Kentucky nonprofit Community Ventures has partnered with Render Capital to assist underserved entrepreneurs in growing and expanding their businesses.
Render Capital will provide $500,000 of capital to Community Ventures’ Equity Boost initiative, a program which focuses on funding ethnic minority- and women-owned businesses, according to a news release. Formed in 2020, Render Capital is a regional investment fund that offers early-stage capital for area entrepreneurs.
"Partnering with an organization like Community Ventures is squarely in line with our missional intent of driving impact through innovation,” said Patrick Henshaw, managing director at Render Capital, in a news release. “The work that Community Ventures is doing backed by Render Capital is critical to driving the right type of capital based on the company and how they operate.
"We envision a robust and thriving regional economy where entrepreneurs see Louisville as a place they can find appropriate expansion necessary for them to start, grow, and succeed — we are proud to partner more deeply with Community Ventures to further scale and execute on this lofty mission."
Community Ventures’ core mission of helping people build wealth and break the cycle of generational poverty through homeownership and business creation, while at the same time revitalizing disinvested communities aligns well with Render Capital’s focus on providing early-stage risk capital for entrepreneurs while building a more inclusive and creative economy, the release continued.
The shared vision of these companies has coalesced in Render Capital’s home base of Louisville, where Community Ventures operates as a certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI).
“We are thrilled to be partnering with Render Capital, a known entity in Louisville, to provide access to funding to entrepreneurs that may not have all the collateral needed to take their businesses to the next level,” said Shirie Hawkins, president of Everything Equity for Community Ventures, in the release. “With Render’s help, we are able to provide more attractive-rate financing to a demographic that typically struggles to obtain the loans they need to grow and thrive.”
