BLOC entrepreneur Antoinette Flores
Neighborhood Development Center (NDC) is a non-profit organization that offers training, lending, and technical assistance to community entrepreneurs in the Twin Cities. Aiming to "empower entrepreneurs and community partners to transform their low-income neighborhood economies from within”, NDC addresses barriers to economic equity by equipping neighborhood entrepreneurs with the knowledge and resources they need to start, run, and grow their own businesses, within the neighborhood where they live.
Via a $750,000 grant, GHR is supporting the multiple NDC services provided within Black and Latina Opportunity Connect (BLOC) – a structured, individualized one-on-one coaching and cohort support program. BLOC participants will receive Money Matters and Mindset Reset training, technical assistance programs offered by NDC’s Business Lab, as well as access to the Credit Up! Program, focused on credit building loans and credit education. Money Matters focuses on participants’ financial literacy and provides them with a year of QuickBooks bookkeeping software. Mindset Reset is a culturally responsive program that helps participants address mindset challenges to their personal and business success, such as self-limiting beliefs, imposter syndrome, and burnout. Credit Up! is housed in NDC’s Lending program and provides a small loan and credit coaching to help boost participants’ credit scores.
Access to these programs is accompanied and guided by expert business coaches who meet monthly with BLOC participants, checking in and supporting progress toward their goals, such as the completion of a business plan or meeting certain sales targets. GHR funding helps NDC secure expert business coaches who are also business plan consultants. Consultants help participants refine and build out their business plans, which are a key tool for guiding the future of the business and securing capital, including loan capital provided by GHR.
BLOC on the Block is a new concept that will provide BLOC participants space to test out their business concept at a bricks-and-mortar location, before they secure a storefront of their own. NDC will build out a storefront space, likely at their Frogtown Crossroads small business incubator in St. Paul, where BLOC participants will hold pop-up sales events.
NDC President & CEO Renay Dossman shared, “the Black and Latina Opportunity to Connect (BLOC) program was born because we found a gap. Black and Latina women were coming to NDC and completing our entrepreneur training program at very high rates—but very few continued on and opened a business. BLOC was designed to ensure Black & Latina women could equitably grow their businesses, create wealth, and shape their communities”.
Via a $750,000 grant, GHR is supporting the multiple NDC services provided within Black and Latina Opportunity Connect (BLOC) – a structured, individualized one-on-one coaching and cohort support program. BLOC participants will receive Money Matters and Mindset Reset training, technical assistance programs offered by NDC’s Business Lab, as well as access to the Credit Up! Program, focused on credit building loans and credit education. Money Matters focuses on participants’ financial literacy and provides them with a year of QuickBooks bookkeeping software. Mindset Reset is a culturally responsive program that helps participants address mindset challenges to their personal and business success, such as self-limiting beliefs, imposter syndrome, and burnout. Credit Up! is housed in NDC’s Lending program and provides a small loan and credit coaching to help boost participants’ credit scores.
Access to these programs is accompanied and guided by expert business coaches who meet monthly with BLOC participants, checking in and supporting progress toward their goals, such as the completion of a business plan or meeting certain sales targets. GHR funding helps NDC secure expert business coaches who are also business plan consultants. Consultants help participants refine and build out their business plans, which are a key tool for guiding the future of the business and securing capital, including loan capital provided by GHR.
BLOC on the Block is a new concept that will provide BLOC participants space to test out their business concept at a bricks-and-mortar location, before they secure a storefront of their own. NDC will build out a storefront space, likely at their Frogtown Crossroads small business incubator in St. Paul, where BLOC participants will hold pop-up sales events.
NDC President & CEO Renay Dossman shared, “the Black and Latina Opportunity to Connect (BLOC) program was born because we found a gap. Black and Latina women were coming to NDC and completing our entrepreneur training program at very high rates—but very few continued on and opened a business. BLOC was designed to ensure Black & Latina women could equitably grow their businesses, create wealth, and shape their communities”.
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