Guiding Light
(continued)
A lot of nonprofits that have focused
on Latinos as a group have ‘grown
up’—they have begun to scale their
work.”
Aseged reports that NSBE is currently structuring itself to resemble an
‘app’ of sorts—a portal for easy, timely
access to practical, useful information for its members in response to
growing demand for entrepreneurial
programs.
They call the new program
“NSBEpreneur.” It is a way of offering a number of different programs
offering a number of different support services to business owners and
aspiring entrepreneurs. “When you
consider the community that we serve,
there is no shortage of ideas. But the
resources and knowledge required to
bridge the gap between those ideas
and a successful product or service is
often just out of reach,” says Aseged.
“This is the void that NSBE will at-
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tempt to [fill]. NSBEPreneur will be
a conduit of information and resources
for our members, as well as others in
our community, who are entrepreneurs
or who have entrepreneurial aspirations,” he elaborates. “NSBEPreneur’s
goal is to help educate our members in
entrepreneurship, so they can, in turn,
form STEM-focused ventures.”
The National Urban League
(NUL) has a similar program. “The
encouragement of increased business ownership is a priority for the
National Urban League,” says Terry
Clark, vice president of entrepreneurship and business services.
To support NUL’s membership
business aspirations, the organization
operates entrepreneurship centers in
the offices of 10 of its local affiliates
across the country. NUL’s clients were
able to receive more than $20 million
dollars in financing and approximately
$566 million in new contracts through
the centers. “[NUL] has seen a very
steady uptick in interest and demand
for entrepreneurship assistance services through our program,” states
Clark.
Dedrick Muhammad, senior
director of the economic department
and executive director of the Financial Freedom Center at the National
Association for the Advancement
of Colored People, is overseeing the
creation of more support mechanisms for minority busi nesses. “We’ve
known since the beginning that this
is an area where we need to develop
strong programming,” Muhammad
said. “For the past several years, the
NAACP programs have been rebuilding themselves. Immediately after the
recession, we focused on fair lending,
mortgages, avoiding foreclosures, and
basic financial education.”
A
s for the future, the NUL is
planning to expand their services
directed at entrepreneurs and business
owners. “The future of our program
will include providing management
development skills to [minority busi24
May/June 2013
MBE
nesses] that are currently Tier 2 suppliers to large corporations with the
goal of moving them toward Tier 1
status. We also have developed a Small
Business Loan Fund called the Urban
Empowerment Fund, which is a subsidiary of the National Urban League
and will provide line of credit, assetbased and working capital financing
in amounts between $50,000 and
$250,000,”
he said.
“This fund
will look
to become
a certified
community development
financial
i n s t i t u - Muhammad
tion (CDFI) and begin to bridge
the credit gap for [minority entrepreneurs].” CDFIs are specialized financial institutions that work
in market niches that are underserved by traditional financial institutions.
In the coming months, the NAACP
is hoping to expand on its local and
national efforts by adding more
programs to support entrepreneurs.
“African Americans are more likely to
be entrepreneurs, but a serious challenge is the lack of capital. As a result,
we’re more likely to have unsuccessful
ventures.”
To help alleviate that and other
problems, the NAACP is partnering
with other organizations to expand
opportunities for its membership as
they relate to business ownership.
“We’ve been looking for some partners to work with us, looking at different types of partnerships. One of the
items we hope to be able to expand on
in the coming months is franchising,
and expanding diversity initiatives in
that industry.”
“There is a real fire to do this,”
says Poyo, “because in the end these
nonprofits are just listening to the
communities they serve.”
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