The CLT Alliance Foundation, the charitable arm of the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance, has developed a new online tool to help escalate the growth of small businesses across the local region.
The Regional Innovation and Support for Entrepreneurs, also known as RISE, launched Nov. 13 and is an AI-powered digital hub created for business owners to explore local resources, jobs, other businesses and events under a single platform. RISE helps entrepreneurs gain awareness of necessary resources to help them succeed, eliminating any challenges they may experience with navigating the complex small business ecosystem. The tool's resource directory will be frequently updated for businesses in the Charlotte region.
Nate Hogan, president of the CLT Alliance Foundation, said RISE was created to scale the work of Tya Bolton, the nonprofit's director of small business and entrepreneurship. She started that role in April and is responsible for guiding small businesses to the right resources to support their companies, increase supplier diversity opportunities and bolster Black, Indigenous and People of Color communities in the Charlotte area. Bolton also serves as a primary referral source for other technical assistance providers and community development financial institutions across the city.
"So, think about if you're an entrepreneur, and you're looking for access to capital in the form of a grant or a loan and you want that specifically for Mecklenburg County, for example, and focused on health-care businesses," Hogan said on how the platform works. "RISE will allow you to go search based on those parameters. And then if those resources are published, it'll allow you to engage directly with those resources there."
CLT Alliance Foundation is backing RISE, which has 24/7 access. In its first week, it offers about 465 resources, ranging from local entrepreneurial events to accelerator and grant programs.
"The AI in RISE allows those resources to always be up to date, which really is helpful from an efficiency perspective," he said. "It allows us not to have to manually manage each one of those resources as well."
RISE comes as the Charlotte region is in need of more resources or organizations that will work to ensure all local entrepreneurs achieve financial stability and economic prosperity along their journeys, Hogan said. "It's still very fragmented here, and I'd say overly complex. RISE allows us to start to bring some order."
In order for the platform to be effective, Hogan said the nonprofit is calling on the local community to consistently apply valuable resources to the online hub.
A platform like RISE is long overdue, Hogan said, especially as there has been a local pent up demand for resources such as the digital tool. The foundation hopes that the platform will become the go-to technology to serve business owners, helping them gain easier access to quality opportunities to start running or grow their companies.
Hogan said RISE will also produce analytics it can leverage to learn about what the local ecosystem may need. It will track elements such as monthly user base and resources entrepreneurs are applying.
"It would have been nice to have something like this a long time ago, but the best time to start something you don't have is now and so that's what we've done," he said.
CLT Alliance Foundation is also helping to provide other ways to bolster small businesses locally. One example is the Charlotte Small Business Growth Fund, which aims to provide greater access to capital for founders. The nonprofit is working with funders in the region to launch that funding opportunity soon, Hogan said.
"So, Charlotte's moving in the right direction," he said. "We've been laser focused on making sure that small businesses are benefiting, not just from the programs that we're rolling out but financially from how we're able to pull them in and do work with them."
