Reaching Deep into Communities to Find and Meet Entrepreneurs Where They Are, Inclusively

Build Institute

DETROIT, MI

The Practice

Since 2012, Build Institute entrepreneurs have created over 500 businesses and 1,300 jobs across 144 zip codes in and around Detroit. To date, they have graduated over 1,850 aspiring and experienced entrepreneurs, many of whom have gone on to start successful businesses in the city.

Build’s intentionality around and success with inclusivity is what excites UMA about partnering with them and including in the Pathways to Patient Capital cohort; 83 percent of Build’s graduates are women, 63 percent are people of color, and 45 percent are African American. Almost two-thirds (62 percent) are 35 or older and three-quarters are low- income.

Beyond Build’s participant demographics, UMA is also impressed by how the organization thinks about the impact it’s having with participants. Since December 2013, Build has endorsed 24 small businesses and raised $136,450 in micro- loans with a 98% repayment rate through the Kiva funding platform. (Kiva also serves on the Pathways’ Advisory Board.) To date, almost 600 businesses have been started by their graduates.

The organization spurs community, too; over half of alumni collaborate with one another on their projects and businesses. And recognizing that entrepreneurship and business ownership can be intensely personal journeys that require as much nerve as knowledge and know-how, it’s noteworthy that more than 90 percent of graduates indicate that they feel more confident in business as a result of their participation. Perhaps that’s, in part, because 77 percent of graduates were connected to resources they say they were not previously aware of. Build works hard to collect this difficult-to-measure, qualitative feedback to make sure their programs are fulfilling the participants’ needs.

Build also finds creative, effective ways to reach into communities and meet entrepreneurs where they are. Classes are offered throughout the City of Detroit, Metro Detroit, and beyond. They host coaching events in neighborhoods throughout the metro area, including at local coffee shops and bakeries. If a participant is not able to pay for coaching, Build will barter with them for in-kind services.

They are also about to launch the Pay- It-Forward Fund. Recipients will be able to borrow up to $5,000 at zero percent interest and won’t have to begin paying back the principal until they reach $100,000 in business revenues. This will in turn make the Pay It Forward Fund a shared-risk impact investment fund in the long-term.

Moving forward, Build is eager to apply these successful community-building strategies to reach the growing number of local manufacturers in the food, furniture, textiles, and metal fabrication sectors. Jacquise Purifoy, Build’s entrepreneur- in-residence and Pathways’ participant, and her coworkers believe Pathways syncs up nicely with their work as they continue to dive into problems around makers and access to capital. “It’s not that [underserved entrepreneurs] don’t have ideas, it’s that they don’t have the funding to do business,” she said. “So when the RFP came across our desk, we were like ‘This would be the perfect fit.’”

The Practitioner

Jacquise Purifoy

Build Institute

“None of us, I feel, are here for the paycheck,” said Jacquise Purifoy, speaking about her colleagues at the Build Institute in Detroit. “We really come here with a passion to serve, with a passion to make the lives of ordinary people better.”

It’s not luck that Purifoy, entrepreneur-in- residence at Build Institute, is surrounded by dedicated coworkers. She became a lawyer expressly to break down barriers and lift up neighbors. Build is doing that by providing underserved entrepreneurs with training and investment opportunities.

“I’m a native Detroiter, born and raised here, and a lot of my passion for serving people of color without access to resources is because I’ve been one,” she said. “I wanted to help people who looked like me.”

A transformative moment for Purifoy was when, as a teenage mom in college, she went to a state human services office in Detroit to see how she could qualify for more public assistance. The employee pulled out a chart and explained to Purifoy that the more children you have, the more assistance you can receive.

“I was like, ‘I couldn’t even study if I had more kids,’” said Purifoy. “This is the WIC program [the federal Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children] and it’s federally mandated. These laws are written in place to keep people poor.”

Working with Build is her way of pushing back against similarly systemic issues in the business field. They provide classes, Kiva loans, retail opportunities, and connections with local financiers and peer lenders to their entrepreneurs.

Build leads a handful of creative capital programs. Detroit SOUP, for example, is a micro-granting dinner that’s open to anyone from the neighborhood where it takes place to come and pitch their business or project idea to small funders. For a donation $5 attendees receive soup, salad, bread — and a vote. Attendees hear four presentations on topics ranging from art, urban agriculture, social justice, social entrepreneurs, education, technology, and more. Each presenter briefly shares their idea and answers questions from the audience who, ultimately, votes to donate the money raised to the project they think benefits the city the most. In the five years this grassroots event has been held, there have been 95 dinners in a dozen neighborhoods that have raised $85,000 for new creative projects.

Manufacturing is like a native language to Detroiters, but Purifoy says it’s time for them to start looking beyond their borders. That’s why they joined the Pathways to Patient Capital program.

“Over 2,000 alumni have come through our program, from bakers to jean makers to candle makers to t-shirt makers, all these different makers,” she said. “We know what [making and manufacturing] looks like in Detroit, but what does it look like nationally?”

UMA has assembled our Pathways to Patient Capital practitioner cohort because each member has found a successful or promising approach to helping entrepreneurs of color — including makers and manufacturers — to get access to the capital and know-how they need to realize their business ideas and plans at scale. We know there is great benefit in lifting up and sharing this information among other practitioners, but also with other audiences, such as policymakers, lenders, and other funders. We compiled the brief profiles you are about to read to give these audiences a sense of both the personal and the practical: one section describes the people and organizations doing this work and the inspiration that guides them (“The Practitioner”); the other describes the innovations in capital access or readiness that each is pioneering or bringing to scale (“The Practice”). You can read the full report here.