Business group to push for ‘results’

By C. GRANT JACKSON

Business Editor

Columbia attorney Stephen Benjamin and two dozen or so of his closest friends are launching a group they hope will earn a seat at the table with the state’s most influential business organizations.

The African-American Business Roundtable is envisioned as a nonpartisan, nonprofit corporation composed of South Carolina’s premier business leaders.

Benjamin hopes the roundtable will be viewed on a par with the S.C. Chamber of Commerce, S.C. Council on Competitiveness, The Palmetto Institute and Palmetto Business Forum.

The roundtable already has some membership overlap with those four groups, which came together in recent years to develop an annual Competitiveness Agenda for S.C. business. A focus has been getting what they term pro-competitiveness legislation passed by the General Assembly.

Hunter Howard, president of the S.C. Chamber of Commerce, said he welcomes the opportunity to involve the roundtable in setting the Competitiveness Agenda.

“When we go setting the agenda next year, we will go and talk to them,” he said. The roundtable’s goals are consistent with the chamber’s in terms of getting businesspeople more engaged in public policy, he said.

Jim Fields, director of The Palmetto Institute, said the roundtable presents “another unique partnership to work with and to build on.”

The roundtable wants to work with the other groups. “This is an effort to buttress and support and compliment all the other efforts that are going on,” said Benjamin, who is the group’s first chairman.

The roundtable will be a vehicle to help formulate public policies that impact minority-owned businesses and the economic status of black South Carolinians.

“But it is not lost on us that if we improve the quality of life for African-Americans, we improve it for the entire state,” Benjamin said.

There needed to be an organization that focuses strictly on the state’s minority-business climate, said Jonathan Pinson of Greenville, the roundtable’s vice chairman and chairman-elect.

The roundtable will be in sync with what the S.C. Council on Competitiveness does, said Pinson, who is a member of the council. But at the same time, there are issues facing the black business community that need to be on the collective agenda, he said.

“Our whole goal is to get results. We want to see progress being made in the African-American business sector,” said Pinson, head of Pindrum Staffing Services.

The first issue the roundtable intends to take on, Benjamin said, is developing a black economic development strategy for the state.

Economic development is important to the entire business community, Benjamin said, “but also very important to the African-American business community.”

The organization will engage in some lobbying. “I think it is important that once we have developed our agenda that we go out and promote it actively with our elected leadership,” he said.

But the organization is seeking IRS 501(c)3 status as a nonprofit, and that will limit the amount of lobbying it can engage in.

Once that strategy is developed, the roundtable will have a more public rollout, Benjamin said.

But not all issues will be public policy issues that need to be addressed by government.

One issue of concern is the small number of black senior business executives in the state.

The roundtable wants to help S.C. businesses increase the number of senior executives, through recruitment and internal retention and mentoring.

And while the roundtable wants to be the unified voice for black business leaders in South Carolina, Benjamin stressed that the organization is not exclusive. “Membership is open,” he said.

Still, members must be the principal executive (chairman, CEO or president) in their companies or a senior executive.

The organization has been in the formative stage for about a year, but efforts to get it going have intensified in the past few months.

The group has a 25-member board of directors. Right now, all are from the Midlands, with the exception of Pinson.

“We wanted to get a base in the Midlands and then go statewide,” Benjamin said.

Pinson said there will be a more diverse board by January made up of people from around the state: “We want to have a collaborative effort that is representative of the state.”

“But being big is a not a goal,” Benjamin said. Being effective is.

Benjamin expects the board to meet about six times a year with an equal number of general membership networking and social events.

The roundtable, which is dues-based, will hire some part-time staff that will be housed in Benjamin’s law office at 1416 Park St.

email this

print this