The Keys to Equitable Unlocking Small Buisness Potential

Welcome to Money and Meaning, a podcast where we connect with people around the world who are working to unlock the power of markets for impact. I'm Sara Sterling, Vice President of Content and Convening of SOCAP Global. This podcast series is hosted by SOCAP Global and the Sorenson Impact Institute. SOCAP Global convenes the largest and most diverse community in impact through live and digital experiences that educate, spur conversation, and inspire investment in positive impact. We work under the leadership of the Sorenson Impact Institute, which helps organizations achieve their impact vision. The Institute is proudly housed at the University of Utah's David Eccles School of Business. Each episode of Money and Meaning features stories of amazing people who are leveraging the power of capital markets for the betterment of people and planet in a just and sustainable way. Recorded at SOCAP 25, this episode of Money and Meaning spotlights emerging models that expand access to capital and business development resources for socially and economically disadvantaged individuals with a focus on the American South and indigenous communities. You'll hear real-world examples of how targeted business support programs and cross-sector collaboration can reduce marginalization, increase business sustainability, and create resilient local economies. The discussion also offers actionable strategies for capital readiness, market access, and breaking down silos between government, nonprofits, and funders underserved entrepreneurs. Enjoy the conversation. >> And this topic, small business finance, um, and local economies are near and dear to my heart. I wrote a book called Locavesting after the, um, financial crisis of, um, of 2008. So, um, I'm very happy to be here, um, with with our panelists. So, I'm going to um, introduce them very briefly and then we can go into a little bit more depth as we get into our conversation. Um So, on my immediate right, I have Tenesha Oops, where are you here? Tenesha Weeks with um uh Winrock International, which I was very glad to um uh learn about, which is a global organization, but you are very locally focused. Um and then we have um the esteemed mayor of Little Rock, Frank Scott. Thank you for coming all the way here and um finally, last but not least, down at the end we have Alicia Murphy, um who is an economist with the Navajo Navajo Nation Division of Economic Development, and we look forward to hearing your perspective as well. Um so, let's just jump right into it. So, um why don't why don't you each tell us a little bit more about your organization and some of the challenges that you're facing in this um area of, you know, getting access to capital um to small businesses in your communities. So, we'll start with Tenesha. >> Hello, everyone. I am a program senior program officer at Winrock International. We are a global company, but a nonprofit organization, but my focus is on small businesses in the southeastern United States. My goal is to actually meet the businesses where they are, help them access capital, help them realize that their business is not maybe not a business, but a expensive hobby. Um and work with them through the process. Many of my projects focus on providing technical assistance. We've helped women-owned businesses. We've helped black-owned businesses, and we focus on rural areas and socially and economically disadvantaged individuals that own businesses. So, that's pretty much what we do, and we're funded by Walmart. We also we've had funding from the Visa Foundation. We do have some government funding. And um we really like meeting businesses where they are and providing one-on-one technical assistance, mentorship, and and helping them to access capital and really realizing what they can do and the potential that they have to grow in their local areas. >> Well, good afternoon, everyone. Uh my name is Frank Scott Jr. I am the proud mayor of the city of Little Rock, Arkansas, which is Arkansas' state capital city. Uh we are the largest city in a very small state. I often tell people there are uh New York boroughs that are larger than the state of Arkansas. Uh we're about 3.3 million in the state, and Little Rock is somewhere around uh 210,000 people. Um the great thing about Little Rock is uh while we are a mid-size city, um we have the same realities as many of the larger cities because we are the largest, most populous, diverse, urban city in the state of Arkansas. So, we have the same realities as a Memphis, a New Orleans, or Atlanta uh from that standpoint. And so, we are both a microcosm we are a microcosm of the United States. We're both rural and urban at the same time. And so, uh we love to share that we are a destination place for you can try it here, and if it works here, it probably can uh be taken to scale somewhere else. And so, we're really excited about what we've been able to do to grow our city from a population standpoint as well as from the economic standpoint. We lead the state as it relates to GDP growth uh as most recently from the Federal Reserve of St. Louis ranked uh the city of Little Rock number two in GD GDP growth with cities our size or larger as well as pure state capital cities. Number one is Nashville. I don't like being number two in anything, but I will be at be number two to Nashville. If you know anything about what's going on Nashville right now, 157 people are moving there each day. And so that lets you know the type of growth that's going on there particularly in the southeast as the nature has just shared. And so when we talk about social capitalism, that's one of the things me being a former banker, I've tried to employ in being not only the chief executive officer of our city, but being the chief growth officer. And so while we do all that we can to recruit and retain existing small, mid-size, and large businesses in our state in our city, we have been focusing a lot on historically forgotten areas in our city that are produced through primarily black and brown communities, but really focusing on scaling up not only from a a capital standpoint, but also from a technical assistant. We got to make certain individuals are bankable so they can get the bank dollars to scale up to really expand. >> Hello. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Alicia Murphy. I am the economist with the Navajo Nation Division of Economic Development. I am based out of Window Rock, Arizona working for the Division of Economic Development for about 3 years going on 4 with the Tribal Nation um branching over three states, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. We have a population of about 400,000 enrolled tribal members. And about 75% of those tribal members live off the nation, but what were our office is focused on is trying to connect and grow business environments on the Navajo Nation. Access to capital has always been a concern and it's not because of systems that and it is because of systems that are not built for tribal communities. Working with the states, collaborating with county and federal agencies to build these business environments is very difficult, but our office works with all of these entities to try to encourage, you know, our entrepreneurs to one establish their business as a legitimate business cuz like like it was mentioned before, they are real businesses. And we have a huge number of entrepreneurs that are part of the informal market, but we want to help them establish themselves into our ecosystem of of entrepreneurship and business development. My job primarily is to understand where our populations are, understand where this these businesses are, and that's through data collection. That's through understanding how we find our community. How do we find these very skilled and very talented entrepreneurs in our communities cuz they're they're everywhere. They're in my own family that they don't even call themselves business owners, but they are. So, all the way from providing technical assistance to building brand brand new loan programs through federal federal state small business credit initiative. But doing that process for our tribal community members who are looking to access more funding, we had to understand where our businesses and how that where they are in understanding the financial anything. Cuz banking is not available on the on the Navajo Nation quite like real for real. It's not there and and having that experience and having that awareness of how to build a business with the access to capital is a whole new conversation that we're starting with our tribal members. So, that's really exciting for me to be a part of, but with all of that we we do want to again understand where our populations are, where the businesses are in data collection and I often talk about how we when once we get to that point of of having access to this information, how do we protect it? How do we keep the the information that our business owners are providing to us, but protecting it from misuse, protecting it from any any kind of things that could be used against our communities that are already at a disadvantage in in terms of if you want to compare it to like county or state. Um so, my job is is fairly new. I am the first economist for our tribe, so I'm very very honored to be in this space to set up the foundation of what we need for what an economist can provide and it's it's again learning about how our communities are operating, how how can we help them scale up? How can we help them be um as be competitive with our our neighbors, our outside neighbors, our other tribal neighbors, so um that's that's what I do at the Division of Economic Development. >> Okay, thank you. Um so, I feel like small business finance and access to capital is like a perennial issue, right? Like we've been talking about this for decades and um you're all doing very good work, but we seem to have um extra challenges now, shall we say? Like a lot of the federal um programs are being cut or are at risk of being cut. Um that's putting strains on state budgets. Um you know, the state and local networks and and ecosystems are more important than ever. Um can you each talk a little bit about how maybe some of those, you know, policy and federal, you know, actions are you know, impacting the work that you do and how you're getting around those challenges um which I think we'll get to, you know, kind of some of the breaking down of silos that that I think we want to talk about today as well. Alicia, do you want to um continue? >> Okay. Uh yeah, I can continue. Um so I and I just wrote a short brief for our Navajo Nation Washington office to describe how these federal shut this federal shutdown is in May and be impacting our community. Um so for one, the Division of Economic Development is uh the office that approves business site leasing um on the nation. So that involves collaboration with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. That includes uh a real estate department somewhere in the federal side also. But those meetings have completely stopped. And we don't know when we when they're going to start up again, but also it's going to create this huge backlog of an already difficult stupid process that we have as business owners on the nation have to go through to get a business site lease. Under trust land status uh for the Navajo Nation, we have to go through the BIA to do housing, to do uh commercial and industrial stuff. So having this um one is an immediate and critical issue to again stop business growth and development like quite literally cuz when we have businesses who want to uh rent a site on the nation that's available, it's we can't do that now. Um another piece that's immediate and also very critical is um the grant funding process with the nation. So we do have to go through um our Navajo Nation Grants and Contracts Office. Uh again, a lot of collaboration with the federal government in terms of granting requirements um and a lot of the uh offices on the nation do depend on grants and federal funding like that to do like technical services, technical assistance and stuff like that. Um, but also um when we talk about building the access to capital for our businesses, we don't do it in one office. We collaborate with many offices on the nation. So, there's probably like 12 different divisions, tribal government offices. Um, half of them we work with because they have authority authority or they have um the experts in that field to answer questions when it comes to getting the business site lease and activating the business and going through the the whole thing to help our our one entrepreneurs, two businesses that want to expand, and three our enterprises that they are all also operating as well. So, it's it's a lot of different offices collaborating, but when we have the federal government who's like the umbrella to all of those offices, that is going to continue to like make it more difficult when we don't have when we have uncertainty in our conversations around federal government shutdown, around um how how slow things are going to be again. Um, and then for the State Small Business Credit Initiative uh for the Navajo Nation, what we can talk about is is the reluctant I guess reluctant reaction, the reaction from outside financial entities that don't understand our processes, but they have they want they they have the the professional expertise to to collaborate with the nation, but when we're in a government who's dependent on the federal government um in many ways, but not all the ways, it's it's just more complex, more confusion, more delay, and um it's very very um interesting because we're already operating in this delay. We're already operating in this weird system that's not made for tribal communities. It's made to to control tribal communities. Um and when we're trying to find ways to go beyond that, to push beyond that, it's it's uh this this conversation is is important because we are still operating so slowly. I mean, it's it's not it's it's it creates this sustained reactiveness that that we're still in. I mean, we want to move past that in some forms and it's not with continued silos. It's in collaboration with other other entities as well. >> Sure. Um for us it's quite challenging. Just like Alicia said, um funding is also an issue. We can't do the things that we normally do because normally it was government funding that helped support our programs. So, those have been cut, shut down, changed, um and a lot of my projects fall in the DEI space. So, at the beginning of the year I was like, "Oh my god, the grants that we planned on applying for, where where are they?" So, we have transitioned to focus on more private funding. Um one of the challenges that's new that I have no answer to is the cut and snap benefits. So, this morning I had a text, I had emails from one of our business owners and she said, "60% of my revenue comes from snap benefits." because she provides groceries in a low-income area and snap benefits was the thing that helps her survive. And she said, "What am I going to do, Tonitrice?" And I am her TA provider. And I was honest, I was like, "I don't know, but we'll figure it out." I try to do that to give them hope and then try to figure out like, "Okay, what what are we going to do? I don't know. And people will think about SNAP benefits and don't think about it impacting actually our economy. They just think about, okay, SNAP benefits, I don't I don't it doesn't bother me, you know, it doesn't doesn't impact me. But now, a grocery Well, it's not a full-fledged grocery, but a a grocery store that provides access to um food for a rural community because the Walmart is a 20-minute drive, this local small grocery store now is going to lose 60% of their revenue potentially on November 1st. So, now there is fear there. So, the what's going on in the government also it impacts Winrock, but it also impacts our small businesses. So, now you don't have a grocery store providing 60% of their revenue, and now she's fearful. And she called me in a panic while I'm here, and I have no answer for her. I'm I was like, I'm watching it, too. I'm sorry. You know, because I don't know what the answer is. And because it's a rural area, it's a poor area, under resourced area, there's not a lot of economy there. We're working on it, but I don't really know what the answer is, but I wanted to kind of bring it up so everybody's aware of what's going on and how it impacts our local economy, our small businesses. So. >> And that is also very much affecting city governments, right? >> Uh I think what we've heard today, we're all in these uncertain times, but let's just be blunt, it's very chaotic times, and it's creating uh disruption and in in and those of us that see things as the glass half full, while it is chaotic, very crisis-driven actions that are creating disruption in the market and disruption across this entire uh US, unfortunately, disruption has to wake people up. Have to wake up those of us who have missions and figure out while we have to understand there's no mission without the margin, but are we truly upholding to the mission? And I think what you're seeing right now is as relates to the need for more social capital is because for for so long we've all become dependent upon the federal government and state government to get things done. Well, we look at it in Little Rock is while it's chaotic, it also creates an opportunity for more creativity for cities, and not just in Little Rock, but across the US to get more involved. You know, at the end of the day, my job is to make sure the trash is picked up, that we catch the robbers, and we put out the fires. And and but we have to do more because our residents desire more, they expect more. And so what we've been able to do is really focus on the technical assistant pieces for our small businesses as well as leveraging other opportunities for the capital side and working with our local banking structures for that to happen. I think mainly is for those who have the capital is really understanding the need and the why and what and the impact that it has for the businesses as well as the community. I can give an example, we got Second Horizon here Kelsey was here with us today. If you'll just raise your hand. And so we we have in in a middle part of our city in Little Rock and she didn't even know I was going to say this and I didn't know she was going to be here. We have a what was a very distressed indoor mall in our city that and we've seen this all across the nation that malls aren't what they used to be. But it was on the verge of creating a crime area. It was on the verge of creating other distressed properties. And so we were able to work with organizations to figure out how do we save it and how do we scale it up? And today is complete is a complete 180 and that's because we're working together. And so, for those who have capital, it may not be the dollars going to a business, but it may be dollars going to community-centric areas that will ultimately help the overall community. But, we just have to really figure out what our mission is, and do we really mean what we say? And I think we have this opportunity to be very creative with those businesses. And last note, when it talks about what we're hearing from a lot of our small businesses, many black and brown businesses and and just businesses in general that we see today 30, 40 years later that have been successful, many of them received a SBA 504 loan. Many of them received a SBA accelerated line of credit. These are these businesses were able to get different things from the federal government. Now, as we all know, it's either delayed or halted. And so, if if that's being delayed and halted, guess what? There's no business happening. So, we're seeing a lot of our small businesses shuttering. And so, we got to figure out from a city perspective, how can we get into that small business realm where we leverage to the extent that we can after we take care of central and basic services to issues more than just having procurement dollars for you to have business, but how do you have that working capital? How do you have the ability to have real estate, to have owner-occupied buildings, things of that nature? And so, it gives us the opportunity to be more creative, but we need also the social capital and the community banks to really not only do what you've been doing, but step it up a little bit more because there's no more relying on the SBA guarantees and things of that nature to get different things done. >> Um thank you for that. And I think that's been a theme here, like stepping up in this moment, right? I mean, across the board, we are facing a lot of challenges. We're in a very different place than where we were just a year ago. Um Frank, are people stepping up and how so and and yeah. >> I would say in Little Rock we've been fortunate that a lot of the new things we've been able to do. I'm I'm a big proponent of what I call now the P4, which is public private philanthropic partnerships. And so a lot of our public policies that we've been able to accelerate and advance has been because of the combining of our our city dollars with other foundations, other businesses and things of that nature, whether it's our affordable housing strategy and the work that we do with our local banks. Hope Credit Union, Southern Bancorp, other banks First Security and what we're able to do to advance that to ultimately have a housing trust fund. I think that also plays a role into how we scale our business. I think the best way to scale a business when you have something that you can take a loan out on to help with your working capital until you're able to get the bank working capital as well. And Bloomberg Philanthropies has been very helpful to us. Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, which is a subsidiary of Winrock as well. And so I think again, we're seeing that. You're seeing a lot of cities work that work from that standpoint, but I think there's a lot more room for different banking, independent financial institutions, social capital businesses to really lock in with with cities. I think if you want to get something done, you got to get it done with the city. You'll spend a whole lot of time dealing with the state. No matter if it's it's blue or red. >> Anyone else want to talk about that? Whether you're seeing people stepping up, okay. Um Uh before we get into some strategies about how you're all breaking down silos and and bringing people together around some of these challenges. Um I'm curious if you're seeing distress showing up in some of your small business um you know uh networks or or you know loan portfolios. Um everybody's being hit by um tariffs um unemployment um you know the snap benefits like the loss of a lot of support networks. So um are you seeing that show up and and you know is that another like yet another challenge as we're um trying to you know uh keep keep the you know small business finance flowing and our local um economies thriving. >> No, I think it it really depends on what industry you're in right now. I would say in Little Rock on the macro level tariffs are impacting some of our large businesses dealing with steel and things of that nature. Your mom-and-pops aren't necessarily seeing it as much. Now there's you see it in the increase and then you can attribute the increases to certain industries from that standpoint. I will say from a city perspective we'll we're all seeing that construction costs are continuing to increase because of the tariffs and the many people are going to different areas of the country to get different materials from that standpoint. So you definitely are seeing that. But what I will tell you is you're seeing a lot of folks uh using more and more personal credit card debt to fund their businesses uh and to stay afloat and trust and believe. I mean you know this federal shutdown at day 28 it's a real thing. Um and not only that, but but the SNAP is really going to uh impact. And I think many times, you know, and I I'll say this, I don't know if it is appropriate, but I'm going to say it anyway, I don't care. Um uh many people paint the face of SNAP benefits as black people and brown people. We just 14% of population. And so, and and what you're going to see a lot of folks, particularly in rural areas, not what we're seeing in Arkansas, it it's it's not just the tariffs, it's the the uh the federal government shutdown is hurting farmers. Farmers that let's be honest, a lot of farmers ain't making profit. They they get these these federal government subsidies to get different things done. And then you were talking about we're not going to deal with China, and we got soybean and things of that nature. And Arkansas is the largest rice producer. I can tell you uh folks are hurting. And uh Oh, you you said amen, that's okay. No, but I I think you're seeing a lot of distress, but as this shutdown in particular, I think the SNAP benefits and how long it lasts and persists, I I want one last anecdote. I was talking to cuz we're trying to figure out what we're going to do as a city to be creative to be helpful to our residents as we did during COVID um and then recent tornadoes. Our school district superintendent shared our free and reduced lunch students were fine until November 30th. We're good. But if it persists, we're not going to be able to take care of our children for breakfast and lunch. Nobody's talking about dinner, right? But the bigger concern for the superintendent right now, based on November 1st, is the employees who are serving the free and reduced lunch, who are on SNAP benefits, who are going to have to decide to quit a a job, a dedicated job at the school district, because they're not making enough at the school district and they were supplementing their income because of the snap benefits and now they're going to have to leave. So, we're not going to have people to serve the students from November 1st to the 30th. I think we all aren't just I mean, one in eight people are on snap. One in eight. We got to open our eyes. >> And that's not to mention Medicaid, right? >> Yeah, we Yeah, that's all this stuff. >> And many of the people on snap benefits have jobs. And in the rural areas, a lot of our clients are not full-time entrepreneurs. They have a job and then their business is part-time. So, they have that job so they could be able to put, you know, food on their table. Some of them are on snap. So, everything it this is the government is really impacting small business owners and that conversation and a lot of times is not being had. You know, that if you have the grocery store in a rural area who cannot no longer accept snap on November 1st and that's 60% of their revenue. And she wanted to start a grocery store because there was no place to go. Walmart was 20 miles away. And so, they needed something in their their area and it's a low-income rural area, right? There's not a lot of economy there, right? So, now she opens up her business. She also works part-time, right? And has this grocery store and she's about to lose 60% of her revenue. And so, she's talked to me like, "What what do I do?" Right? And I'm trying to figure out are there is there some opportunity where we can sell her food somewhere else? Okay, you know, direct, you know, direct another direct consumer something that we can think of? Are there bank loans or opportunities? We can't go to SBA right now. So, even the past solutions are not working in this current con climate. And so we're everyone yes, be creative, but the options that you had in the past are no longer available because of what's going on. And I think sometimes we don't have that conversation about what those decisions are going to do and how they're going to really impact our the most underserved communities. >> Tiffona Antone. >> Yeah, I have I have a couple things to add. Um for Navajo Nation, a lot of our entrepreneurs depend on visitors coming to the nation. Where our tourism industry is is right now the the most active industry around around uh Navajo Nation in Arizona because of the Grand Canyon. Everybody wants to visit the Grand Canyon. They either drive uh very close to the Navajo Nation or directly through the Navajo Nation to get to visit the Grand Canyon. So, that industry and because of the dwindling um number of people making trip to Grand Canyon and because the parks are closing, so a lot of our entrepreneurs depend on this visitation to the nation. Artists um are also suffer are suffering and and going through the hike in silver prices of silver. A lot of Navajo Nation are are our artists and entrepreneurs are working at home making jewelry. Price of silver is going up, but it directly impacts what they can produce. Um things that are often bought at like the grocery store and we're talking about um access to food and and um how EBT or or WIC is going to be is going to be impacted very soon. A lot of our families depend on that as well, but those grocery stores where you buy this those foods are off the nation. So, when you think about an entrepreneur dependent on the price of silver, dependent on uh um taking care of their their household, um working on or off the nation, but also getting access to food off the nation, which is already something that the tribe endures with economic leakage. We we don't have enough grocery stores on the nation to to supply all the food. So, a lot of people travel off the nation to get stuff in in bordering towns. But, those those situations have always been complicated for for tribal community members and finding these creative solutions is always the thing that we've been doing for generations because of circumstances that but the federal government has put tribal nations in living on reservations, having trust land. And I think today what we're feeling and what we're experiencing is is just okay, now now what? What's next? What are the creative solutions? What and we're kind of just like checking our checking our emails every day thinking it's going to be it's not going to be solved right away. Even even if there's the restart and everything goes back to a normal. It's not going to be quick for for tribal nation communities because we're still enduring other kind of complications of federal federal policy for tribal nations under trust land. So, >> Thank you all. So, let's get into what are some of the creative strategies and how are you all to get to the title of the the session? How are you breaking down silos that have sometimes hampered, you know, your work and especially at this time when we're kind of on our own, it takes a village, it's you know, you got to bring everybody in your ecosystem together. Tanitra, can we start with you and I think you've worked with the city of Little Rock, right? >> So, my department not directly, but our our women's business center does work with the city of Little Rock. And what they do is they help businesses actually become a supplier for the city. So, they help them through that process. And um speaking of partnerships with different cities like Little Rock, I just I don't work with Little Rock, but Winrock does. Um we do >> That means you work with Little Rock. >> Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, so we do work with cities so outside of of Arkansas, I do work directly with cities to give small businesses the opportunities to become suppliers, helping them through the process. So, you have businesses that traditionally would have been left out of that opportunity. We're helping them if they need to get a certification, they may need to take a class or do whatever the steps that are necessary to become a supplier for cities such as Little Rock. Also a supplier for Walmart. We've helped a couple of people who are now on Walmart's marketplace sell um their products. So, you imagine somebody from a rural area is now selling their product at Walmart. So, we help do those things. And the way I think we have really Winrock has really worked to break down silos is first we kind of we go to the community, right? We are we work in the Delta region, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama. We actually talk to communities to see what they need. One of our partner organizations had a wonderful AI training for businesses in a area that has very little high-speed internet. So, they wanted these businesses that are some of them are using pen and paper to take a AI class for business. That really didn't work because they never thought about they had a great idea, but they never thought about actually talking to the community. Winrock allows me a lot of time to actually go in the community, talk to people, connect with the grassroots and community based organizations that that are there and talk to the small business owners and ask, "What do you need? What are some of the barriers here?" And some of the needs and barriers, they're different from different towns, and the towns are directly next door to each other, right? Some of the towns actually have rivalry because their high school team rivalry. So, they're not going to go to the next town, there's a coffee shop in the next town because they beat us in football, you know, last year and they're mad. So, you have to kind of know who you're working with and who you're talking to. So, one of the first things we do is see what the need is. And then, once we consider Winrock kind of a connector and an advocate. Many of the community birth-based organizations we work with, they may not be able to accept money already or have the capacity to accept money from the government or from Walmart or from Visa because they're just they they don't they they're not at that level yet. They're a small business, mom-and-pop, three people, maybe only two full-time people, right? So, we work with them because they're actually doing the work. They understand the community. They're providing the services. For example, in the Mississippi Delta, they didn't have a small business development center in the Mississippi Delta since 2016-17 before we start working with them. Why didn't didn't they have a small business development center? I have not no idea. I think it's political reasons from what I'm thinking about, but that they have some of the poorest counties in the nation. Why wouldn't you have a small business development center, right? They didn't have money. And the person that was doing it was a guy who was retired. He was volunteered his time to help build it back up. And he says, "Yes, we have a small business development center." And he was like, "Well, not really. It's just me, and there's no money." And so, I said, "Okay, well, let's try to get you some money." And so, that's where the partnership kind of happens because we had money from Walmart. And so, I went back to Walmart, and I have really been blessed to work with some private foundations that treat us as partners and not just that old-school, you know, funder-grantee relationship where you said you're going to do this in the proposal, you can't pivot, you can't change. Whereas, Walmart and Visa Foundation did it, too. I just not currently funded by Visa. So, we're you know, if we talk about now what's recently happened, Walmart, I can go back to them and say, "Hey, we thought this was going to happen like this. It's not happening like that." Right? In this area, that's not what's going on. We think we should do this. And they talk with us. Okay, well, we want this to come out of this funding. How can we make this happen? I think that's the partnership sometimes we don't think about the funder being truly a part of that part partnership, but they are because a funder can tell you no, and you can't do it. So, we've been allowed the flexibility to talk to them and say, "Okay, this is what's happening in the community. Can we do this? This is our solution." So, we've gone from, you know, working with with um small you know, uh community-based organization like Mr. Finley's Small Business Development Center in the Delta to also working with HBCUs that are institutions that have been there for a long time. And our goal is to build their capacity. So, now Mr. uh I lovingly call him Mr. Finley. So, that's why how I'm going to say it. But it's it's the Small Business Development Center. Mr. Finley now knows how to respond to RFPs because he's responded to ours. And when he responded to ours, and it didn't look right, right? We picked up the phone and called and said, "Okay, this is what this is saying. This is how you need to quantify what you're actually doing because we know you're doing great things." And that doesn't happen with the funding relationship at all. And we don't just offer it to him. We offer it to everybody that applies, right? So, it's just not we're focusing on him, but we tell them like, "This is the process. This is what they're really asking for. Okay, you're talking to 45 people when you are at the local Walmart cuz he will do that and you find somebody and you start talking with them. Well, when you start talking then type write down what you're saying to these people cuz that's just how Mr. Finley is and he'll go to the businesses, be at the restaurant and tell them, "Oh, you don't need to do this anymore. You know, you need QuickBooks. Stop using pen and paper." Well, he's that's technical assistance. It just looks a little different. So, I'm working with Mr. Finley to understand that he's providing services. It looks a little bit different. I need you to write this down, Mr. Finley, so you can capture it. And then in return, you tell the funder. So, that's kind of what we do. We connect Mr. Finley to he's funded by Walmart. So, he goes around and tells everybody he's funded by Walmart. And you know, everybody hates Walmart now. So, that's a unique relationship there, but we can also say, "Well, though they the I was dismantled and Walmart went through their thing, this is actually still a DEI project." I mean, the the word DEI. I know it doesn't exist anymore, but it's a belonging project. Let's call it that. But, it's a project that ensures that everyone is helped in the business world. Everyone that is socially and economically disadvantaged is helped. And so, I think with us, I forgot what the question was and I got I ran I forgot what the question was. Okay. Okay, I'm still on I'm Okay. Okay. So, that is kind of how we work together cuz you're working with someone from the grassroots level, Mr. Finley, and then you're working with the funder and then that's us in the middle kind of being the connector and filling in the gaps and seeing what they need. So, that's I think that's it. I think I answered you. >> I'm not sure who's busier, you or Mr. Finley. >> Mr. Finley. He'll call me at 7:00. He doesn't know that I haven't started work, but okay. >> Okay, let's um keep moving down the the line here. >> Well, uh what we're focused on in city Little Rock and have been for quite some time is uh when I walked into office our uh minority women spend uh was somewhere around 6, 7, 8%. Uh give or take on how you look at things from what I would call hard costs. Hard costs is landscaping, construction, office supplies, things of that nature. And soft costs would probably be more like professional services, auditing, accounting, legal services, engineering, things of that nature. Um and and we weren't satisfied when you have a city that's 57% global majority, which means 45% black, 5-6% Hispanic, uh the remaining percentage of Pacific Islander, but our dollar spend in the city did not reflect that. Uh and so we worked very hard um not to have any tokenism, uh but to focus on the quality and but to increase uh that dollar spend. And so we did that through one, a joint venture policy, two, uh not only with the joint venture policy to encourage um large-scale businesses to work with minority women-owned businesses. Uh secondly, we created out of COVID when we were giving $5,000 um forgivable grants because to small businesses that our own small business community could not qualify for the grants because they didn't have their proper paperwork. And so out of that bore uh Businesses United Leadership Development, where we really focus on how do we help our small business uh entrepreneurs really become bankable, to helping them understand how to do business, manage their own existing business, and also to get them to be a part of our procurement process, kind of growing our own, as well as helping them become more bankable. We've now done 12 cohorts. Uh it's a 6-9 week cohort, and we've done it 12 different times now uh since COVID has happened. And so we're very excited about that. We've grown that number. Uh you know how you look at different things. We've uh we're now somewhere between 18 or about 20 to 25% and minority spend when I came into office it was 8%. Uh and so around 25% give or take on the year and different thing projects that are going on. And in addition to that, because we want to do more uh from a policy standpoint, again giving cities the opportunity to be more creative, we uh instituted a disparity study. Uh and we figured out through that disparity study most recently and that disparity study not only looked at the city of Little Rock, it looked at the met uh metropolitan statistical area. Uh and there is a disparity. And so out of that, even though we have to deal with some of the recent legislative changes on how we do different things from the federal government and state government with uh disadvantaged businesses, uh we can still create a small business certification program where you can have mandated dollars for small businesses um at a revenue level. So if you're under if you're between half a million and three million dollars in revenue, you can qualify to get these set aside not because of your your race or your gender, but because of your revenue aspect uh from that standpoint. So those are the things that we're breaking down the silos, being very creative in how we get different things done. Again, our joint venture uh encouragement policy, our Build Academy that's helping scale up, helping people come uh participate into the progress of the city uh from a vendor standpoint, and then ultimately this disparity study is going to help us go even broader. >> For for our office at Noble Nation, um we had to completely break down uh how to start or even implement the State Small Business Credit Initiative and that's the example I'm thinking about right now because we couldn't have got this this program this opportunity off the ground if it wasn't for our partnership with Change Labs, a non non-profit organization. Um and they had been they they've been in community for for almost 10 years at this point, but they were the ones on the ground truly understanding what our entrepreneurs were going through when they were trying to get their business started like doing the technical assistance of going learning about QuickBooks, but also learning the language of being a business owner. Um a lot of our entrepreneurs are at home businesses and they're um probably skills passed down generation to generation, but they do operate as the funding source for a family and a lot of our families are multi-generational households. So, having a business owner in the household provides for the whole family, three three generations often in in in a house. So, having our opportunity with ASBCI, and having those all of those requirements, so many requirements to meet with you with the Treasury Department, but also with the Navajo Nation's requirements, but those weren't speaking to the makeup of all of our entrepreneurs. So, what do those entrepreneurs um operate like in their home and how do banks understand that that's a business, right? Having to communicate that that's a need um in in building your your application for a loan. So, um Change Labs really was the entity on the ground to build those relationships of one with the business owners, but also helping our our office as the tribal government understand the true needs, the true needs of our community members who are on the nation in the middle of nowhere, Arizona, but they have a business. So, that partnership there was is is and still is incredibly crucial for any development within the tribal government because um they do they know our businesses and yes I I grew up on the Navajo Nation. I do have family members who are business owners, but I don't I don't think a program to be successful is built in the office of a government. It should be coming from the design of our community members' voices and that's how the silos for us at least in the very recent is is proving successful for us. And we hope to have that first ever loan program change the way that our community members talk about access to capital. They're going to have that opportunity and when I grew up I didn't know I thought loans I thought credit cards were just bad words. You don't say those. They're just that's bad, but with this program a new opportunity built from community and and having them tell us what what the true needs are is is how a silo is is being broken down. >> Thank you Alicia and we are going to go to some audience Q&A now. There will be a mic circulating. I've got a question right here. >> Hi, Tom Bohenick and I'm currently in career transition or maybe retired, but I have a lot of free time. So I am doing more of what I've been doing for the last dozen years when I was last working, which was technical assistance to small businesses. So I have a lot of questions around technical assistance if there's any innovation you see in this area. If I were to describe kind of what I do and the the range I see, there is highly personalized training that's two consultants on one business owner, very deep, and then there is this very scalable big classroom setting, not so rich, instructor in the front of the room educating about 40 entrepreneurs, which is not as How do you see I know a lot of you deal with data. You have 200 Oh, sorry, 200,000 people in in Little Rock, 400,000 people in the nation, you have so many tens of thousands of businesses in there. How do you segment your business owners and what they need and what's effective and deliver that to them? >> I would say in Little Rock, uh, we probably have we're more on the the classroom scale, uh, from that standpoint. I think, you know, the business owners going to segment themselves. Uh, those individuals who want to learn more, who want to, uh, grind it out more from the opportunity standpoint, they'll they'll always separate themselves, uh, from that standpoint. Uh, I think for us, the the reason why we choose the classroom setting, uh, because we want to hit more people as best as possible, uh, and touch more people as best as possible, rather than, you know, focusing on two entrepreneurs at a time, we try to scale as much as we can from that standpoint. >> We do a combination, so we do one-on-one technical assistance and the trainings both. Um, our bread and butter, what people like most is the one-on-one technical assistance. Um, they like that person to be able to coach. So, like the business owner this morning that sent the email about the panic of the snap, she likes to be able to do that, but we also have trainings because we try to meet people where they are. Sometimes the trainings work, sometimes that they don't. And sometimes people our trainings are virtual, so some people can't access the training. Some people prefer, so we offer both, a combination, and I think that works well. So, but the thing that when we do our surveys that they love mo- most, they'll either call it TA, coaching, or mentorship. And they like that because you can help them wherever ever they are. And sometimes in the classroom you'll have someone who doesn't even have a bank account versus someone who is a little further on along. So, that one-on-one helps really meet them and helps makes them sure that ensure that they they scale up to the next level. >> Do Do want to add? >> Yeah, I can add uh for the Navajo Nation we at at our tribal government office, very governmenty. Um also some of our regional offices do provide the technical assistance programs like classroom style. Um they're not they're always posted, they're always shared on socials. Um those are in person, but a lot of our nonprofit partners um with the nation do provide the um the classroom the the technical assistance training um at more convenient times. For a government we're like 8:00 to 5:00. Um for our nonprofit they understand. Again, they have the ability and that's that's awesome. They have the ability to have one virtual in person as well as when it's after 5:00. A lot of our entrepreneurs are not doing it full-time, right? They're they're working their regular job and then they do their their business afterwards. So the training that is offered from our nonprofit organizations are definitely more convenient. Um we have to collaborate. I think we have to collaborate more uh with how we provide this information because doing the business site leasing process, getting all that stuff um where all have to be on the same page, but some information can be mis- miscommunicated um and then that just doesn't help a lot of people. So um I think what I like from this conversation is that collaboration of providing these services um but yeah, I think um our nonprofit organizations are really superheroes out there. So yeah. >> Okay, other questions? >> Hi, thank you so much for sharing your perspectives and your levels of leadership in this complexity. Just want to name um I think what we're witnessing and experiencing is the empire empiring or collapsing. And at a local, state, regional, national level um having to operate outside of that system. Um I come from New Mexico. We just universalized child care. Small businesses are stepping up to feed kids in light of the SNAP loss. We have about 20% of our state dependent on SNAP benefits. Yet, we have the largest sovereign wealth fund in the country, which is grown out of oil and gas revenue. So, folks on ground are trying to access that. Um in your opinion, as you're witnessing leaders at all levels and sectors step up or or not or be silent. Um any hopes of glimmer you can share in in light of the work and the witnessing of courage you see in this moment? >> I would say that the hope of glimmer again are are you're witnessing a lot of mayors across the the US really step up and a executive level much more than their governors and how they respond to their residents. And so, I would say that's the hope of glimmer. Um I think we're not at our worst stage yet as a nation. Um we're just not. And I think it's going to have to get a a lot We've gone past all it can never get this bad. Well, it keeps getting bad. And so, I think um what's going to bring us to the brink is when it truly hits the masses from a financial standpoint, not from a corporate standpoint. But, you know, as we're seeing what's happening in rural America with our our farmers and their families as what we will see depending on how long the SNAP benefit um ex- uh persists. But, then also I think in what you're seeing also many states, depends on where you are, uh as you talk about child care, we we would love to have child care, but there are a lot of states in the south that are cutting child care funding. So, that you know, there are there are literally organizations where our children are losing that access right now. Um, and it's all in the name of particular ideologies um, at this point. So, again, for those of us who are all in this room, have we really stepped up? That's the question. You know. And what are we all doing to fill in the gap until the Hope So Bright creates that bright shining light? >> It's kind of a tough act to follow. We're all nodding in agreement. Um, we have just a couple more minutes. Um, there another question here. >> Thank you for for what you're doing. So, I I'm a Stella Montero. I do research on this and center in Houston, in Texas. Um, and maybe not a question, but a provocation. Um, actually, what we have found is that it is the opposite of unlocking. It is locking the potential of of individuals and small businesses so they cannot be perturbed by the bigger competitors. So, food co-ops in Houston have been drawn by organizations like Whole Foods. You know, um, and when you lock the potential of the small players to preserve their identity and their uniqueness, and when you protect that, um, you allow organizations like Whole Foods to not be able to compete. Um, where Whole Foods wins is where their efficiency because of their centralization, and, you know, hierarchical operation traditional operation research modes of efficiency. Um, that's when they can win. But, if you preserve the the diversity of the ecological system of small businesses, um, you actually allow them to to succeed. Uh one experiment that we're doing in Houston, and I would love to hear your perspective, is that we are finding that there are small co-ops of food, there are small um artist organizations, there are small groups of people doing gardens, and these are all organizations that have monocultures that they're acting individually. And so, uh what we're doing is an experiment of radical increasing the the number and the diversity of these centers of a small business. Uh the challenge is the infrastructure. So, what we're doing is using like Broadway stage development technology to be able to change the infrastructure to be a coffee shop in the morning and a classroom in the evening, and a yoga shop. Um but um I do want to hear what you think about that idea of it is not about breaking the silos, but actually embracing them and looking their individuality. Uh >> Okay, um just because we're running out of time here, if there I'm not sure there was a question buried in that, but um um any closing last remarks? >> Well, I wanted to speak to that. I think that that is what we're saying, breaking the silos, because you're bringing them together. They're staying as individual, but they're working together, right? So, you have that space that's yoga and different things in the morning and night. That's them working together. They're still individual, but they're working together. Just because you're you're working together doesn't mean you're going to take away your individuality, if that makes sense. So, I think what you're we're saying the same things, but the approach is different. They are working together. If they're all businesses coming together and in one space, everybody's able to do their own individual thing just at different times, if that makes sense. >> Thank you for listening to this episode of Money and Meaning. If you were inspired by the conversation and are interested in getting more involved with the SOCAP community, join us at the next SOCAP. Learn more and register at socapglobal.com. Be sure to subscribe to Money and Meaning wherever you get your podcast to be notified of our next episode's release.