanthropy that employees would like to do and the types of agencies that might best fit with the company's culture.

Skywire Software in Frisco joined the foundation in 2002 when the company had only two dozen employees, using the foundation's service projects as a team-building exercise, said Patrick Brandt, chief executive officer at Skywire.

"It has helped us bond as a company" as the firm has grown to its current staff of 630, he said.

In one of the foundation's projects last year, more than 350 volunteers from various companies primed and painted doors, built kitty condos for animal shelters, replaced batteries in smoke alarms at apartments and other small projects.

Those individual actions, though, added up to a lot of community good will toward the companies, Ms. Gerber said.