As a kid, I didn’t fully understand what it meant to be a “small business owner”. The term felt like a label prescribed to a group of people who were distant from me, rather than a description of my own family. I knew my parents owned their business, but I didn’t know if it was “small” or not, and I didn’t know that wasn’t par for the course.
I didn’t understand that when politicians said how important small businesses were to the economy, we were included in that.
I didn’t understand that being a small business owner meant supporting yourself, your staff, and in part, your entire community based solely off of the revenue you could generate.
The impact of these businesses wasn’t clear to me until later as I started to think about the ripple effect they push through cities and neighborhoods, benefitting both those economies but also the happiness of those communities.
The statistics are staggering:
- On a macro level, every 1% increase in entrepreneurship drives a 2% decrease in the US poverty rate.
- The 30 million+ small businesses in the US generate 50% of the GDP and nearly 2/3 of new private sector jobs.
- Of those small businesses, 18% are owned by immigrants, including my parents. Many of whom start their businesses out of necessity when they arrive to the US because they struggle to be hired and start from scratch with their credit history.
But small businesses aren’t just statistics. They are you and me. They are my mom and my dad. They are the local retail boutiques, the fitness studios, the cafes, the couriers, the gas stations, the florists, the salons, and all the other businesses that make our day-to-day lives better and our communities closer. They are the people you say hello to on your neighborhood walk.
Needless to say, their stories resonate with me.
Which leads me to Opportunity Fund. Opportunity Fund was founded on the basis of one simple idea: entrepreneurship transforms lives. I know this is true of my parents’ and my life; that’s why I decided to join the regional board of Opportunity Fund.
The current financial system is not fully set up to support small business owners or enable them to take risk. If they can’t get a bank loan, an SBA loan, or have access to private capital, then they’re out of luck. Surely, venture capital does not exist for the community member launching a food truck.
8,000 small business loans are rejected every day. Borrowers of color are 2x more likely to be rejected. They are often faced with predatory lending as their only option, with interest rates that are cripplingly higher than the norm.
This is where Opportunity Fund steps in to offer affordable capital and financial solutions to entrepreneurs and communities.
In their 2019 fiscal year alone, Opportunity Fund:
- issued 3,193 loans to entrepreneurs
- invested $117,571,270 to small businesses
- created or sustained nearly 10,000 jobs
That’s in just one year. In the 25 year history of Opportunity Fund, they’ve issued over 17,000 loans and over $700 million to small businesses around the country.
We tend to lack empathy when we speak in broad strokes about communities; it’s sometimes easier to ingest the idea of one or two lives impacted than it is to stomach that of thousands.
So keep that in mind when I say Opportunity Fund has supported 17,000+ businesses in getting off the ground. That’s not just 17,000 businesses, but that’s 17,000 Olivias and Jims and Teresas and Franks. It’s 17,000 Majids and Parisas, too.
I spend much of my time with entrepreneurs, but most of that is with high growth, tech entrepreneurs for whom capital is relatively easy to come by. As the divide between small business entrepreneurs and tech entrepreneurs widens, I’m excited to be working hard with an organization that is bridging that gap and bringing capital access to all types of entrepreneurs.
Through an innovative nonprofit structure, Opportunity Fund is able to generate returns for investors through an investment fund while also offering small businesses access to capital at reasonable rates.
If you want to learn more about Opportunity Fund’s impact, take a look here. You can also feel free to reach out to me or Iosefa Alofaituli directly if you have questions or ideas.
If you feel as passionately about this mission as I do, help me start strong by making a contribution of whatever you can to the organization. Rarely do we see our dollars go directly back to support and stimulate our economy in such actionable way.
I’m honored to be a small part of an organization that truly encompasses doing well while doing good for a population I care deeply about. I will be focusing on partnership opportunities between the tech sector and the community Opportunity Fund serves, so let me know if you’d like to get involved.
Deep thanks to the one and only Shauna Nep for introducing me to Opportunity Fund and Iosefa Alofaituli for working so hard to make this process seamless; I can’t wait to get to work.
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