About Us
Enterprise Facilitation is a nonprofit, grassroots organization that helps people transform their passions, dreams, and talents into viable business ventures by providing free, confidential business management guidance to new and existing entrepreneurs in Northeast Kansas.
Who We Are
The Northeast Kansas Enterprise Facilitation is a nonprofit organization which offers free and confidential business coaching in Northeast Kansas. We are a group of over sixty volunteers from five counties who care passionately about the success and sustainability of our rural Northeast Kansas region. We formed the Facilitation Board in order to assist our rural entrepreneurs in creating or maintaining their small business ventures.
Each member of the Northeast Kansas Enterprise Facilitation Board understands his or her role and duties because each has received board training, prior to joining the Board. A select number of the initial board also received more intensive training to further assist in project implementation. This training included how to effectively work with entrepreneurs, how to create an entrepreneurial environment, how to leverage various resources for entrepreneurs, and how to properly support the Enterprise Facilitator. As time goes on, the board continues to recruit and train new members.
The NEKEF Board usually meets once a month. During the meetings, the Facilitator will ask the board for assistance with specific issues facing clients. The Board spends an hour brainstorming resources and possibilities so that each issue can be successfully resolved by the client. The board also monitors the progress of the project through monthly reports from the Facilitator on client activities, including the number of new or expanded businesses, and new or retained jobs. Once a year the Board conducts random client surveys to assess the project.
Assistance from an Enterprise Facilitator is described very nicely in an Old Chinese Proverb…..
GO to the people
LIVE among the people
LEARN from them
LOVE them.
START with what they know,
BUILD on what they have.
But of the BEST leaders,
When their TASK is accomplished,
Their WORK is done,
The PEOPLE will remark,
“WE HAVE DONE IT OURSELVES.”
What we do
The NEKEF board provides an Enterprise Facilitator who gives intensive, one-on-one assistance to the entrepreneur, educating him or her in the “Trinity of Management”, a concept that teaches each entrepreneur how to put a successful business and a business team into place.
Besides using the intelligence and resources of the community-wide Board, the Facilitator also links clients to programs and resources offered by economic development organizations and professionals.
Who we help
This program is targeted to help any person who aspires to create or expand a business in one of five Northeast Kansas counties: Atchison, Jackson, Doniphan, Brown, and Nemaha.
The service of Northeast Kansas Enterprise Facilitation is free and confidential to any local individual with an idea for starting or expanding a business.
Enterprise Facilitation Method
Dr. Ernesto Sirolli founded the Sirolli Institute in 1995. The Institute teaches civic leaders how to manage Enterprise Facilitation Communities utilizing a method Dr. Sirolli pioneered in Esperance, Australia in 1985.
In this video Dr. Sirolli speaks about the Trinity of Management.
“Over the past three decades, Enterprise Facilitation has demonstrated that the provision of caring, competent, dedicated advice and support to entrepreneurs is as important as the development of physical infrastructures to the development of a stable and prosperous economy.” ~ Sirolli Institute Enterprise Facilitation Website
