The Nashville Business Incubation Center (NBIC) is expanding its services to Louisville this fall thanks to a $1.25 million grant from the Truist Foundation.
Founded in 1986, NBIC is a nonprofit focused on helping develop and grow women-, minority- and veteran-owned businesses. The organization offers programs ranging from workshops for aspiring entrepreneurs to consultation services and loans for existing businesses.
Angela Crane-Jones, CEO of the Nashville Business Incubation Center (NBIC), said the center plans to start offering programs in Louisville that NBIC is finalizing partnerships with three Louisville organizations already providing help to local entrepreneurs because they don’t want to duplicate services that are already available in the community.
“A lot of our programs are held virtually. But we will also have staff that will come into Louisville for us to partner and work with organizations there that are already doing great work,” Crane-Jones said in a recent interview.
The $1.25 million grant is part of Truist’s commitment of $120 million to support small businesses nationally, with a focus of women and diverse business owners. In addition to Louisville, the money will allow NBIC to offer programs in Huntsville and Birmingham, Alabama and some rural communities in Tennessee.
Lynette Bell, president of the Truist Foundation, said Truist was looking to partner with an organization that could provide wrap around services and a supportive community for small businesses, especially those owned by women and minorities.
“One of the lessons learned from the pandemic was that clearly small business had to be resilient, had to pivot, and had to recalibrate their models,” Bell said. “But a lot of them, particularly businesses that were managed and ran by people of color, suffered the most during the pandemic and had the hardest time with resiliency ... If you look at any white paper written by the Federal Reserve or any other regulators, it talks about access to capital for entrepreneurs, and we've been talking about that for 20 years. That's not the only component of their ecosystem that needs structural support. ”
Crane-Jones said NBIC’s new RISE UP Academy, which works directly with women-owned businesses, is one of the programs that will be coming to Louisville.
Women are the fastest growing group of individuals starting businesses, but those owned by Black women earn an average revenue of just $24,000, compared to $142,900 among all women-owned businesses, according to the 2019 State of Women-Led Businesses Report conducted by American Express.
“The goal with the investment from Truist is to scale companies owned by women, especially African American women, from being a 'solopreneur' to really being a CEO. We really want to help them create 5 or more jobs and to get the revenue to a $1 million or more," Crane-Jones explained.
“Louisville is similar to Nashville when you think back 10 or 15 years ago. That is one of the reasons we choose Louisville. Had we in Nashville chose to invest more in the minority business community to create more jobs, to buy our own commercial buildings, and those types of things, we’d be in a stronger position.”
Truist is one of Louisville's largest banks by deposits, according to Louisville Business First research, with $2.6 billion in local deposits as of June 2021. The gift to NBIC was announced on Thursday, July 14, during a ceremony at the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville.
