Business Development for Social Enterprise

Made in Lower East Side (miLES) is an emerging social enterprise that seeks to connect New York City creatives to short-term rentals in the Lower East Side (LES) neighborhood of Manhattan. Taking advantage of the vast amount of empty storefront space in the area, miLES offers landlords the possibility of filling their vacant space with exciting activities in spaces that would otherwise be gathering nothing but dust. The Capstone team was charged with assisting in the primary stages of business development. First, the team conducted a benchmarking examination of organizations with structures similar to miLES’, inventoried vacant storefronts in the LES, identified potential landlords for the organization to reach out to, and ultimately developed a series of pitch books for miLES to use when reaching out to landlords.