Pass It On

A profile of the 1995 EOY's Supporter of Entrepreneurship Award and the runners-up.

By John Kerr | 
 

SIFE -- Students in Free Enterprise -- was a sleepy on-campus nonprofit organization when Alvin Rohrs took over as president, in 1983. Today SIFE counts 24,395 member undergraduates, all of whom teach others how business really works

SUPPORTER OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Supporter of Entrepreneurship: An individual whose work makes entrepreneurial success possible for others by providing infrastructure and encouragement

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THE WINNER
Alvin Rohrs
Organization: Students in Free Enterprise, Springfield, Mo.

Activity: a national organization of college students who, with guidance from faculty advisers, teach the value of free enterprise and entrepreneurship to high-schoolers, grade-schoolers, and other members of their communities

* * *

THE RUNNERS-UP
Murial F. Siebert
Organization: Murial Siebert & Co., New York City

Activity: A discount brokerage that donates half its sales commissions from bond or equity issues to causes such as the Los Angeles Women's Entrepreneurial Fund, a no-interest microlender

* * *

Marion Dietrich
Organization: CID Entrepreneurial Education Foundation, Indianapolis

Activity: A foundation that funds entrepreneurship-education programs for schoolchildren and training for entrepreneurs throughout the Midwest

* * *

Minister's son Alvin Rohrs likes to joke about how inept he once was at spreading the gospel of free enterprise.

Rohrs tells stories about the days when he belonged to a campus group called Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE), an organization whose mission is to have college students nationwide teach the value of free enterprise and entrepreneurship. When Rohrs's self-effacing tales are told to an audience of SIFE students, the real purpose is to make the students feel great about what they've done.

The 39-year-old Rohrs is now the president of SIFE, heading a small staff -- just 11 people -- at its headquarters, in Springfield, Mo. But the nonprofit has quite a reach. Last year SIFE backed 1,731 faculty advisers at 343 colleges. The 24,395 students involved got their free-enterprise message out to another 1,157,225 college students and to 1,805,412 school-age children and, SIFE says, to some 66.6 million community residents. That last claim may be a stretch, but the main idea holds: the organization touches many lives with its message.

SIFE students can tell you how a business makes a profit and why the United States is running a deficit. And they do tell. Team members, almost all at non-Ivy League schools, actively teach what they know -- to grade-schoolers, high-schoolers, and senior citizens. The concept is simple: teach it, and you learn it very well yourself. How exactly each team does that is up to it and its faculty advisers. Whatever costs the team members incur, they cover.

What sets SIFE apart from other organizations promoting economic know-how is the teams' self-sufficiency. There are no handouts from headquarters, no blueprints for how to make money. The best SIFE chapters have effectively built little entrepreneurial organizations. They set goals and track results. They raise funds and manage money. They recruit and motivate other people. They tap the expertise of outside advisers. In short, they function just the way real businesses do.

Their efforts culminate in competitions, nine regional contests at which judges -- 100 or so business leaders -- vote based on each team's half-hour presentation. Regional winners go on to a national event that's two parts pep rally, one part patriotic revelry, one part affirmation of corporate support, and one part recruiting frenzy.

The national winner this year -- La Sierra University, in Riverside, Calif. -- put together 122 projects in all. Among them was a coloring book for elementary-school children, The Saving Game. (To raise money for everything from marketing materials to travel, many of the top contenders run for-profit ventures. The La Sierra team, for example, launched Rent-a-Brain, a successful small-business consultancy, and started a dry-cleaning operation.) Southern Utah University, in Cedar City, ran a program called Rural Young Entrepreneur Search, which sought out high school students in rural areas who were running their own companies. The 10 finalists were invited to a conference for young entrepreneurs, and the top 5 won cash prizes. Many SIFE chapters devise and implement board games that teach youngsters how wealth is created. Others run entrepreneurship competitions in their states' high schools.

Rohrs runs SIFE like an entrepreneurial company as well: he bootstraps, does guerrilla marketing, and takes on the role of chief cheerleader. It's the way, he believes, the students learn best. The underlying message: you want to teach free enterprise, you live and breathe like an entrepreneur.

SIFE's energy level wasn't ever thus. Rohrs was a SIFE chapter adviser at Southwest Baptist University in Missouri in 1983 when SIFE's national board hired him to try to reverse the organization's fortunes. Started with a bang in 1975, SIFE lost its spark in the early 1980s as the U.S. economy faltered and SIFE's backers -- large industrial corporations -- cut their contributions. The roster of SIFE schools had shriveled from 100 in 1981 to 18 two years later.

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