Genius at Work

Strickland won over Peter Benzing, 69, a decade ago. Benzing had retired as a vice president at Bayer Corp. - the U.S. subsidiary, headquartered in Pittsburgh, of the giant German chemical-pharmaceutical conglomerate - but he had stayed active with the company. When he met Strickland, Benzing's biggest concern was the need for an educated local workforce that could meet Bayer's needs.

Benzing recalls his meeting with Strickland. Thirty minutes into the session, Benzing asked whether Strickland could train chemical technicians. "Bill said, 'I don't have the slightest idea about how to train somebody for that, but if you'd be willing to help, maybe we could do that at Bidwell too,'" Benzing says. It was a classic Strickland response, going straight to the core of his market-oriented operating philosophy: I've got poor people who want to learn how to work. You can't find people who've been trained to do the jobs you've got. Let's do it together.

Benzing was so impressed that he immediately went back to Bayer, got the company to contact other chemical companies nearby, and wound up with a business consortium that partnered with Strickland to create a one-year-long curriculum to train chemical lab technicians. It's a tough program - many students drop out because of the demanding work. But in 12 months, it turns out trained workers who can compete with college graduates for jobs. More than 100 students have finished BTC's program; of those, 81% have found jobs in a field where the annual minimum starting salary is between $20,000 and $25,000.

Companies have found there's another reason why it's good business to do business with Strickland: It makes them look good. Case in point: the creation of a Grammy Award-winning jazz record label, another Strickland innovation that happened almost by accident. When Strickland brought MCG and BTC under one roof in 1986, he made sure that the blueprint included a 350-seat jazz concert hall. His rationale? He loves jazz.

But Strickland knew nothing about booking concerts, so he hired someone who did: jazz musician and promoter Marty Ashby, 37. Under Ashby's direction, MCG quickly gained a reputation as a great venue for live music. Although the musicians were just coming to play another gig, they inevitably left impressed by Strickland's community. "He's like a Dr. King," says singer Joe Williams, 79, whose award-winning career has spanned more than 50 years, and who has performed at MCG three times. "I've watched Bill's project grow to become an integral part of the community. And when I say community, I mean the community of the United States."

Strickland's team made sure that each live concert was recorded on state-of-the-art equipment, videotaped, and archived. But it wasn't until 1994, when Strickland and Ashby were at Bayer for discussions about BTC's training program, that the idea of a record label began to take shape. While touring the company, Strickland asked about one machine in the plant, and was told that it was for making compact discs. Bayer, it turned out, is a leading producer of polycarbonate, the plastic from which CDs are made.

"Bill said, 'You've got the CDs. We've got the music. There has got to be a deal here,'" recalls Ashby. Bayer liked the idea so much that it helped broker an extraordinary relationship. Using Bayer's contacts with Sony, Benzing helped put together a classic Strickland-style hybrid, combining the for-profit and nonprofit worlds.

What ultimately emerged was a five-record deal, with taped live performances provided by MCG; plastic provided by Bayer; pressing done by Sony Disc Manufacturing; and jewel boxes, liner-note production, and printing donated by three other companies. Under the deal, proceeds from the sale of the first 25,000 units of each record go directly to MCG.

It was an inspired move. In 1997, the first record of the deal - the Count Basie Orchestra with the New York Voices - won a Grammy for best performance by a large jazz ensemble. A second release, by Paquito D'Rivera and the United Nations Orchestra, is in the stores and selling briskly, and a third, by Brazilian artist Ivan Lins, has just been released.

As for Bayer and Sony, explains Benzing, the corporations benefit by having their names attached to a socially responsible project. "It's a big deal when a large company works with an inner-city organization," he says. "It's good news, and it fits into Bayer's philosophy of working with the communities in which we're located."

"Welcome to the conversation"

There's one other thing about the break-the-mold way that Bill Strickland does business: It's about the payoff. No, Strickland isn't in this for the money. But he's also not into being a starving artist. Strickland is looking for something in-between, like his hybrid model of social entrepreneurship. In fact, he's striving for the one thing that he thinks is missing in the world today: balance. A balance of resources, equity, and opportunity - a socially responsible mind-set that asks the haves in this country, How much is enough?