I am two years retired from a position as a professor of sociology. When I shared with colleagues that I was retiring, they said, “Well, gosh, you so deserve it. You’ve worked hard all your life. It is time to take some time for yourself.” Or, “Now you can sleep in and do nothing all day if that’s what you want. Have lunch with your friends. Play golf.” But I heard, “Ah, now you are done with working. You can be put out to pasture, set aside your skills, and console yourself with the idea that your time is past and it’s up to others to take up the torch and fight the good fight.”  When in fact, I already felt put out to pasture in my old job. I had been domesticated with my talents managed and confined. Leaving that position was actually liberating, an opportunity to expand my talents, learn new skills, embark on a new adventure, and see what emerged. I wasn’t worried that I didn’t have a plan or a book club or a hobby or a house in Florida where I could retire and join other retirees. I wanted to forge my own path after leaving what had been a twenty-year career in higher education. 

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Summer 2021, me modeling an apron from Frog & Toad from the Hope Springs Back box

I came to the realization just a few months after retiring, that I wasn’t retired at all, I was repurposing myself. Not everyone needs to do this. I am casting no judgements here. Everyone does retirement in their own way. I am simply explaining here my own repurposing journey; maybe it will resonate with others. I retired from the university a few months after my 70^th birthday and launched a small business later that year. Now, on most counts, a 70-year-old retired sociology professor really has no business launching a small business or a big business for that matter. It is a stretch goal, as they say. However, I was aching for an opportunity to see if all my frustrated creativity and energy to do something good for the world could be translated into a real live enterprise. Could I move from teaching and scholarship to really getting something done, something that would bring real value to a community that I love? 

A short history of Giving Beyond the Box

When I was a faculty member, I would host, with the help of some activated students, holiday pop-up markets that featured local social enterprises, i.e., small businesses or nonprofits with products that supported social missions such as refugee employment and retraining, empowering women, supports after school arts program for under-resourced communities and more. Our last market showcased eighteen vendors and sold nearly $8000 worth of merchandise in four hours. We took the market to the cafeteria of a Fortune 500 company the following day and did just as well. My takeaways from these markets were that people would be willing and happy to purchase an item that did good, if this was convenient, if the story behind the product was compelling, and they were especially likely to do for gift-giving occasions. Building a bridge between these organizations and conscious consumers was the challenge I decided to explore. As Seth Godin writes in new book, The Practice, part of a journey like this is to, “To find the contribution we’re capable of.”

Moving out of my old faculty role

Learning new skills. As I developed this idea, I relied on my friends and others who became friends. When I decided to curate gift boxes that would feature items from organizations with inspiring social missions, I began my building a few of the boxes, meeting with people I knew and many I didn’t to get their feedback. This was new territory for me. Prior to this adventure, I would have never introduced an idea unless I had already figured it all out. But in this case, I had so much to learn. Exploring this put me on a path of researching a fascinating topic. And it all required, tapping into people’s expertise and viewpoints. Was this a good idea? Who would buy this? What values could the box celebrate? And more. The effect of this was that at the end of the process, I had spoken with more than seventy people and had a much better idea then than I had when I set out.  I became more excited and more passionate about making this idea work, of bringing it to market.  In November 2019, I launched Giving Beyond the Box: Gifts that Do Good. Nearly two years into this experiment, we have partnered with over fifty vendors, created more than ten boxes and sold almost one thousand of these curated gifts.  That passion flowered into something real that gave to the community. And as Godin puts it, “our passion is simply the work we’ve trusted ourselves to do.”

Learning to seek help and hope. Another challenge was developing a new network of colleagues and friends for mutual support and encouragement. I have never in my long career as a public servant, as a professor, as a researcher ever made such extensive use of networking. I know have the widest, more diverse community of my professional life. This has been a blessing and something I have carefully cultivated. As a classic introvert, I relied on my ability to make one-on-one connections, to take genuine interest in the work of others.  I have also relied on incubators and accelerators, to develop my ideas, and often have been the oldest and dumbest person in my room. I have had to move out of my former “expert” role as a faculty member, recognizing that unless I learned about marketing, distribution, value propositions, inventory control, project management, and more I would never make this business a reality.  Luckily, one of the characteristics of the social enterprise community at least where I live in Rhode Island, is a system mutual support and an eagerness to help each other succeed. It is more like Dolphin Tank, than Shark Tank. 

A few final words. Repurposing, as I am using it here, puts on a road when we can refashion ourselves, if we choose to. We can have an idea, build it into a dream, take on some new skills, and then see where it takes us. One of the biggest joys of this adventure was being able to support many young entrepreneurs by buying their products and featuring their work in our boxes.  Telling the story of these social entrepreneurs and the work they do has been great medicine for me during these COVID times.  I think our customers appreciate that as well. Being able to explore avenues that were unknown or unavailable before, because of work or family obligations, is a great gift of aging and retirement, or better put, repurposing.