Our Impact
Local Impact
Region map
Northern Initiatives has customers in every county, often on every block in a community. Click on a region to see our impact where you live. (Map updated Jan. 2024)
Supporting Startups
over 400
in the past 30 years!
2023 Initiate highlights
a new platform & partnerships
For Initiate, our online learning portal, 2023 was a year of rebuilding and transitioning.
Initiate 3.0 launched, and we retired Initiate 2.0, which had served thousands of entrepreneurs since 2017. The new platform provides high-quality content that small business owners can access on their own time, and more tools for business advisors to help their clients work on critical business issues. The rebuild not only harnesses years of testing and feedback, but also the latest technology, so Initiate can continue to be shaped and grow over the next few years.
Along with the technology infrastructure we incorporated ways for advisors to enhance how they utilize Initiate and ways to help emerging and larger entrepreneurial support organizations.
Initiate is available to 100% of our loan customers, as well as entrepreneurs in 40 states around the country, in both Spanish and English.
With support from the Opportunity Finance Network’s Google.org grant program, Northern Initiatives rolled out Initiate 3.0 and more people are recognizing its value, as well as the impact of blended learning, which leverages Initiate’s resources with existing coaching and training. Mission lenders and economic development organizations continue to subscribe to Initiate to engage their learners as well. Our rebuilt onboarding process is getting rave reviews.
Through our partnership with the Aspen Institute, funding from the Gates Foundation and our Good Jobs work (more on the next page), we’re welcoming more subscribers focused on job quality. Shared Success grantees are helping us build a dedicated space on Initiate to try tools in “beta” form and engage in testing and learning. As content is refined and tools are finalized, we expect to open this section to all Initiate users, as well as non-users through public platforms such as the Economic Opportunities Program Job Quality Tools library. A new partnership that launched at the Native CDFI Network’s Annual Policy & Capacity Building Summit offers Initiate access to members of the Native CDFI network. NCN creates access to capital and resources for Native people in both rural and urban areas.
EN INGLÉS Y ESPAÑOL
“Initiate has been a great tool for our technical assistance program. We send clients curated content based on their needs, which reinforces concepts we covered during our coaching sessions. Best of all, as a bilingual business coach, I can pull content in English and Spanish!
– Aldo Medina Martinez, Business Services Program Lead, Craft3
growing partnerships
meeting entrepreneurs where they are
Pitch contests can be scary, exciting, and require a ton of work – but the payoff can be very sweet.
Tastefull Vegan owner Kalene McElveen and her children LJ and Sophia
Nadia and Shatawn Brigham won Start Garden’s Demo Day in 2019, and the $20,000 helped them start GRNoir, a thriving jazz club in downtown Grand Rapids. Kalene McElveen, owner of Tastefull Vegan Frozen Desserts, also pitched to Start Garden in 2019, and used her $5,000 winnings to buy a mobile cart – and some knowledge. “The 5×5 award allowed me the opportunity to get some school under my belt and get some support.”
Because these are the cornerstones of our mission – helping underserved entrepreneurs with money and know-how – we have now partnered with Start Garden – and it’s going great! Both of these small businesses – and many more – are now Northern Initiatives customers. The 10 winners of last fall’s Demo Day were all assured a $20,000 loan with Northern Initiatives and five have followed through. Welcome aboard!
The second part of our partnership is our work on the Capital Readiness Program, a program from U.S. Department of Commerce, Minority Business Development Agency, providing the largest investment ever in underserved entrepreneurs. Northern Initiatives and Start Garden will use a $3 million grant award to continue creating an innovative program that connects entrepreneurs to resources, assistance, and capital – from idea to launch and beyond. The project hopes to enroll 400 early-stage entrepreneurs over four years, with a goal of creating 300 businesses and 645 new jobs.
More and more, we’re finding partnerships vital in today’s financial ecosystem. Thank you to all our partners.
Winners of Start Garden Demo Day
Building better businesses
Before brothers Jackson and Tristan Bredehoft even opened Café Rica in downtown Battle Creek, they knew they wanted to use their business as a “force for good.”
“We understand that a business’s influence extends far beyond its walls,” said Jackson. “We have always believed in giving back to the community that has embraced us so warmly.”
Café Rica is a longtime Northern Initiatives customer and a member of our Good Jobs Cohort. This year, the café’s cofounders won the Good Governance Award from our partners at People First Economy for all that giving back, as well as their environmental responsibility and – this one’s special – employee practices.
Patricia Bejarona Bredehoft, Jackson, left, and Tristan
Creating jobs, easing headaches
Shoring up communities
Corissa VanderStelt had barely started building her second day care location when people started telling her where to put the third.
“This location is three times bigger than the first and there’s already a waiting list,” said VanderStelt, standing in the midst of construction of Little Ones Daycare and Preschool in White Cloud.
It’s complicated to open a daycare and “my first teacher, first day of college, said, ‘Don’t go into this field if you want to make money,” Corissa said. The inch-thick licensing handbook is her guiding star as she converts the former church into the town’s only day care center.
Using funds from the Fremont Area Community Foundation, Northern Initiatives helped Corissa buy the building, which will eventually hold 90 children and create 17-20 jobs on top of the six jobs she’s already created in Fremont. The “trickle-up” effect adds the countless parental jobs and headaches she’s easing.
ENERGY LOANS
Hiawatha Log Homes, near Munising in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, kiln-dries its logs in a process that takes nearly a month. “The power bill is crazy,” said Joe Esbrook, CEO. A no-interest energy loan from Northern Initiatives, in partnership with the Upper Peninsula Power Co., helped the company purchase Variable Frequency Drives that will distribute just enough electricity where it’s needed, when it’s needed. “We should save over $2,000 a month,” Esbrook said. “The more money we save, the more reinvestment we can do.”
Corissa VanderStelt, Little Ones Day Care, Fremont and White Cloud