Venture North's new fund looks to expand impact

Mark Urban, The Record-Eagle, Traverse City, Mich.
·4 min read

Feb. 8—TRAVERSE CITY — Venture North's Regional Resiliency Program helped keep small businesses from going under.

A new fund aims to keep these companies growing and thriving.

Venture North rolled out its Small Business Growth Fund for the new year and is ramping up efforts to fund and publicize it. Venture North staff are also emphasizing the fund's ability to assist a wide-range of businesses with mini grants and consulting services.

Venture North Executive Director Laura Galbraith said the fund is a way the nonprofit organization can continue its "impact across the region," which includes businesses in Antrim, Benzie, Charlevoix, Emmet, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska, Leelanau, Manistee, Missaukee and Wexford counties.

The Small Business Growth Fund is also designed to provide assistance to all companies in the 10-county area.

"Any business within the 10-county footprint (of Venture North), we are here to help," Galbraith said last week.

Venture North Contract Public Relations Specialist Tim Ervin and Galbraith said efforts have been expanded to target businesses operating in agriculture and day care, for example.

"All businesses regardless of industry are invited and welcome," Ervin said. "Farms of all sizes. We want to build those relationships along with all others."

As part of its effort to reach more agriculture-related businesses, Venture North and the Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation have partnered to bring more capital to the MI Farm Cooperative. The cooperative is a collaboration of 25 farms and distributors with the goal to "bring even more consumers to the altar of wholesome fresh foods" through a Community Supported Agriculture program, according to a release from Venture North.

The newly-launched Small Business Growth Fund is focused solely on small, mini grants and business consulting services. Venture North will continue to offer lending services to small businesses, but it will be in a separate fund outside the SBGF.

The Small Business Growth Fund will be focused on providing services that may be outside of a company's expertise.

"Many small businesses are confronted with legal, accounting, marketing, product development or other questions that get in the way of progress," Galbraith said in the release. "We want to learn about the things that are holding a business back and address them through a combination of small grants, business consulting or both in addition to our Affordable Lending program that is supported through a different fund."

Ervin said small businesses and start-up entrepreneurs are often experts with their own product and the market. The Small Business Growth Fund wants to offer financial assistance and consulting in areas that may not be a strength.

"We want to offer a whole lot of talent and expertise that fill those gaps," he said.

The goal for the Small Business Growth Fund is to have access to a "revolving fund" of $500,000 and "replenish it as it is used," Ervin said.

Venture North is working on securing grants and donations from agencies and other philanthropic organizations to build the fund. Some of those include partners Venture North has already worked with in the Regional Resiliency Fund and following.

"We are grateful that several partners have already stepped forward to seed the fund with a total to date of $41,000 with $95,000 more pending in grant applications," Galbraith said in the release. "Donors to the Fund thus far include the Consumers Energy Foundation, ITC Corporation, USDA Rural Development and the Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) Fund managed by the U.S. Department of Treasury."

"Venture North's new Small Business Growth Fund is a terrific approach for small businesses to have a customer friendly process to access resources needed to put them on a growth curve," Consumers Energy Foundation Secretary/Treasurer Carolyn Bloodworth said in the release. "For us, it offers a very focused way for us to help underserved areas of northern Michigan that makeup 60 percent of Venture North's 10-county region."

Assistance with the Small Business Growth Fund begins with an online intake form at www.venturenorthfunding.org. The form should take about five minutes to fill out and triggers a staff contact within 24 hours.

"It begins right there," Galbraith said.

Venture North can also be contacted by phone (231-995-7115) or email (info@venturenorthfunding.org.)

To handle the additional work at Venture North the Small Business Growth Fund is expected to generate, Galbraith has added two to its staff and plans to add two more. Galbraith said Venture North will also be "extending time involved and increasing availability" of existing staff.

Venture North has made 144 affordable loans of $8.6 million while leveraging an additional $27.6 million. Venture North awarded grants to over 300 small businesses totaling more than $1 million and provided business consultation to more than 1,100 businesses.

A lot of that work was during the first years of the pandemic and now Venture North looks to continue that work on both sides of the equation with the Small Business Growth Fund.

"The Regional Resiliency Program created during COVID built relationships with businesses in the 10-county region we didn't have before," Galbraith said. "We built relationships with philanthropic organizations in the 10-county area we didn't have before."