Foundation Supports New Non-Profit Business, BlueSun

by Dale Stowell, Executive Director, Institutional Advancement

Diana Howell, BlueSun COO, pays first installment to
Foundation Executive Director Dale Stowell.

BlueSun staff, Dale Stowell and Corvallis Chamber
members attend a ribbon cutting April 2.

With an eye on opening new streams of revenue, the LBCC Foundation provided a loan to help open a staffing agency that will help place disabled people in jobs throughout the region and potentially generate funds to help support the college.

BlueSun Inc. is a staffing agency led by Distinguished Alumna and former LBCC Foundation board member Diana Howell. It will open March 1 at 517 S.W. 2nd St. in Corvallis.

The nonprofit business will coordinate vocational resources, such as job training and special equipment, for people with disabilities to place them in jobs best suited for their skills.

BlueSun will serve all people with disabilities, said Howell, but the focus will be helping military veterans and people with autism.

Like any staffing agency, BlueSun will generate funds by receiving a percentage of the salary of each individual it places for work from employers. Oregon law requires all tax-supported bodies to give nonprofit staffing agencies serving the disabled the first chance to fill jobs before contracting with for-profit staffing agencies.

By maintaining a low overhead, BlueSun projects it will generate revenue in excess of expenditures in its first year.  Howell believes that BlueSun could generate enough revenue in the first year to pay back LBCC Foundation’s $100,000 loan and to begin sponsoring grants for clothes, transportation and other things that will help people with disabilities get to work.

The loan terms include interest and a 10 percent share of the net revenues of BlueSun for the next seven years. The businesses plan underwent an extensive review by LBCC’s Small Business Development Center and Foundation legal counsel. It required a revision of the Foundation’s investment policy to allow 5 percent of Foundation assets to be invested in alternative investments.

Three people from the LBCC Foundation – board members Dan Bedore and Doris Johnston, and Foundation Executive Director Dale Stowell – serve on BlueSun’s five-member board. Many foundations invest in – or own – other businesses. In fact, the LBCC Foundation already generates revenue from rental income from a duplex it owns in Corvallis.

The idea grew from discussions at the Foundation’s summer retreat, which focused on ways to begin building systems to eventually raise an amount equal to 10 percent of the college’s operating funding, or about $4 million a year.

Employees will be placed as temporary workers under BlueSun for a trial period. If it’s a good fit, employers can directly hire them.

Howell worked for DePaul Industries as area manager from 1996 to 2001, helping to establish a similar staffing service that still successfully serves the Portland area. She left DePaul in 2001 for Barrett Business Services Inc., where she worked until last month.

“We were, as a for-profit, filling quite a few of the jobs over the years that should have gone to the nonprofits,” Howell said in a recent Gazette Times interview. “That was a lot of opportunities for people who really needed those jobs. We have customers lined up, breathing down our necks saying, ‘When are you going to be open?’ and we have the people.”

Blue Sun has already placed two employees, and the contractor finishing the remodel of the new office already signed a contract with Blue Sun to hire disabled veterans to fill its temporary staffing needs.

The need is definitely there, said Howell.