LEAP OF FAITH: Josh Kwan (left) and Dave Blanchard started Praxis to provide tailored training to Christian leaders of nonprofits and cause-focused businesses.
This article is one of a series The Chronicle is featuring this month about leaders who are pushing unorthodox ideas to give philanthropy more power to do good.
In second grade, Dave Blanchard rented out his family’s garage to friends who set up tables to sell baseball cards. By his mid-20s, he was a serial entrepreneur, with a Rolex, a BMW, and an American Express black card. But lying on a Virgin Islands beach with his wife, he wondered: Is this all life holds?
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Aaron Young, PraxisLabs
LEAP OF FAITH: Josh Kwan (left) and Dave Blanchard started Praxis to provide tailored training to Christian leaders of nonprofits and cause-focused businesses.
This article is one of a series The Chronicle is featuring this month about leaders who are pushing unorthodox ideas to give philanthropy more power to do good.
In second grade, Dave Blanchard rented out his family’s garage to friends who set up tables to sell baseball cards. By his mid-20s, he was a serial entrepreneur, with a Rolex, a BMW, and an American Express black card. But lying on a Virgin Islands beach with his wife, he wondered: Is this all life holds?
Today, Mr. Blanchard, the son of a Protestant pastor, has turned away from amassing wealth and toward helping others. With Josh Kwan, a fellow alum of Northwestern University’s MBA program, he launched Praxis in 2010, which offers corporate-style “accelerators” for promising new nonprofit organizations as well as for-profit enterprises aimed at doing good.
Applying a business start-up model to young social enterprises is nothing new. Groups like the Skoll Foundation and New Profit have promoted the idea for some time. But Praxis is designed for Christian leaders and built on the theory that faith-based social entrepreneurs need tailored training.
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Like other accelerators or incubators, Praxis provides mentorship from veteran entrepreneurs as well as opportunities to work with investors and donors. But it also aims to help entrepreneurs maintain Christian principles as they get started and grow. “We say to our entrepreneurs: ‘If faith is at the center of who you are as an individual, it also should be at the center of what you create,’ " Mr. Kwan says. “Few things are harder than to start something from scratch. The pressure can bring out the worst in an individual.”
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Praxis, which graduated its first fellows in 2012, now boasts more than 100 alumni. Some do traditional charity work — education for African women, work-force development, and the like — while others run businesses that aim to produce social good in addition to profits. One example: Jessica Rey, who develops and sells modest, Audrey Hepburn-inspired swimwear that she hopes will persuade women and girls to abandon barely-there bikinis.
Centuries ago, Mr. Kwan says, Christians influenced the world through the church, where pews filled weekly with society’s leaders. Today, with religion’s influence diminished, the entrepreneurial class has emerged as a powerful force in culture, Praxis contends, thanks in part to the allure of Silicon Valley.
People of faith must take note, Mr. Kwan says. “If we want to influence the world, we have to influence and shape the lives of entrepreneurs.”
