Powered by passion, presented with panache and assisted by “dog and pony show” props, via the television show “Shark Tank” theme, entrepreneurs Michele Zurakowski, Jennifer Grenier and Beth Klein wowed a crowd of about 200 attendees (including a large panel of judges) to capture the $50,000 prize at the Oak Park and River Forest Community Foundation’s first annual Big Idea Pitch Party at Wire, 6815 Roosevelt Road, in Berwyn last night.
Over the last year or so, 40 businesses and business owners in and around Oak Park, contributed $2,500 each, including Wednesday Journal, Inc., to fund the contest that culminated on Thursday, Feb. 25.
Initially drawing 39 grant applicants, the pool was culled to six finalists and now one winner — “The Surplus Project, ” a start-up venture that has its roots in a program piloted at Rush Oak Park Hospital in conjunction with the Oak Park Food Pantry.
In the pilot program, nurses, nurses’ aides, hospital secretaries and anyone who wanted to get certified as a food handler joined forces to package surplus food into individual meal containers that are delivered to local agencies who serve people who are hungry, said Zurakowski, the executive director of the Oak Park Food Pantry, in her prize-winning pitch.
“We are all about food use,” said Grenier, the nursing director of the telemetry unit at Oak Park Rush Hospital who is leading the volunteer effort there.
On stage, in a post-win interview with Wednesday Journal, Grenier said “in our cafeteria we used to waste it, throw the food out, or compost it. Now we are packaging it up and delivering the surplus food to people who are food insecure.”
Grenier said she and Klein cooked up the idea while participating in the Community Foundation’s professional leadership program. But it took off when the hospital’s CEO bought in — literally.
“[Rush Oak Park Hospital CEO] Bruce Elegant said to me, ‘Here’s $3,000. Buy your fridge and package up whatever surplus food you need to give back to our community,'” Grenier said, adding that “the other day we packaged up 50 meals consisting of pork chops, green beans, rice, potatoes and bread, but if all we have left over is rice, we will package that up, too.”
The $50,000 prize, she says, will put legs on their volunteer efforts.
“It will enable us to keep this going at Rush Oak Park Hospital, but we want to expand it to MacNeal [Hospital], West Sub[urban Hospital], Dominican University and Oak Park and River Forest High School. We have all these connections already, but now we need [to pay] someone to coordinate all that.”
OPRF Community Foundation’s CEO, Kristin Carlson Vogen, said the Big Idea entrepreneur contest was established last year under the umbrella of the foundation’s giving group, Entrepreneur Leaders in Philanthropy (ELP).
Four founding members took the proverbial ball and ran with it.
Vogen said that all of the 39 ideas submitted were connected to local “social impact organizations” — otherwise known as nonprofits. Although there were similarities to the popular show “Shark Tank,” in that ideas were “pitched” to a slate of entrepreneurs, the similarities ended there, since the ideas are all tied to the nonprofit sector and executed through the connected social impact organization.
ELP founding member and Big Idea Pitch Party judge Laura Maychruk, owner of the Buzz Café, described the packed-house turnout as “a phenomenal success.”
“We are not going to be mean, as they can be on the reality TV show, but we are going to ask them some questions,” Maychruk said. “It’s $50,000, so that money needs to go to the right people who are going to do the right thing.”
Prior to the Feb. 25 pitch party, business owner and judge Jamil Bou-Saab said he planned to pepper the finalists with pertinent questions, although every group who submitted an idea is a winner in his mind, he said.
“[Being on the panel of judges] is a great opportunity for our law business to give back to the community a little bit,” said volunteer judge Greg Coplan, an attorney from River Forest. “All of us judges are entrepreneurs who have chosen to provide financial support that funded the $50,000 grant, so we get to have a say in who wins it, right?”
Other finalists strutting their stuff ranged in scope from a group of native plant enthusiasts interested in creating living landscapes in lieu of lawns in Oak Park and River Forest, to a group who had created a volunteer-driven model to expand services to local seniors, to a win-win new business venture that is being powered by people living with intellectual disabilities who founded a start-up artisanal pickle business.
“I think this is a terrific way to bring together the rich resources of Oak Park, of course, in terms of philanthropy,” said Illinois State Sen. Don Harmon, an attendee at the event. “You do not have a road map unless you have a big idea. It is these moments when you can take a step back and say, ‘What is the big idea that will transform the community?’
“This is another version of democracy, we are just voting for a different thing. This is a smart and local option to try and find a new way to do business. It is a wonderful, Oak Park kind of thing.”