Category: Social enterprise

Booth School of Business seeking Foundations for L3C Social Venture Fair

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Announcement from L3C Connect — University of Chicago to Facilitate Foundations’ Investment in L3Cs

The Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago will host a Social Venture Fair on October 26, built around the opportunities presented by the L3C, the the low profit limited liability company, social enterprise hybrid..The fair will include an educational component to be contributed by Marc Lane; a keynote luncheon talk by Sen. Heather Steans, the primary sponsor of Illinois’ L3C legislation; and presentations to social investors, including foundations, by entrepreneurs whose social ventures will have been vetted and selected by Booth’s MBA candidates.

Booth is seeking to identify foundations whose decision-makers may be interested in attending the Fair, to advance their understanding of the L3C’s potential to drive positive social change.

State of Pay – a Chicago news-blog suspense story

Originally published in Huffington Post-Chicago
Veteran journalists I know really enjoyed seeing themselves played by Russell Crowe in the recent film State of Play.

Handsome, disheveled, world weary and all-knowing, worn down by the events he views and records, Cal is still honest to a fault. Me, I am not as veteran as most — so my favorite was the set design of Crowe’s apartment. He had way too many refrigerator magnets on his fridge. That’s where I am at.

These days, it’s best to decorate the fridge, rather than open it. The shelves aren’t bare exactly, but they’re not stocked either.

I’d have to say that’s due to the current “State of Pay” in the journalism field.

As new and unexpected methods of news delivery reveal themselves, systems of vetting and hierarchy will develop, and established journalism will find itself embedded somewhere in this news delivery ecosystem developed by Steven Berlin Johnson, one of the founders of Outsidein.

Our emerging newsrooms will be staffed in part by a generation of newshounds — yes, journalists — who’ve taken on the task of news delivery through the Web on their own.

You can learn more about this world of independent news bloggers at The Chicago Media Future Conference, a free afternoon event Saturday, June 13, put together by Scott Smith, a senior editor at Playboy.com, and fellow co-conspirators, Barb Iverson, teacher of all things digital and journalistic at Columbia College, and Mike Fourcher, founder of Purely Political Consulting.

Meawhile, read on. I talked to a sampling of these entrepreneurs and here’s their review of the current “State of Pay” in Chicago.

The Beachwood Reporter
Steve Rhodes

“We just added a fantasy sports columnist,” says Steve Rhodes, editor and publisher of the Beachwood, “in addition to a new horse-racing correspondent and auto-racing correspondent.”

“We just posted another YouTube parody song, Wee Love Q by Green Bay Bill, Tom LaTourette and Joe Dillo. It has already been played on the radio.”

This follows a notable success. The Society of Professional Journalists in April honored a joint investigation by Chicago Talks and The Beachwood Reporter with the SPJ’s 2008 national award for online investigative reporting by an independent media outlet. The Better Government Association assisted with the investigation into the activities of Chicago City Council committees.

“The award was nice because it is the second year in the row that we have won while working with (Journalism Professor) Suzanne McBride’s class,” Rhodes says. “If Beachwood can do this without any money at all, with just a little bit of money we could compete with the legacy media,” Rhodes says. “It’s not like the newspapers are the only ones who can do it.”

Named after Rhodes favorite Wicker Park bar, The Beachwood Reporter is unique among Chicago’s news blogs. Searing political commentary is Rhodes’ signature and the rest of the coverage — on music, TV, politics, sports, books and People, Places and Things — shimmers with humor and creativity.

Joining a stable of 20 contributors associated with The Beachwood are
new columnists Dan O’Shea on fantasy sports, Thomas Chambers on horse racing and Carely Lundin on auto racing. Each and every one is a volunteer.

Recently, Rhodes says, one feature is soaring in popularity: Ferdy On Films, a member site of the Beachwood Media Company, is getting 40,000 unique views per month.

Windy Citizen
Brad Flora

“WindyCitizen’s front page is a snapshot of what is new and most interesting in Chicago right now,” says Brad Flora, editor and publisher. “It will all be local and it will all be interesting.”

Flora was one vocal guy at the Chicago Journalism Townhall in February. We won’t repeat what he said, but it was passionate and angry. He’s calmed down since then, and focusing on the business side of his site.

“We are very similar to a Digg or a Reddit,” Flora says. “It’s a people-powered editorial approach to pulling together the news of the day.”

As a crowd-powered front page for Chicago, on any given day Windy Citizen will feature local blogging, video, photos, news reporting that contributors have brought to the site. Flora says Windy Citizen has 42 blogs in its network, who are compensated by enhanced visibility. But none of them are PR writers, he said.

It’s a central place where links can be shared and content can be voted up and down.

“The stuff that gets the most votes floats to the front page using an algorithm,” Flora says.
He’s currently running a fundraising drive and he’s making some money. But the general state of money things?

“It’s been paying my rent and Ramen noodle bill,” Flora says.

New Communities
Patrick Barry

“We have some fermenting going on here and pretty soon the cork’s going to pop,” said Patrick Barry, an editor and writer at NewCommunities.org. “I hope that when the cork does pop it will unleash a bubbly cascade of champagne.”

Barry works with Gordon Walek to put out a suite of news sites that report on Chicago neighborhoods at Newcommunities.org.

Recently Walek and Barry launched NeighborhoodSportsChicago.org. They pulled everything together — reporting, writing and graphic design — and published it in 11 days.

“It was our latest experiment in trying to create new avenues for underreported stories,” Barry says. “We got decent traffic during that week.”

Built almost five years ago, New Communities sheds light on media-neglected Chicago neighborhoods and the organizing and economic growth going on in those places. It’s the kind of coverage that was the bread and butter of Chicago’s newsrooms in the days when newspapers were more prone to report on stories relevant to the entire demographics of a city instead of the top 50 percent income demographic.

The sites have sustained funding from the MacArthur Foundation, so unlike the editors of many news sites, NewCommunities editors and writers get paid for their original reporting. But still, since they are a nonprofit, their search for operational revenue is never-ending.

“I don’t want to simply pass on something from somebody else,” Barry says. “I want to create original content that is not provided anywhere else and provide some insight into why it deserves to be up there.”

“That takes work,” Barry says.

“I think people really have very little understanding of what goes into putting out news. The layers and layers of editing, reporting, graphic support and now technology support.”

Barry says NewCommunities coverage brings alive the language of community development in a powerful way.

“It’s allowed people to understand what community development means,” Barry says. “We just showed them by running stories and photos. You can touch and feel it a lot more rather than some theoretical presentation of comprehensive community development theory.”

Barry says the sites have been successful because of the vacuum they’re filling.

“The search engines saw the stuff immediately,” he says. And once they started publishing the sites, the neighborhoods got involved and started building their own grassroots sites.

“They realized that they could have their own voice,” Barry says.

Gapers Block
Andrew Huff

“We are soldiering on,” said Andrew Huff, editor and publisher of Gapers Block, a Chicago-centric Web publication providing information on news and events around town.

“We are looking for some new contributors in art. Our editors get a small stipend as an indication that we do want to try and pay everybody.

Chicago’s network of news bloggers is “definitely collaborative, and extremely supportive, but unfortunately that doesn’t translate into financial success,” said Huff, who launched Gapers Block six years ago.

And that’s what’s holding everybody back.

“I believe that the future of journalism is a whole bunch of little sites,” he said. “The newspaper isn’t being destroyed. It’s being exploded.”

And everybody is flying out and doing their own thing — pay be damned.

“In the past, newsrooms were considered to be almost a community utility,” Huff says. “But since investors started expecting ever-increasing returns, the money equation for newsrooms hasn’t made sense.” In the old days it was a stable profit, not an ever-increasing profit.

“I don’t think money people know how to make money with news,” Huff said. What does that mean for Huff who writer for business blogs to make ends meet?

“If I left, the site would die,” he said.

Community Media Workshop
Gordon Mayer

Thom Clark and his Community Media Workshop are making a list and checking it twice to understand what is happening in Chicago’s online news streams as part of a Chicago Community Trust project.

“One of the things that we are doing is building a list,” says Gordon Mayer, vice president. “We know how to do directories.”

“We found 70-80 solid online news sites. There are a couple of questions about what does and doesn’t fit into this category. That’s what’s going to be in the report,” Mayer says. “It’s basically impossible for a single organization to come up with an authoritative list.”

Mayers says that In looking at newspapers, “what really shifted was their mission of who they delivered information to. The audience shifted from everybody in Chicago to an audience that was more monied.”

And the Internet is clobbering newspapers because of it, Mayers says.

The Community Media Workshop’s portal opens into a plethora of channels aimed at assisting nonprofit communicators and others who want to connect with the legacy broadcast and newspaper press. Its NewsTips service offers insight into the kinds of stories nonprofits are seeking to place in the press.

The CMW is doing the report for the Chicago Community Trust and planning to build its own newsroom, Mayer says.

CMW’s annual conference June 9-11, Making Media Connections this year on June 11 includes a session on social media and the news that’s free. But if you want to attend anything else at the conference the cost is $95 for the half-day workshops and $190 for full-day workshops.

Read More: Andrew Huff, Barb Iverson, Beachwood Reporter, Brad Flora, Chicago Blogs, Chicago Media Future Conference, Chicago News, Chicago Newspapers, Community Media Workshop, Future Of News, Future-Of-Newspapers, Gapers Block, LISC New Communities, Making Media Connections, Mike Fourcher, Patrick Barry, Scott Smith, Steve Berlin Johnson, Steve Rhodes, Windy Citizen, Chicago News

L3Cs on Chicago Tonight

When the Chicago Sun-Times declared bankruptcy March 31, 2009, I discussed the future of Chicago’s newsrooms on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight with colleagues Chi-Town Daily News Editor Geoff Dougherty and Northwestern Digital Media Professor Owen Youngman. They made some great points about what is to come here and I made a few points about the L3C business model and the Chicago Newsroom of the Future. Here’s the clip.

I also mentioned the L3C and Chicago’s Newsrooms of the Future on a segment on ABC Channel 7 News.

The Emerging Ecosystem of News Delivery

Steven Berlin Johnson over at OutsideIn, which I wrote about in June 2007 for the Chicago Sun-Times, brought wonderful clarity to the situation of legacy news operations yesterday at a presentation at South By Southwest. He envisions an evolving news ecosystem and with clarity places newspapers as a foundational gathering operation. He also cautioned that it is important to move forward to a vision rather than cling to the old.

But in times like these, when all that is solid is melting into air, as Marx said of another equally turbulent era, it’s important that we try to imagine how we’d like the future to turn out and set our sights on that, and not just struggle to keep the past alive for a few more years.

Steve says so well what I have been stumbling around trying to articulate here in Chicago. In evidence of the beauty of the Web, I was able to read his comments and see a video of him presenting the day after he did it – glorious access to information!

At a Poynter Institute event here in Chicago yesterday, the reality Steve describes was coming sharply into focus in the discussion. It is so sad that newspapers and some other legacy media do not see the preciousness of their brands and how important it is to preserve THAT so that they can have a place in the new ecosystem. Could be that they think their brand is a logo and marks, not something organic that emerges from the way that they operate.

Newspapers don’t need to go more deeply into the “swamp” of disinformation or useless eye candy to have a role in the new forest. They need to do a LOT more of what they do well — good local reporting — and spread cooperatively through their value systems to work with partners. Unfortunately, some newspapers like the Sun-Times where I used to work have been sucked dry of their newsroom resources by their business operating model. The Sun-Times is operated by a hedge fund, and all it wants is a dollar return. Hedge funds don’t value one bit the social return that is evident in a well-done newspaper newsroom.

It’s one reason why I am on the soap box for theL3C hybrid for news businesses. It’s great to hear Steve’s vision and here in Chicago, many of us are working to develop a healthy new ecosystem. Below is Steve’s flow chart for news delivery. You can watch a video of the presentation here.

Steven Berlin Johnson’s News Flow

How to save newsrooms

Chicago’s newspapers could find a lifeline to solvency and a return to social purpose in a new kind of business structure called an L3C, or low-profit limited liability company.

Why is that?

Illinois foundations have $350 billion in assets and they are required to invest 5% of that, or $17 billion, in programs that serve a social purpose each year. If the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune were to be reborn as L3Cs — a structure that encourages foundation investment while allowing a profit –they could tap into some of that $17 billion. With foundation heavyweights on board, other investors seeking a decent, but not excessive, return might contribute to the coffers.

Bill SB 239 creating the L3C hybrid was introduced to the Illinois legislature Feb. 4 by Sen. Heather Steans (D-Chicago). Prospects for the bill are good, supporters say.

The L3C structure was signed into law in Vermont in 2008, and into law in Michigan and the Crow Nation in January. Legislatures in Georgia, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon are also expected to pass L3C legislation this year.

In Washington, D.C., draft legislation called the Program Related Investment Promotion Act of 2008 is being considered by staff in the Senate Finance committee. While many types of businesses–from community yoga centers to affordable housing–could benefit from L3Cs, the successful creation of newspaper L3Cs is largely contingent on passage of the Federal law, which would effectively expand charitable purposes to include newspapers.

The L3C structure plays well in Peoria where the Peoria Newspaper Guild, and a coalition of
Journal Star employees and community leaders have been quietly looking for two years at alternatives including co-ops and employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) to operate the Peoria Journal Star.

The one idea that really clicked was the L3C.

“We are looking at long-term ownership that puts journalism first,” said Jennifer Towery, President of the Peoria Newspaper Guild and also Neighbors Editor for the Peoria Journal Star. “[The L3C] just resonated. It has so much potential.”

Because it can tap into foundation money, an L3C is sustainable, and because an L3C business must meet a social purpose, it realigns newspapers with their mission of community service.

“It insists that serving the readers is your mission,” she said. “If it doesn’t serve the readers to cut your newsroom staff you can’t do it.”

While good news judgment is essential to accomplishing the social return, the L3C structure has significant sweeteners to generate returns for investors.

“The participation of the foundation, which is seeking high social return but low monetary return serves as a catalyst for high investor return,” said Marc J. Lane, a Chicago-based attorney who authored the Illinois L3C legislation and last year launched Chicago’s chapter of the Social Enterprise Alliance, which believes in investing in businesses that do well by doing good. “You can end up with a blended financial return that is fairly modest but skewed toward the private sector investor.”

“Capital is formed,” Lane said. “Social purpose is achieved.”

The L3C is different from a typical nonprofit because it can earn a return, but the social purpose must trump the financial purpose.

Lane says that he expects the Illinois law will pass with little debate. “I see it sailing through,” he said. But even if it doesn’t, Illinois news gathering organizations could incorporate in Vermont or other states that have legalized L3Cs.

The creator of L3Cs, Robert Lang, CEO of the Mary Elizabeth & Gordon B. Mannweiler Foundation, says the Federal legislation is essential for any of these good news scenarios to play for newspapers.

Lang, an economist and businessman by trade, devised the L3C structure to address the problems he was having while trying to invest family foundation money in a sustainable and effective way.

“Historically, the IRS has not accepted newspapers as nonprofits,” Lang said. “The Federal legislation mentions L3Cs specifically and it lists newspapers specifically.”

The problem newspapers are dealing with today is that investors turned news-gathering into Wall Street product.

“The Peoria paper still makes money,” Lang said. “The problem is it cannot make enough profit for all the games normal for-profits get involved in.”

But in the L3C scenario, newspapers can make “enough” money.

“What we are looking at is the newspaper as a self-sufficient entity,” he said.
“It will not be a high profit entity.”

The idea of the Newspaper L3C is to bring back those journalistic contributions like neighborhood reporting, music reviews and book sections and make them part of the community service. And ads are part of the mix too.

“I think there is a lot of viability to newspapers still,” Lang said.

Could the L3C save Chicago’s newspapers?

“Somewhere you still need a newsgathering organizations,” Lang said. Newspapers still drive much of the news circulating on the web, he added.

“I’m not saying that we can save the Chicago Tribune and make it what it was 10 years ago,” he said. “But at least the money that’s made today can go toward improving the product not paying off leveraged debt.”

Meanwhile back at the Journal Star, which has an owner and is not for sale, Peoria Guild President Towery says, “We are all interested in finding models that others can replicate. It’s not saving the paper, it’s saving journalism. ”

“One of the bright spots is that [newspapers] have lost so much value that it is now feasible for communities to buy their newspapers.”

Read More: Americans For Community Development, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, Doing Well By Doing Good, Heather Steans, Jennifer Towery, Journalism, l3c, Low-Profit Limited Liability Company, Marc J. Lane, Mary Elizabeth And Gordon B. Mannweiler Foundation, Newspaper Industry, Newspapers, Oregon, Peoria Journal Star, Peoria Newspaper Guild, Program Related Investment Promotion Act Of 2008, Robert Lang, Saving Newspapers, Social Enterprise Alliance, Chicago News

A sample newspaper L3C

newspapers.jpgI write in the Huffington Post—Chicago February 9 about the potential for newspapers to incorporatebe set up as a new type of corporation business, an L3C, low-profit limited liability company.corporation. This would allow them to meet their community purpose, and qualify for foundation money while providing a return for private investors committed to the social good. Here’s a sample of what a newspaper L3C might look like, according to Robert Lang, who developed the structure.

Sample Newspaper
Project Goal
Purchase and restructure the Community’s Newspaper as a locally based independent newspaper with a focus on community service and news targeted specifically toward the local market. The emphasis includes the recognition that newspapers are the only business specifically recognized in the U.S. Constitution and the information provided is vital to the proper function of a democracy. The newspaper is also an important engine of the economy of the area and is an vital source, through both news and advertising, of information significant to the commerce of the area. Additionally, many of the cultural and nonprofit venues depend on a healthy vibrant newspaper for dissemination of information regarding their services. Lastly, government at all levels needs newspapers for the same dissemination of necessary information.

L3C Advantage –
The operation can be a profitable, self sustaining venture by expanding its role and restoring many services that have been reduced or cut. It will be profitable enough to maintain and purchase equipment as needed and to explore and develop ways to use and integrate new media with the newspaper model. But as an L3C it will not be under pressure to generate unreasonable level of profits or diminish services in order to increase profits or service highly leveraged debt. The L3C structure will permit the paper to direct its effort to providing the kind of community service the subscribers, advertisers and other stakeholders have a right to expect. It can operate as a public service vehicle rather than emphasize the maximization of return on investment model that has become so common in the industry and is ruining newspapers all over America. As an L3C, it will, by law, be charged with placing community service ahead of profit.

Amount of Investment Required -To Be Determined

Possible Members of L3C –

Equity or First risk tranche
Foundations through PRIs and tax deductible donations by individuals to Community Foundations turned into PRI investments by Community Foundations. Community Foundations in particular have a stake in the successful operation of a local community newspaper since in many ways it is vital to the basic spirit and health of the community served by the Community Foundation.

Mezzanine tranches
Employees, local businesses such as auto dealers or restaurants, local merchants and banks, supermarkets and other national chain retailers and theater chains all of whom depend on the viability of the paper for delivery of their message to local customers. Local individuals and investors who see the value in a viable local community even if the return on investment is not spectacular. An example might be a large local employer that needs a strong, prosperous, cohesive, vibrant local community in order to enhance their ability to attract the best employees to come to our community to work there. The community often makes a difference as to the level of compensation a large corporation has to pay since prospective hires may demand higher pay if they perceive the need to leave a community for some of the services they will desire or to compensate for a lower quality of life.

Senior tranche
Foundations through Mission Related Investments of endowment, State and local Pension Funds, insurance companies, foreign sovereign wealth funds and other very large scale institutional investors who are looking for very secure long term income paying investments with a return compatible with the risk.

Members not making cash investments -to be determined

Management Structure
A hired professional staff reporting to a management board which may include members of the present management structure.

Structure of investment
Stability of the project for the long run indicates an all equity transaction. It is obvious that certain groups such as the local members of the Newspaper Guild will have a relatively small financial stake in relation to their role in say over the quality of the product. Other investors such as local businesses will put in more dollars for substantially less day to day control. Others such as pension funds will be far more passive investors.

Projected Sales, Expenses, and Gross Profit -tbd

Projected investment and Return per Tranche-tbd

Unique socially beneficial aspects of this project
The newspaper means many different things to many different stakeholders. The key to the success of the newspaperas an L3C will be the drafting of an operating agreement that assures all the stakeholders that the paper will live up to their expectations and yet permits those in charge to be able to make the needed business decisions on a day to day basis without having to clear each and every decision with the various stakeholders. It is going to require new thinking to some extent on all sides. The advertisers, for example, will have to understand that they are investing to be sure of the success of a tool necessary to the marketing of their products. The management will have to understand that the employees are the most valuable asset, while the employees will have to make tough decisions sometimes that are important to the viability of the paper and think like the owners they will be. But once an operating agreement has been crafted a newspaper as a pillar of the community will finally be a reality.

Bobbing for bits on the media streams

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnSauj2855M

Sally’s World, July 2003
www.worldwit.org

By SALLY DUROS

Lately, those who make a living as pundits have been busy clicking and clucking and clattering keyboards and uttering bellicose profundities about one, single-syllable word: Facts. The questions about fact morphing into fiction float and bob about like so many balloons buoyed by the media winds.

Me – I’m not chasing any balloons because I take as fact very little of what I read or see broadcast in any of the media streams. I am one of those people who thought the Barry Levinson film, “Wag the Dog,” was a thinly veiled documentary.

Instead I ride the media currents to see what is bobbing on the horizon of the public mind. What’s happening today is a simple matter: The media soufflé has flattened and with the collapse of the puffery – within corporations, government, and media outlets – we are rushing to fill the void. I’m enjoying the “whooshing sound,” and looking forward to seeing what kind of omelets we’re left with.

Label me wacky or label me a cynic (perhaps both!), but for me a fact begins with that which I can personally touch, see, smell, taste, and hear. I then apply the gut test – my intuitive sense – to create an impression aligned with my value system, cultural wants and spiritual beliefs. Some of my criteria are tangible and some are intangible. And then, when I’m done I still don’t have a fact. I have my belief. One of my core beliefs is that we are all – each of us – a spinmeister of sorts.

I liked the tale that was being spun by master storyteller Judy Wicks, owner of Philadelphia-based White Dog Cafe, co-chair of the National Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), and chair of the Social Venture Network (SVN). She was speaking at a kickoff meeting for a new organization here called Sustainable Chicago.

Wicks says that upon waking every day, she looks in the mirror and says: “Good Morning Beautiful Business.” You have to like a woman who has two cabins in the woods, one named “Happy House,” and the other named “Fart Freely.” What began as a home-based coffee shop in 1983 is now a restaurant that seats 200 and grosses $5 million a year, with a commitment to fun, food and social activism.

What was most persuasive about Wicks was that her tale came right from her heart. I could tell because I had heard it before – from entrepreneurs of all political stripes and others involved in building local economies. That is, that business is really about relationships, relationships with certifiable, verifiable, living, breathing real people.

“A large factor in our success is that we are a real community-based business,” Wicks said. “We share values with our customers.”

“Living and working in the same community has given me a great sense of place, which is really important for building local, living economies,” Wicks said. “When you work and you live in the same place there is a very short distance between decision makers and the person who is affected by your decisions because every day you see your customers that you serve, every day you see your employees that you work with. And you live in the community and you see your neighbors (and the impact of your decisions.)”

That’s the kind of real world fact-checking that resonates for me, and helps me spin my personal vision of a perfect world. It also occurred to me that that’s the kind of fact-checking you get, and you can create through your local WorldWIT email discussions and real world events.

WorldWIT was ahead of the game in understanding that the strength of the new email tools of the web could help women with a friendly point of view, women from the same work/life integration tribe, women in the same cities and regions, share information with each other, and then create real world networks.

When you post a question to a local discussion list, like ChicWIT, you can receive a dozen or more replies. You can pick and choose what information to follow up on based on your own criteria. Even better yet, you can attend a networking event and meet the helpful individuals who communicate with you through the lists. And if something happens and you have to change jobs and move to another city, you can use the same WorldWIT resource to check out your new hometown.

Before the rush to make the Web a commercial force, there was a web that was a community of people. Hobbyists and techies and those who were simply curious built the web by putting up special interest sites, basically as communications tools that said, ” Hi, there – look what I’ve done!” That was about it. If you were on the web around 1995, you will remember when Yahoo was just a page of favorite links, a daily record of what was new on the web, put up by a couple of guys who thought the information-sharing was really neat. It was a community, and the sites were places where like attracted like, where you could find your tribe.

During the days of the dotcom gold rush, some of us lost site of the tribal energy because some financial wizards got the idea that there was money in huge global markets and numbers of eyeballs. Perhaps there is. But in my opinion, that is not the richest or deepest well.

The under tapped frontier is the landscape occupied by WorldWIT, where the locals knock on each other’s doors to find the answers to the burning questions of the day, the answers that simplify our everyday lives.

When we send our request to the WorldWIT universe, we are inviting friendship and collegial exchange. We are building trust and creating relationships. We – friends, neighbors and colleagues – are finding and becoming trusted sources for each other. And that is a great way – and the only way – to do business with each other. And that – to me – is a fact that I count on.