Social Impact Blog

An organization created for educators, by educators. That’s how Lauren Greenspan describes Youth Yoga Project, a social enterprise created by herself and co-founder Julia Handelman.   After years of working in academia and public school settings, both Greenspan and Handelman stumbled upon a missing piece of the mental health aspect in K-12 education, for both students […]

SocialVentures is proud to announce the 2020 Annual Report: The State of Social Enterprise in Central Ohio. Every year, we showcase the amazing social enterprises that have gone above and beyond to serve their community. This year, we celebrate the resiliency and dispatch of social enterprises and small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. For most, […]

This time last year, we gathered together at the Columbus Museum of Art for Positioned to Prosper 2019 to celebrate the 98+ social enterprises that encompass the SocialVentures family. This year, we’re doing things a little differently.  Just as many of you have had to adjust to new challenges and obstacles, SocialVentures has also had […]

In 2012, David Ranallo learned that the food space needed his help. After working with direct-to-consumer programs in several industries and learning about the power of decentralization, he discovered that the same could be applied in the food and farming sector.  “With the meat processors, the big farms, there are very few middle-class farms; everything’s […]

French for “to improve,” Bonifier was developed to do just that. Founder Ryan Scott came up with the idea for a web-based app— a virtual sidekick called Pip—two years ago to improve the pediatric-patient experience. Scott’s goal is for Pip to help alleviate the fear, anxiety and loneliness experienced by sick children. “1.7 million kids receive inpatient treatment (every […]

Glance above the counter at the Clintonville bakery Food for Good Thought, and it’s right there, printed in red. In 2018, the bakery’s customers tipped $653. These above-and-beyond incremental dollars provided more than 70 hours of paid employment to the individuals with disabilities, whose pictures hang on the opposite wall. But those numbers are now […]

If you’re of a “certain age”—read, “OK, Boomer”—you likely remember the late ‘60s, early ‘70s ABC series “The Mod Squad.” The series featured an unlikely trio of undercover detectives, each representing a segment of the era’s counterculture, tackling big, sticky cultural issues. Today, Columbus has its own Mod Squad in the form of a social enterprise founded […]

Eddie Rapp operates two social enterprises owned by Lutheran Social Services. The businesses are dedicated to moving men out of homeless shelters by providing supportive employment to residents in the Lancaster shelter system. Fairhaven Lawn Care and Patriot Pride Painting have a customer mix that is 60 percent commercial and 40 percent residential, with Franklin […]

When HonestJobs.co and Nature’s Touch Landscaping & Lawn Care were named winners of The Metropreneur’s annual Social Enterprise of the Year Awards presented in partnership with SocialVentures at Aspire 2019, there were no red carpets, no smoke machines, gold statuettes, or long-winded, political speeches. For Ramona Wheeler of Nature’s Touch and Harley Blakeman of HonestJobs.co, […]

Farm-to-table food-grower preps for sustainability, 2020 launch John Schrock is an engineer who has an idea for how to transform the farm-to-table movement. Having worked on the concept for several years, this summer he plugged into SEA Change, an accelerator program in central Ohio focused on jumpstarting social enterprises. Roots Up will manufacture and operate […]