Enterprise Facilitation: Growing Entrepreneurs One Contact at a Time

by Patty Clark, Director of Community Development, Kansas Department of Commerce

Owning your own business is the dream of many Americans, and more Americans than ever are taking advantage of opportunities to become entrepreneurs. This trend is especially promising for rural communities, where homegrown businesses are fueling economic growth a handful of jobs at a time.

Like other rural places in the Great Plains, many small, agriculture- based Kansas communities have been losing population as the next generation chooses not to return to the farm. However, new and exciting efforts are under way to create economic opportunities in Kansas from the inside out.Many of these initiatives began at Prosperity Summits – interactive workshops held around the state about the future of economic development in Kansas – at which there was a resounding call to focus time, energy and resources on the rural communities that are the state’s backbone. One of these initiatives is “Enterprise Facilitation,” a concept the Kansas Department of Commerce implemented in 2001 to help rural entrepreneurs get started and keep their businesses thriving.

Few people had heard of Enterprise Facilitation at that time. The brainchild of Ernesto Sirolli, founder of the Sirolli Institute in Sacramento, California, Enterprise Facilitation is a model that cultivates a “barn-raising”mentality among citizens, which can then be applied to business development. Sirolli’s program is being used successfully in rural areas throughout the United States, Canada and Australia. The Kansas Department of Commerce contracted with the Sirolli Institute to use its regional approach to economic development in Kansas.

Enterprise Facilitation uses the best resource rural Kansas has – its own citizens – to jumpstart the process of increasing local capacity. Business owners are motivated by different needs, but those taking advantage of entrepreneurial networks such as Enterprise Facilitation generally fall into these categories:

• Lifestyle entrepreneurs – individuals with a desire to live in or move to rural communities and would like to see their quality of life and communities prosper through more job creation.

• Growth entrepreneurs – existing entrepreneurs who want to enhance their communities by expanding businesses to create more jobs and better resources.

• Immigrant entrepreneurs – second and third generation immigrants who possess a desire to become successful business owners and operators.

• Transitional entrepreneurs – agricultural producers who must transition to more value-added and direct marketing business creation, and former employees of manufacturing firms who have lost their jobs to out sourcing or downsizing.

• Youth entrepreneurs – enthusiastic and less risk-averse youth who want to start their own businesses.

Through Enterprise Facilitation, communities take ownership of their future and create an entrepreneurial culture in a system-based, accountable approach to business and job creation.While still in their early stages, these projects are already showing promise not only as a way to create new jobs but also as a way to create a renewed sense of community.

There are now five separate Enterprise Facilitation projects throughout Kansas, organized in groups of five to six counties:Western Kansas (including Wichita); Prairie Enterprise Project, in central Kansas; Sunflower, in south central Kansas; QUAD, in the southeast; and Northeast Kansas. Each region faces unique challenges and opportunities, but by drawing on local resources, they are finding success.

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