Investing to Teach Others the Business
A Pasadena entrepreneur who has urged business leaders to help more minorities join their ranks has put his money where his mouth is.
Joseph J. Jacobs, chairman of Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., announced Tuesday that his nonprofit foundation will provide a $100,000 grant to help establish a Pasadena-Altadena Entrepreneurial Training Institute.
“If we believe in the free market system, we should try to bring the underprivileged into that system--not by handouts, but by offering them an opportunity to participate in the system,” Jacobs said.
The institute, which organizers said will cost about $200,000 to fund, will be run by the Pasadena-Foothill branch of the Los Angeles Urban League in cooperation with several other community groups. It will primarily serve minority and women owners of small businesses.
“This new training program is designed to help people become independent by helping them create their own businesses,” Jacobs explained. “We decided that (the Los Angeles riots) were so horrible that we businessmen have not only a responsibility to fix what happened, but to prevent it from happening again.”
The institute will, among other things, provide nuts-and-bolts training in business plan development, sales, marketing, contracting and other critical areas of business start-up and operation, organizers said.
Jacobs, whose 12,000-employee engineering firm is one of the nation’s biggest and one of Pasadena’s largest employers, has teamed up with local Urban League officials to try to raise another $100,000 in donations from local businesses for the institute.
Shirley Adams, director of the Pasadena-Foothill branch of the Los Angeles Urban League, will spearhead the entrepreneurial training program. She said efforts are under way to find a director for the institute, and she hopes the program will be fully funded and operational by late summer.
It will be based at the Urban League headquarters on East Orange Grove Boulevard in Pasadena and will have seminars and provide one-on-one counseling to entrepreneurs.
Adams and Jacobs are also trying to find 15 businesses that would be willing to underwrite $50,000 each in loan money to be used to establish a $750,000 loan pool. Adams said the money would be used to lend small amounts, from $50 to several thousand dollars, to small or medium-sized existing or start-up minority businesses.
