BWP Puts $38 Million Back into Your Pocket

As the job market is beginning to look slightly brighter, stories of organizations doing more than their fair share to create new positions are surfacing faster than ever. Recently, the Boston World Partnerships (BWP), a nonprofit organization founded by Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, celebrated its one year anniversary. (Image courtesy:http://bit.ly/ahgHyK)

“The information that they bring forward to me is astounding,” said Menino about the BWP’s progress report. In just its first year of operations, the organization was responsible for creating over 200 new jobs in Boston with salaries averaging to $70,000. Additionally, the BWP takes credit for preventing the loss of an additional 115 Boston-area jobs. Altogether, this translates into an extra $38 million dollars entering the Massachusetts’ economy from the BWP’s efforts alone.

“I wish some people in other positions in the government understood that creating jobs is the best way to move the economy, and that’s what BWP does,” Menino explained.

According to its homepage, the BWP’s goal is to “raise global awareness of Boston as one of the world’s foremost centers of intellectual capital and innovation.” Essentially, the BWP serves as a networking organization with hundreds of thousands of connections. The BWP describes itself as “similar to an alumni organization” in this way. New connections are generated naturally via word-of-mouth and also by BWP employees who work fulltime at cultivating new leads.

Ultimately, the BWP serves to publicize “Boston’s economic opportunities and assets,” so that entrepreneurs and investors from outside of the city will realize its appeal. Ideally, these connections from outside of the city will then choose to locate their companies in Boston, open a Boston branch, or tap into the expertise offered by the city in some other mutually beneficial manner.

Mark Maloney, former Boston Chief Economic Development Officer and current director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, serves as president of the BWP. “I am truly an entrepreneur... But as an entrepreneur, I like to work one on one with people who are sparking my imagination and my creative spirit,” Maloney said in regards to his motivation for working at the BWP.

Looking towards the future, the BWP hopes to open its first international chapter in Dublin, Ireland later this year. According to representatives of the BWP, the U.S. State Department has been encouraging the formation of this branch because “the business cycle is down” in Ireland and the country has a “strong connection to the Boston area.” This new chapter will be only one of the six or seven international chapters the BWP intends to open within the next couple of years. (Image courtesy: http://bit.ly/cY2oQI)

In addition to generating new Boston-area jobs, the new chapters the BWP plans to open abroad will augment the organization’s success in fostering diversity in the city. In 2009, “Color Magazine” awarded the BWP an “All Inclusive Award as Boston’s most significant Change Agent organization.” This honor came shortly after the BWP signed The Commonwealth Compact, declaring its commitment to setting goals to work towards increasing diversity via its practices.

It is stunning that the BWP has managed to rise to such a level of success inside of a year. If all goes well, it stands to reason that as the organization’s number of connections grows further, its success will increase exponentially. Cleary, the BWP will be worth keeping an eye on over the next few years.

[Sources: http://bit.ly/SPkT, http://bit.ly/bBQZex]