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One of RHD's first ventures into a for-profit business was such a dismal failure that CEO Bob Fishman finally pulled the plug. And yet Kim Crew was sure she could turn it into a success. She just needed someone to believe in her, someone to give her a shot.

Luckily, she was in the right place.

“We'd lost money, and RHD took its chips off the table, and I was standing there screaming – I can make this work!” Crew said. “But I didn't have any control. So I proposed to Bob: I want to take this over, if you'll be my equity partner. I can make this work.

“A lot of people said no. Absolutely, positively, no way. And Bob said: Sure.”

Crew throws back her head and laughs at the re-telling of the story, and today Crew and Lighthouse Venture Management have indeed had the last laugh. From those humble beginnings, Crew capitalized on RHD's faith, patience and support to build a wildly successful $18 million corporation that employs 150 people and provides cutting edge services in the high tech field.

Among Crew's businesses operating under Lighthouse Venture Management are: Computer Systems and Solutions (a computer repair and recycling company), CSS Staffing (providing contract and permanent technical placement) and Green Technology Recycling (an asset disposal service for businesses, schools and government agencies.

It was one of the first of RHD’s growing “crossover” ventures – for-profit businesses with nonprofit ideals. In recent years, RHD’s social enterprises have produced Brothers' Keepers (an employment program for ex-offenders and adjudicated youth) and SQA Pharmacy (a wildly successful full-service pharmacy that serves community-based residential facilities around the country).

Crew, who began at RHD as an administrative assistant, has grown a one-woman firm with two clients and a few thousand in billing to a multi-company conglomerate with revenues of $18 million a year.

Crew has earned the Philadelphia Business Journal's Women of Distinction Award, been named “Business Owner of the year” by the National Association of Women Business Owners and earned the Excellence Award for Entrepreneurs by the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce.

With Lighthouse Venture Management, she runs an open-book corporation that shares profits with employees. In addition, she returns a percentage of her profits each year to the Murex Corporation and to RHD, helping nurture other for-profit ventures and contributing to RHD's mission of serving people in need.

“We're a for-profit version of RHD, is what we are,'' Crew said. “Through Bob’s network, I had a lot of access to knowledge. I learned budgeting and forecasting. Bob rubbed off on me in the way I understand entrepreneurship and opportunities. And there was his nurturing, and his guidance. The man is a saint. He kept me going through a lot of pitfalls, where I really learned through on-the-job training. He scooped me up a handful of times when I would have failed.

“I made some big mistakes, and instead of hanging me out to dry, he said: 'Let’s fix this.' He didn't have to do that, but he did. I did learn. That was the biggest thing – patience. RHD let us grow, let me do it. Bob put me in business and said: Do best you can. And I said: 'Oh, God!' I mean, I was terrified. But that's Bob. He believes in empowering people, and making ordinary people extraordinary.”

Crew is indeed an extraordinary person, and certainly would have been a success somewhere no matter how she went about it. But RHD provided the opportunity, a patient and nurturing environment in which to grow – and a blueprint for the kind of business she wanted to run and the kind of employer she wanted to be.

“I would hate to be an employee that comes to work every day and just doesn’t know why,'' Crew said. “I consider these guys my business partners. It promotes a different level of conversations that enhance the business, so that when my phone rings I know it's not about problems. It's about opportunities.

“All along we talked about making enough to consider yourself stable, and then giving back. I truly believe you need to be giving back, and not just anywhere – giving back to a structure that is going to promote more of the same. That's what I really enjoy. And it turned into 'crossover.' Bob always had that vision. What he got to thinking was: This profit thing has legs; profitable companies are the way to create and maintain a society.”