PROVIDENCE – Services for Rhode Island minority and women-owned small businesses are slated to get a major boost thanks to a $1 million grant through the U.S. Small Business Administration.
The grant, part of the SBA’s Community Navigator Pilot Program, will help six community business service organizations to hire employees, add programming and invest in other services to better support “historically disadvantaged” small businesses, such as those owned by women, people of color, veterans and so-called “solopreneurs.”
Social Enterprise Greenhouse will serve as the grant administrator under the SBA’s “spoke and hub” model, redistributing some of the federal funds to its five partner “spokes”: the Center for Southeast Asians, the R.I. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Hope & Main, the Multicultural Innovation Center and the R.I. Black Business Association, according to a press release from SEG.
The federal funding, which comes through the American Rescue Plan Act, marks the largest grant SEG has ever received in its 11-year history, according to Kelly Ramirez, SEG’s CEO. Exactly how the funds will be spent over the two-year grant period remains to be determined but will involve some combination of staff, programs and other investments such as technology, Ramirez said in an interview on Monday. SEG plans to use a portion of its funds to hire a new employee to help with financial and administrative work, including overseeing how the federal grant gets spent. Other potential spending plans include data tracking and technology to automate processes for how prospective businesses are screened or referred to other partnering organizations, Ramirez said.
SEG and its partners were the only Rhode Island group to receive funding through the competitive federal program, which awarded funds to 51 recipients nationwide out of 700 applications, according to the SBA.
Ramirez credited the strength of SEG’s application to the diversity of groups it has partnered with as well their already established track record of success in working together to serve small businesses in the state.
Collaboration across state business groups began in earnest when the COVID-19 pandemic hit last year, Ramirez said.
“We may have traditionally seen each other as competitors in a very crowded philanthropic landscape but now we’re saying … we can go faster, further together,” Ramirez said. “We saw the need before there was money attached to that need.”
One example of that collaboration was the new business resource center SEG opened in June on Manton Avenue partnership with other business service organizations, Ramirez said.
Federal relief programs, including those through the SBA such as the Paycheck Protection Program, came under scrutiny by federal lawmakers for failing to reach historically disadvantaged small businesses such as those owned by women and people of color. The Community Navigator Program aims to address that gap by partnering with area community organizations that can better reach and connect minority and underserved businesses to resources at the local and federal levels, according to the SBA.
Ramirez said the state has done a “fantastic” job of aiding small businesses across the spectrum during the pandemic, but added that there was always room to improve.
“We really realized as business service organizations that there are some businesses that just do not have the access that others do,” Ramirez said. “It’s very different for a company that has 50 employees who know how to fill out grant applications to do so than it is for a solopreneur who has never done that before.”
Lisa Ranglin, founder and CEO of the Rhode Island Black Business Association, in a statement called the grant funding a “great win for Rhode Island entrepreneurs and small businesses.”
“This grant will help us deliver much-needed short-term relief and strategic support needed to help minority entrepreneurs and small businesses launch, grow and scale for the long term,” Ranglin said.
Nancy Lavin is a PBN staff writer. You may reach her at Lavin@PBN.com.
