Telvin D. Debnam

Entrepôt, Inc is an innovative nonprofit focused on creating socially entrepreneurial, market-based solutions to poverty. This is accomplished through partnerships with nonprofits and businesses to develop earned income schemes and strategies, as well as providing job placement and venture development services for the underserved. We are partners and co-creators with our clients and the community. Our vision is to work hand in hand with the organizations and individuals, across the public, private and non-profit sectors to realize the goals of sustainable growth, increased capacity for positive impact, and unwavering focus on the shared values that bring us all together to work for the common good

A social enterprise is a business with primarily social objectives whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose in the business or in the community. Rather than being driven by the need to maximize profit for shareholders and owners Social Entrepreneurs work to maximize their impact on the community or the issue the enterprise was created with the intention of addressing. Social Entrepreneurship encompasses both non-profits that use business models to pursue their mission and for-profits whose primary purposes are social impact. The goal of achieving  targets that are social and environmental, as well as financial – is often referred to as “The Triple Bottom Line”. Many commercial businesses would consider themselves to have social objectives, but social enterprises are distinctive because their social or environmental purpose is the primary motivation in every decision they make, over and above profit or shareholder value.

What change do you want to bring to the world?

Our goal is simple: to eliminate poverty, period. Our vision is to pursue this goal by empowering the organizations and businesses that work to address the root causes of poverty as their primary goal by helping them to develop and implement innovative new tools and approaches to their work that allow them to carry out their mission more effectively. We want to enable nonprofits to create sustainable market based solutions to the root causes and consequences of poverty. We also want to assist business leaders to start new social enterprises or make the transition from a traditional profit centered model into a social and environmental mission focused Social Enterprise. We want our work to not only allow business owners and non-profit managers to live out their values through their business or accomplish their organizational mission, but increase their net revenue as well. By doing so we will not only increase the organizations’ sustainability, but gradually address arguably the single greatest foe of poverty alleviation; the false dichotomy between making profit and making the world a better place. We believe in the power of individuals and organizations to better the lives of the underserved. Through our efforts, we hope to increase the impact of our clients and partners; decrease poverty in the respective communities that our clients represent; and make people aware that poverty is not contained in some abstract, far off, “over there”, but present in our own cities, towns, and neighborhoods as well

Checkout our fanpage here on Facebook, our website will be coming soon. You can also follow us on twitter @entrepotinc