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Pocketnest shares insight with PACE and NEI on entrepreneurship and community engagement
Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE) and New Economy Initiative (NEI) partnered on a project to explore the relationship between entrepreneurs and community engagement, asking the question: How can we motivate and position rising generations of entrepreneurs to give back to the communities that supported them along the way?
Jessica Willis, founder and CEO, Pocketnest shared her insight with PACE and NEI to help them to better understand the role of galvanizing the local community when starting a new business.
From interviews with Willis and other entrepreneurs, PACE and NEI were able to uncover key insights, including:
91% of entrepreneurs are currently engaging their communities outside of their business responsibilities.
44% of entrepreneurs say their businesses have grown as a result of engaging their communities; this increases to 54% for female entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs’ most commonly selected motivations to engage the community—by a significant margin—center around intrinsic motivations like personal values and passion.
Entrepreneurs see more than double the benefits than obstacles to engaging their communities. Across all demographics, the largest reason entrepreneurs do not start or increase their community engagement is business demands on their time.
While 53% of entrepreneurs define community as the place where they live and work, 43% have a different definition of community and 4% have no definition of community.
69% of entrepreneurs say their current geographic community helped them on their entrepreneurial journey.
Read the full paper from PACE and NEI (and see p. 44 for the Pocketnest feature!).
Interested in bringing Pocketnest to your community? Request a demo!