Raised Capital: The STEPS Story
Note: Written in collaboration with STEPS Steering Committee member, Sheetal Lodhia. For a full bio, please scroll to the end.
STEPS Consulting, a social enterprise, and its nonprofit partner organization the Sustainable Thinking and Expression on Public Space (STEPS) Initiative were founded in 2009 by Alexis Kane Speer. Building on the work of the Initiative to date, STEPS Consulting provides clients with unique services that draw on the knowledge and experience of our network of urban planners, artists, architects, educators, designers and community mobilizers. We provide clients with creative community–based research, engagement and placemaking services, while supporting the nonprofit activities of the STEPS Initiative.
The STEPS Initiative responds to a need for a meeting ground for community arts, development and environmental groups to share experiences on using art to connect people with places (especially public spaces). Such artistic work effectively creates community; and we call such work Public Space ARTivism. Up until this point, ARTivists have not really had a place to share these experiences, or to teach and learn from others working in public space. In fact, while each STEPS ARTivist seeks to engage with community, the process of working as an artist in public space is paradoxically very isolating. STEPS has begun providing such a meeting ground and providing resources for ARTivists. We have a bilingual website, a Facebook page, and will soon be launching a searchable ARTivist database and resource library. Perhaps our biggest strength at the moment is our team of over 50 dedicated volunteer interns from across Canada who believe in the larger vision of STEPS.
STEPS Consulting has been operating with very little startup capital (like most social enterprises). Alexis Kane Speer, the Founding Director and Helen Huang, the Artistic Coordinator secured YWCA Youth Eco Internships to begin STEPS. The majority of financial support has come from in-kind contributions from Toronto’s Centre for Social Innovation (CSI), and from partnership developments with our own network of ARTivists and other nonprofits and community agencies. We have been successful at leveraging the resources we have, such as networks and development agencies. We recognize, however, that neither the STEPS Initiative nor STEPS Consulting can rely on in-kind support indefinitely. STEPS has throughout this year applied for numerous Federal, Provincial and Municipal grants to fund project, company and resource development (a gruelling, but necessary process!). We are in the process of creating several curriculum resources, including The STEPS Manualfesto: profiles of ARTivists across Canada, a series of promising practices for Public Space ARTivism, and a code of conduct, guiding ARTivists on ways to engage with communities respectfully.
We are also developing an “ARTivismworkshop series” in low income communities to provide youth with opportunities to engage in Public Space ARTivism. In partnerships with interdisciplinary artists, the workshops will draw on techniques of oral storytelling, performance, social practice, urban design and collage. STEPS seeks to offer free workshops in priority neighbourhoods and paid workshops for those who can afford them.
STEPS Consulting is in the exploratory phases of financing options, and only just beginning to consider options such as private equity, venture capital and community bonds. We have been seeking meetings with private enterprises to discuss possible collaborations, and to discuss ways in which STEPS might pilot new methods of community consultations and public policy development guidelines. Over the next 5 years, we hope to develop successful partnerships with the for-profit sector so that we can achieve our long-term goal of turning a percentage of profits over to the STEPS Initiative.
To find more information on STEPS, visit the website at http://www.stepsinitiative.com/. Please also feel free to post your thoughts and perspectives in the discussion below in regards to methods and experiences on raising capital to start or grow a social enterprise.
Photo credit: STEPS
Author credit: Sheetal is a recent doctoral graduate in English Literature from Queen’s University. She has researched and taught in various areas of interest, including Renaissance poetry, prose and drama, history of medicine, colonialism and cultural studies. She is very much interested in fostering relationships between academic institutions and the world-at-large, making research accessible to a wider public through writing, radio, film, theatre, and other creative means. When she is not working on her split step, she can be seen writing creatively, and devouring blogs, tv, and magazines. Sheetal has been supporting the STEPS Initiative in various capacities since June 2010, and has just started a production company called Black Leg Productions (blacklegproductions.com).
