Category: Small Businesses
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Supporting Small Businesses:The Critical Role of Community Banking
Small businesses are the lifeblood of local economies, driving innovation, creating jobs, and building community identity. However, they often face significant challenges—chief among them is access to affordable financing (source: sba.gov). This is where community banks step in, playing a critical role in helping small businesses thrive, fostering local economic growth, and building resilience. Small…
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Meet Brooklyn Packers, The Co-Op Connecting Small Farms To The Big Apple
Steph Wiley has been an entrepreneur almost as long as he’s been a New Yorker—and he’s been a New Yorker his entire life. At first, Steph owned a dog-walking business in lower Manhattan for more than 10 years before starting a community organizing business with his partner. In addition to being an entrepreneur, Steph is…
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Investing In Black-owned Small Businesses To Close the Racial Wealth Gap
There is a staggering disparity between the wealth of Black communities and their white counterparts in the United States where wealth is the difference between financial and social mobility and terminal economic insecurity. In 2019, Black households, on average, had 14.5 percent of the wealth of the average white household. This disparity is reflected throughout…
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Why CDFIs Often Create Better Lending Outcomes for Small Businesses
Small businesses that need financing often find themselves at a crossroads: apply for a traditional bank loan that’s difficult to get but has lower-interest rates or an online loan that’s quickly approved but can end up being inordinately more expensive in the long run. But some business owners don’t realize that there’s an additional option:…
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Small Business Credit Survey: Report on Women-Owned Firms
The Federal Reserve Banks of New York and Kansas City just released a joint report on credit access and financial performance trends for women-owned small businesses across the United States. One Big Takeaway, There’s still a huge gap between genders when it comes to small business ownership:
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Small Biz Story | Mamacitas Cafe
A Different Startup, With a Quirky Mission Mamacitas Cafe, a specialty coffee and baked goods retailer in Oakland, is different. A lot of other coffee shops may say the same. Be it their brewing methods, the coarseness of their grind, or the music heard playing in the background, this cafe is on a mission to…
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Small Biz Story | Z011 Coffee Roasters in San Francisco
A whole new coffee experience For San Franciscans, coffee drinking has become a ritual and an experience to be savored. And discovering coffee shops offering new flavors, aromas, and brewing methods has become a popular pastime in the city. In 2015, Belen and her husband decided to offer a completely unique coffee drinking experience to…