Right Angle Club (RAC) Monthly Member Newsletter
for
October, 2021
Zoom Speakers & their Presentation Topics
1 Oct. The Hon. Gary Glazer has been a common pleas judge in Philadelphia for more than twenty years. He was a federal prosecutor in Philadelphia prior to his first election to the court in 1991. Perhaps for this reason, he was selected by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice to replace the Administrative Judge of the Philadelphia traffic court when a FBI investigation revealed wide-spread corruption in the traffic court. Judge Glazer will provide a lively account of his tenure during which seven judges were convicted of corruption crimes and the Traffic Court abolished.
8 Oct. Anne Gemmell is a practical futurist and the founding executive director of Future Works Alliance PHL. Anne came to this from the the new Office of Workforce Development for the City of Philadelphia. He intention is “future-proofing” the current and emerging workforce of Philadelphia. Future Works focuses on the future of work: research, creating consensus, policy recommendations, and coalition-building — all with an optimistic bias for action.
15 Oct. Jonathan Goldstein, the founding partner of the botique commercial law and litigation law firm, Goldstein Law Partners. In addition, he is a nationally recognized expert in election law. He was a member of the core Pennsylvania legal team for Bush-Cheney 2004. He has litigated signature challenges in the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania and has won an election law appeal before the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. He recently served as the Deputy General Counsel of the Pennsylvania Republican Party responsible for the eastern 1/3rd of the Commonwealth and in that capacity he can give a unique and surprisingly different take on the 2020 election in Pennsylvania.
22 Oct. NO SPEAKER. FALL FLING instead
29 Oct. Daniel Richter is the Roy F. and Jeanette P. Nichols, Professor of American History at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Richter will be introducing Philadelphia Stories People and Their Places in Early America by C. Dallett Hemphill which he edited for Penn Press. Philadelphia Stories chronicles twelve of these lives to explore the city’s people and places from the colonial era to the years before the Civil War. This collective portrait includes men and women, Black and white Americans, immigrants and native born. For example, the name of banker Stephen Girard, one of the wealthiest men ever to have lived, may be recalled but less of his material legacy such as The City Trust and Girard College. In a different register, but equally impressive, were the accomplishments of Sarah Thorn Tyndale. In a few short years as a widow she made enough money on her porcelain business to retire to a life as a reformer.
Previous Month’s Speakers’ Presentations Summarized
(prepared by Bob Haskell)
September 3, 2021. No meeting….Labor Day Weekend.
September 10, 2021. Ryan Fleur, Executive Director of The Philadelphia Orchestra, discussed the current state of the Orchestra, how it pivoted operations in the pandemic, how it is executing strategies on inclusion, diversity, equity, access (IDEAS), what its new partnership with the Kimmel Center means, and highlights of the upcoming 2021-2022 program. The business model of the Orchestra is based on establishing long term relationships with households, to build loyalty in the next generation(s). Their objective is to tell a story of hope and joy, expressed through music instead of words. Pre-COVID, 50% of active buyers were 55 and over (attend 6 concerts per year) and 50% were under age 55 (attend concert once every two years). COVID was a shock to the system (among other things, they lost $30M in ticket revenue), but the Orchestra never went silent. 1) They reinvented themselves as a Digital Media Company (hashtag #YourPhilOrch). In March of 2020, they immediately streamed Beethoven’s 6th Symphony, and it has since been viewed worldwide over a million times. A Virtual Gala was held June 5, 2020 called “Hear Together”, which was a conversation about social justice. This program has now become a monthly podcast with dialog and music. The Orchestra is also blessed with a strong international brand, which they cultivate. Their Digital Stage presentations have now reached audiences on all seven continents (in April, 2021, the crew at Palmer Station in Antarctica gathered to watch a performance of Rhapsody in Blue). They have commissioned and performed new digital works, including the world premiere of Valerie Coleman’s Seven O’Clock Shout, dedicated to frontline workers. For this piece, each musician recorded their piece separately at home (each given a common tempo), and then all pieces were edited together. 2) They established Education and Community Programming to reach individual homes, schools, and global communities. For example, in February of this year, over 16,000 students in 446 schools in 18 countries (39 states in the US) participated in a virtual school concert. Two more such events are in the planning stage. The Philadelphia Global Music Center was established to promote global learning. It held a one-week intensive Virtual Summer Program pilot in July for students in China. The “Our City, Your Orchestra” program (https://f.io/r_cVKcmN) was produced to better connect with the local communities and to also highlight what the City otherwise has to offer. Small groups of orchestra members perform and are filmed at iconic locations throughout the area. College students do internships with the Orchestra. As a final co-op project, two students at Drexel University produced a film called IDEAS in Action completely on their own, not sponsored by the Orchestra (https://f.io/
September 17, 2021. Glenn Bergman, principal of Glenn Bergman Consulting LLC, discussed his experience in social entrepreneurism, particularly in the realm of food production and distribution. Glenn left the corporate world with a desire to do social good, and to merge the concepts of both social and for-profit business enterprise, i.e., merging business profit objectives with non-profit social benefit objectives. Non-profits need to be run like any for-profit business, and for-profit businesses need to integrate a measure of social good into what they do. To this end, he saw food as a universal means of serving a community need, of creating shared social experience and building interrelationships, and of operating a viable for-profit business. Glenn first joined Weaver’s Way in 2004, where he was general manager. Weavers Way is a member-owned cooperative grocery with locations in Northwest Philadelphia and Ambler. It offers reasonably priced, high-quality food that is local, sustainable, organic, fairly traded, and healthful. Using his business acumen, they raised prices, attracted employees by paying fulltime benefits, added debt. brought in business consultants, and other such actions to help improve the bottom line. From a non-profit perspective, they started to measure the social impact of their business in the community, such as by establishing fair pay levels, tracking the amount of local produce sold, and opening the books to all members and staff. Over the course of his 11-year tenure, Weaver’s Way expanded the coop to include 5,200 members and 155 staff; increased annual sales from $4.5 million to $20 million; expanded its programs to include the operation of four stores, two urban farms and a farming/nutrition education program. In 2015, Glenn became Executive Director of Philabundance, whose mission is to relieve hunger in five counties in PA and four counties in NJ through the provision of emergency food. But they also engage with other community organizations that provide critical life skills and services, to establish a holistic approach to providing food, including education, financial literacy, health services, housing, and job training to the local communities. By pairing food with the social determinants of health interventions provided by other community organizations, they hope to increase the stability and long-term overall food security in the communities they serve. This was a non-profit that needed business acumen. For example, they had started a non-profit grocery store in Chester, but had no practical business experience in running retail grocery. It was established for social good, but it was not a viable business ($600-$800K loss per year) and had to close. A non-profit must operate for, and measure, business success. For Philabundance, an important measure of success was how efficiently they moved food. For example, they improved efficiency by purchasing small vans for partners to deliver food, instead of doing it directly themselves. They established the Philabundance Community Kitchen in North Philadelphia as both a social and business enterprise. It is a culinary vocational training program students for the food service industry that teaches them how to prepare food for those in need. Some students are accepted into the program as an alternative sentence to prison. They have established both an on-site $200K catering business (box lunches) and a contract food service business (e.g., meals on wheels), and are now doing about 4.5 million meals per year. Now they don’t have to rely strictly on philanthropy. Philabundance grew from $17M to $745M last year. Lastly, Glenn is currently advising another non-profit, Berkshire Agriculture Ventures, on fulfilling its mission to support the development and viability of small local farms and food businesses in Western Massachusetts, and as a result, to provide good food to the local community. They do this by offering technical and business assistance (e.g., up to $5K of technical support), and providing flexible financing options, including low-interest loans (e.g., $50K at 2%), grants, and other resources. Most contributed support comes two large equity investors, who are in for-profit companies. Profits go to the participating farmers and businesses. Overall, social entrepreneurism is important. It serves the social good, there are new market tax incentives to encourage it, and it can improve a company’s brand. There were 16 in-person and 2 Zoom participants.
September 24, 2021. General business meeting with no speaker. Meeting minutes distributed to the full membership.
Carter Broach
Corresponding Secretary
broach@udel.edu
