“The Center was developed by and for parents, by listening to and being driven by parents. This is what has allowed us to keep our market,” says Mara Kaplan. Mara is CEO, and one of the founding moms, of the Pittsburgh, PA-based Center for Creative Play.

What is unique about the Center is that it was developed by and for parents of children with disabilities. Kaplan’s son has a serious disability, and this adds a level of passion to her work. “We felt our community was lacking a place where kids with disabilities could play with their siblings,” says CEO Kaplan, who helped to found the Center 10 years ago.

“Our entrepreneurial culture was built into our operating philosophy – we started out as an entrepreneurial organization, so we weren’t in the position of having to force an entrepreneurial spirit into an existing culture. This is what has allowed us to keep our market.”

Accelerating Enterprise
The Center is unique in the type of services it offers, including a 15,000-foot play area, birthday parties, family activities, evening weekend camp, an award-winning line of children’s CDs and recently a fee-for-service advisory practice in which CFCP partners with leaders in other communities to build developmentally rich, universally accessible indoor play spaces. Their unique portfolio of services was due to lots of research and effort spent on their business and strategic planning, partly in partnership with the Pittsburgh Social Enterprise Accelerator (see PSEA profile in this issue of SER).

“PSEA has been a god send for us,” says Kaplan. “They have provided the business sense we lacked–I have an MBA but come from a nonprofit background. They made me answer the hard questions. They’ve have paid for consultants to help us with cash flow analysis and developing a strong strategic plan. I can call them any day to check in on any business problems. One of the ways they differ from a foundation is that part of the money they’ve provided us is a loan that has to be repaid.”

The new Center for Creative Play environment drew 51,000 visitors during its first year of operation, and the Center has raised $4.5 million in their capital campaign to complete building improvements. Today, the Center for Creative Play generates 30% of its $1.3 million operating budget through earned-income from social enterprise and fee-for-service programs.

Consulting to Build More Centers
The Center’s Advisory Practice provides a range of services, from half-day workshops to complete consulting on a $5million build-out. “Our business plan shows that we should start making a $42,000 profit in year 3,” says Kaplan. “We plan on grossing $1 million in sales in year two. The budget for the Advisory Practice covers expenses for some of our normal overhead, including 80% of my salary, a portion of the CFO’s and office space.”

As a consultant on indoor play areas for all abilities, the Center will charge fees to help other organizations reproduce the play space and ancillary services for children and families -- starting with community development and fund raising, then moving on to the design and construction of the play areas. They help organizations plan for their grand openings, and for the first year of operation they provide a weekly telephone consultations to smooth any early glitches. Kaplan said the play spaces that Center For Creative Play has developed aren’t just for stand-alone centers, but also work for children’s museums and hospital waiting areas.

With a lead gift of $1 million from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation of Battle Creek, Michigan, the Center launched the Able To Play program to build inclusive play spaces throughout the state of Michigan, in collaboration with another nonprofit, Boundless Playgrounds™. There are currently three new Center for Creative Play environments being created in Baraga and Holland, Michigan. Additional Center for Creative Play environments are in the initial planning stages in Buffalo, Cleveland, West Virginia, and Trinidad. “Why reinvent the wheel when we can come in and show you how to do it,” Kaplan says.

Valuing Services
In advising other nonprofits that are considering the feasibility of building similar play environments, Kaplan points out a problem common to all nonprofits that have to balance money and mission: undervaluing your organization’s services. “Don’t price your services at under the market rate,” says Kaplan. “Our admission should be much higher, but we can’t double admission at this point. We’re telling our advisory practice clients to really think about pricing. You’re offering something very very valuable!”

Keys to Success
CFCP has worked hard to develop a product that people are interested in purchasing, and they’ve been fortunate to have the support of the PSEA. But one of the keys to their success, Kaplan says “is things we’ve done internally. We learned to change management when we grew from a grassroots organization to a multi-faceted one. I hired a passionate team and I trust then to do their job. There will be a point when I’m not the right person to direct the Center, when we need to keep the status quo for 5 years and manage what we’ve got. That wouldn’t be the job for me— I can’t stop coming up with new ideas!” .