COMMUNITIES - PEOPLE

Connections, Opportunities, Partnerships.

Our mission is to actively partner with entrepreneurs to create growing businesses, thriving communities, and a diverse regional economy. Key to achieving this mission is ensuring those who are often under-resourced and left out of mainstream finance have a place to access capital, grow businesses and build wealth. We understand our role and opportunity in supporting economic justice and inclusion and make this central to our work.

We apply an entrepreneur-centric approach to drive change at the community level and beyond.

Rural-based businesses, BIPOC-owned firms, and women-owned businesses are our primary focal areas for this work. We target small business outcomes to these people and places and we prioritize tailored strategies and resources for each in partnership with other committed partners.

Supporting Local Entrepreneurial Leadership

Harvest Nation | Tower, MN

By nature, entrepreneurs are an innovative and hard-working group and we work closely with hundreds each year. Then, there are the entrepreneurial leaders who are not only passionate about their business, they also understand the big picture and dedicate themselves to strengthening their communities to be more healthy and vibrant. The women leaders of Harvest Nation are just that; local entrepreneurial leaders who are in the process of developing an indoor, aeroponic farm on the Iron Range to provide their neighbors with healthy, affordable farm-to-table foods.

Building authentic community connections.

Relationship building is a foundational element of our work and this is no different when working to improve access to capital and services for communities frequently left behind such as BIPOC owned businesses, women owned businesses, and rural businesses. We continually work to improve and grow our organization and the resources we have available to make this work possible.