Program seeks to expand capacity of small businesses
LaForce Baker is the Vice President of Community Impact for World Business Chicago. PHOTO PROVIDED BY LAFORCE BAKER.
World Business Chicago has created a program with the goal of expanding Black and Latino owned businesses on the South and West sides.
The World Business Chicago Black and Latino Excellence Investment Summit connects Black and Latino owned businesses to tech assistance and at the end of the program, those businesses have the opportunity to receive funding from banks and lenders to expand their businesses.
World Business Chicago is the city’s economic development arm. There are 15 business owners in the summit’s cohort, those businesses include a restaurant, a bridal shop and an auto shop. To participate, the business had to be in retail, professional services or light manufacturing, be in existence for three years and identify clear growth, and development opportunities that require capital.
“There’s a lot of programming that’s targeted toward start-up businesses and helping them get off the ground, but there’s not a whole lot of support for existing businesses that have been around maybe for three, five or seven years and they need capital to grow and scale or to improve their offering and modernize and be relevant for today,” said LaForce Baker, Vice President of Community Impact for World Business Chicago.
The mission was to use the convening power of World Business Chicago to get together banks which include Bank of America, BMO Harris Bank, WinTrust, CIBC, JP Morgan Chase to make a commitment to fund the business in the summit.
The three-year requirement ensures the businesses have at least two years of tax returns, which Baker and his team found is one of the core banking documents lenders need to make an underwriting decision. The businesses that are participating are amenities that are needed on the South and West sides of the city. The hope is as these businesses grow, they will create jobs in their communities, and it will create thriving commercial corridors. Also speed up the revitalization of the communities.
The businesses were chosen in March and they received technical assistance in late April. In June, the businesses will pitch to the banks and the banks will make the decision of what businesses it will fund. The banks had to commit to giving the businesses meaningful capital that would allow the businesses to grow. The banks had to commit to lend at least $25,000 to the businesses.
“The ultimate goal is to grow existing Black and Latino businesses. To help them add their second location, to help them expand their business offerings,” Baker said.
Baker knows what the business owners are going through. He owned a business in the food space that he was able to grow and scale. He knew the challenges of going from one location to two locations to five locations to 10. He learned it was really hard to do business at scale. When businesses scale, they can be competitive.
World Business Chicago was seeing that retail, light manufacturing and professional services businesses were not getting as much capital as tech businesses are getting.
On June 16th, the summit will culminate at the Museum of Science and Industry.
For more information, visit www.worldbusinesschicago.com/investmentsummit.
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