Join the Club

Elsa Sevilla found there’s profit in nonprofit. One of the first things she did when she started her own business, Sevilla Productions, was to join San Diego Mana, a nonprofit Latina organization that helps women through leadership and networking. The organization became her video production company’s first client. Now she’s working on her third video for the organization.

Sevilla, 36, also a member of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, enjoys the camaraderie of organizations that are predominantly Latino. “It helps in the sense you feel at home,” she says. “You can relate to people who are going through the same things you are. In a sense, they’re your mentors and supporters. And that’s exactly what I get out of San Diego Mana. You feel they’re family and that they’re looking out for you.”

Whether it’s organizations such as the Black Chamber of Commerce, the Asian Business Association (ABA), the Thai Commerce Association of San Diego or the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, membership in ethnicity- or race-based clubs is a clear plus when it comes to networking.

Take the case of Sophie James and Gina Walkin, both Filipinos. It had never occurred to them to do business together until they served on the Asian Business Association’s Chinese New Year Committee. Now Walkin, who owns a production company, is shooting a video for James’ Ocean Beach graphic design business, Vividline.

“Because we’re a smaller organization, you don’t get lost in the shuffle,” says Yen Tu, ABA executive director, explaining why organizations such as hers are sometimes better for networking. “An ethnic organization like ours allows members to actually have a connection in business, because they have a cultural commonality and they feel comfortable just talking to each other.”

Clubs such as ABA and the Spirit of the Barrio are also a place where business owners, whatever their ethnic background, can come together to hear community leaders discuss issues that may affect their livelihoods. More important, according to Fran Butler-Cohen, who founded Spirit of the Barrio as a way to raise funds for the Logan Heights Family Health Center years ago, “this provides a well-defined and strong marketing venue for groups whose ends haven’t been met through mainstream organizations.”

That’s the main reason the Hispanic Chamber was founded, senior membership coordinator Alex Montoya explains. “There were prominent Hispanic business leaders who felt their needs were not served and that they were not treated with enough respect by the general business community,” he says. “They needed further outlets to advance their business ideas and business needs.

“It recognized if members of the Hispanic community were to advance, they needed to help each other out,” Montoya says. Since it was founded 12 years ago, the organization has grown to more than 1,000 members—20 percent non-Latino—and has established a scholarship fund for Latino students.

Networking is often about being in the right place at the right time—which Dan Lungren, the Republican candidate for California governor in 1998, thought he was when he sought the support of San Diego’s venerable Catfish Club, founded 30 years ago by local Presybyterian minister and community activist the Reverend George Walker Smith. The meeting went fine until Lungren made the argument that minorities don’t need assistance in getting into colleges. Smith, a black and himself a Republican, listened politely until Lungren finished—then chastised him and called an immediate end to the meeting. So much for Lungren building support.

Organizations such as the Catfish Club and CLUB (Community Leaders Undoing Biases) go beyond networking groups whose main function is to promote and gain business. Their business is understanding—what makes the San Diego community tick, in the Catfish Club’s case, and dealing with racial intolerance, in CLUB’s case.

The Catfish Club started out as the Colored Folks Club, a meeting place for black professionals and business leaders, but soon attracted racially diverse leaders from the community who gathered each week over catfish (and later red snapper) at Smith’s United Presybterian Church in Golden Hill to exchange ideas. Over the years, it has hosted three California governors, three U.S. senators and 1,500 programs.

Unlike the Catfish Club, the focus of CLUB, founded by Harold K. Brown, semiretired associate dean of SDSU’s College of Business Administration, and business leaders Malin Burnham and Bob Payne, is a single one: coming to grips with the racial divide. Since 1995, CLUB’s meetings have reached some 2,000 people, most of them white and many of them corporate heads and owners of local companies. The idea is not to promote business but to affect the way it is done, not only at work but in the daily lives of everyone.

How has it fared?

“How do you measure something like kindness, or a change in attitude?” responds Brown. “You can only measure in terms of outcomes. People who attend CLUB meetings tell us what a wonderful, meaningful experience it is to sit down with people from various ethnic backgrounds to discuss this problem in ways they never did have an opportunity to do.”

Brown’s vision is that discussion doesn’t end at CLUB’s door. “We are hopeful that what they learn, they will carry over into their families, workplaces and community organizations.”

—Leonard Novarro

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