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Sand
dollars: India incubator concept comes to Mass.
What’s good for Hubli and Dharwad is good for Lowell and Lawrence, says Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande.
The telecom entrepreneur and philanthropist is importing to the Merrimack River Valley a philanthropy incubator model his nonprofit Deshpande Foundation Inc. has piloted since 2005 in his native state of Karnataka, India.
In northern Karnataka, the Deshpande Foundation has seeded about 60 social-enterprise startups in a program called the Social Entrepreneurship Sandbox. The foundation will likely spend about $1 million in year one of launching a similar incubator in the Merrimack River Valley — a model Deshpande, chairman and co-founder of Chelmsford, Mass.-based Sycamore Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: SCMR), said he hopes can become a global blueprint.
Massachusetts has one of the highest concentrations of nonprofit workers in the nation. Deshpande said he wants to draw Boston organizations’ attention to efforts grown indigenously in hard-scrabble local communities.
“There’s innovation that happens when people adapt innovation ideas to their own areas,” Deshpande said. “Boston is the nonprofit capital. And who needs it the most? Lowell-Lawrence. But it’s hard to get in there.”
New York City-based Teach for America opened a Boston office two years ago and now has about 125 young teachers in Massachusetts schools. As of September, 20 of them are starting their first semester of teaching in Lawrence with a $100,000 Deshpande grant.
Joshua Biber, founding executive director of Teach for America of Greater Boston, said he’s hopeful the Sandbox will draw other organizations.
“When other issues are being addressed — housing, family — it makes it easier to succeed as a teacher,” Biber said. “If we did that at a system level, that could serve as a proof point and a blueprint for other communities.”
The Merrimack Valley Sandbox will be headquartered in UMass Lowell’s Wannalancit building. The university will also provide a stream of academics and students. The Deshpande Foundation has lured executive director Todd Fry from the Boston Center for Community and Justice.
UMass Lowell Executive Vice Chancellor Jacqueline Moloney said social entrepreneurship is already emphasized at the university. However, Deshpande’s Sandbox approach will require a new approach.
“It’s more ‘Let 1,000 flowers bloom’ than some of the work we’ve been doing,” Moloney said. For example,
UMass currently assigns students capstone projects; Sandbox projects are more likely to be generated out of multidisciplinary teams formed inside the incubator, she said.
Deshpande Foundation Executive Director Nishith Acharya said if the Merrimack Valley Sandbox grows as big as the India program, the foundation will be spending “several million dollars a year” there.
“It’s not that different from doing the Sandboxes in 100 other places or 1,000 different places,” Deshpande said. “The idea is to develop a new way of doing philanthropy development.”
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