Center on Business and Poverty
Center on Business and Poverty (COBAP) is a non-profit organization that supports writing and community projects related to employers which participate in social enterprise or employee ownership. While it was an initiative of The College of Letters & Science at the University of Wisconsin Madison, it is now a private non-profit organization. John Hoffmire, who holds the Carmen Porco Chair in Sustainable Business at the Center on Business and Poverty, founded the organization in 2004 and serves as the current director. By arranging projects through employers, the program helps low-income individuals and families to improve their financial situations through various means. History The idea for COBAP emerged during conversations between John Hoffmire and John Karl Scholz who knew each other from graduate school at Stanford University. Hoffmire started working on setting the groundwork for the center in 2004 and established a national advisory board. The original idea was to use trained volunteers from the university to counsel workers on financial matters. The program started as a way for UW Hospital employees to have their taxes done for free, but branched out to other businesses when demand increased. Work COBAP supports writing and community projects related to employers which participate in