Lowe Foundation partners with Ohio group to second-stage firms

Southwest Michigan-based Edward Lowe Foundation has found a new partner and kindred spirit with Ohio’s Burton D. Morgan Foundation.

Both organizations were founded by and named after successful entrepreneurs, both were founded to support entrepreneurship and both are focused on second-stage companies — though for Morgan, that’s a fairly new focus.

“They both had a legacy to give back, so we kind of wish they’d known each other,” Lowe Foundation President Dan Wyant said of the organizations’ founders. “Because our mission statements are almost identical.”

Lowe has been focused on second-stage companies for over 20 years, Wyant said, while Morgan began to scale up its work with such companies just last year.

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The two differ in that Morgan has primarily been a funding source for other nonprofits and organizations working with entrepreneurs while Lowe specializes in providing programming and retreats at its 2,000-acre campus in the small town of Cassopolis, about halfway between Kalamazoo and South Bend, Ind.

Wyant and Morgan CEO Dan Hampu, who took the reins of the local foundation in 2022, said they’ve already begun working together, with Morgan sending some local entrepreneurs and economic developers to Cassopolis and more to come.

Wyant said that Lowe, which has connections to other foundations around the U.S. as well, works nationwide and relies on partners to send entrepreneurs to the training programs, mentorships and retreats that Lowe provides on numerous old farmhouses or the six rail cars that it has renovated and converted into lodgings on its property.

“We typically rely on our partners to do that. They’re the ones that maintain the long-term relationships (with individual entrepreneurs),” Wyant said.

Hampu said Morgan began doing that last year and will ramp up its work with Lowe in 2024.

“We’ve had 17 entrepreneurs go so far and we have plans for another 20 or 30 to go this year,” Hampu said.

Both foundations say that they are putting special emphasis on second-stage companies — which, broadly defined, have sales of between $1 million in $50 million — for two reasons.

First is the need, they say.

“There are already a lot more resources for startups than there are for stage two companies,” said Gina Dotson, Morgan’s director of communications and grant management.

But, perhaps more importantly, both foundations say the data shows that focusing on second-stage companies can have a greater impact. For one thing, such companies have often already proven that they have good products and management in place. They just need help getting to the next level, Hampu and Wyant said.

On top of that, growing such companies often has a greater impact than helping a startup get off the ground. If a second-stage company can significantly grow, it tends to have a larger immediate effect on things like employment, supply-chain purchases, and other things that spur and multiply economic activity, say the foundations’ leaders.

Attending Lowe is not free, though. For an entrepreneur on their own, it can cost hundreds of dollars to attend a training session and even more to attend a multi-day retreat.

But there is no cost for the entrepreneurs Morgan sends to the program.

“Lowe is subsidizing it and we’re picking up the rest,” Hampu said.

The more expensive multi-day programs can be the most impactful too, said Morgan Program Officer Michal Marcus. Too often, she said, they’re hunkered down with their own staff but seldom get time to reflect or to interact with other entrepreneurs.

“I think it’s important for entrepreneurs to be able to get out of their own space,” Marcus said. “It’s interesting to me to see how lonely it is to be an entrepreneur sometimes.”

Marcus said she’s already recruiting Lowe participants for 2025 and, along with Hampu, expects to see more people go from Northeast Ohio to Lowe’s campus each year.

Wyant said he also expects the relationship to grow as it matures and says Ohio is fertile ground for the sort of assistance Lowe provides.

“Second-stage companies are in every region and in every industry in Ohio,” Wyant said. “I think this has the potential to grow into something very significant.”

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