Community Entrepreneurship Program

The Baugh Center Community Entrepreneurship Program is a faith-based community entrepreneurship training program developed by Baylor University, hosted by local churches, and facilitated by successful executives and entrepreneurs.

A vision to serve churches as they reach business owners in the community.

The mission of Baylor University is to educate men and women for worldwide leadership and service by integrating academic excellence and Christian commitment within a caring community. The purpose of the John F. Baugh Center for Entrepreneurship and Free Enterprise is to develop entrepreneurs outside the walls of the Baylor classroom and help catalyze and grow business ventures. Arising from the intersection of these two missions, the team of faculty and staff within the Baylor Entrepreneurship Department recognizes an opportunity to train local business owners through church-facilitated programs that provide faith-based entrepreneurship training.

Need

Baylor University has exhibited precedent with a long-term commitment to serving local communities through its programs and people. Local small business owners generally need business training, equipping, coaching, peer-to-peer learning, mentorship and community to become excellent entrepreneurs. In addition, many local communities experience a negative cycle of underemployment, homelessness, poverty and crime.

Vision

We believe that growth in free enterprise, business activity and employment are transformative forces that can break this negative cycle. In settings around the world, entrepreneurship training has been found to lead to economic transformation. More importantly, the body of Christ has served to provide true long-term transformation to people and families. Early-stage entrepreneurs need experienced business executives, CEOs and other mentors to offer wisdom, networking, and funding opportunities to help break their ventures through barriers to greater scale for customers, profits, employment and community impact. The Baylor community entrepreneurship training program utilizes existing networks surrounding neighborhood churches to provide business owners a hand up while, at the same time, giving successful executives vehicles to use their valuable business skills to serve their churches and communities through entrepreneurship training and coaching.

Solution

The Baugh Center's faith-based community entrepreneurship training program leverages the resources of the Baugh Center, nearby churches, local community members and funding collaborators.

Baylor provides content and programming. Churches provide hosting sites and contextualized leadership, while members and volunteers facilitate, train and coach attendees.

Classroom trainings are held for 90 minutes, once per week, over an eight-week term.

How to Host

Information on the next Community Entrepreneurship Program class will be posted soon.

How to Participate