Black Biz Backers Get $1M KeyBank Boost

A vegan baker, a mobile notary, and a professional organizer were among the 20 hand-picked Greater New Haven minority business owners to embark on a rigorous entrepreneurial boot camp — and to benefit from a new $1 million grant designed in part to help that program and its participants thrive.

That grant was given by the KeyBank Foundation to the Connecticut Community Outreach Revitalization Program (ConnCORP).

Part of that grant has gone to set up the new ConnCORP/Quinnipiac Community Entrepreneurship Academy and Clinic. Supporters of the program gathered on Tuesday at the Lab at ConnCORP at 496 Newhall St. to celebrate the $1 million grant and the entrepreneurial education it will afford.

The community impact grant, which will be dispensed in $200,000 increments over the next five years, is designed to ​“help address the entrepreneurial challenges facing the Newhallville and Dixwell neighborhoods,” KeyBank’s Matthew Hummel told a spirited group of 20 attendees. 

The grant reinforces a successful partnership between KeyBank and ConnCORP Board Chair Carlton Highsmith and CEO Erik Clemons that began in 2012 and continued with a $1 million grant to the related job-training nonprofit ConnCAT in 2018.

“We embraced their vision of building a place where people could be inspired to come, to learn, and to change their life path,” Hummel said. ​“I’ve seen first-hand the immediate impact these programs can have on our communities, especially for the underserved.” 

With ConnCORP embarking on a large-scale revitalization project to transform the Newhallville and Dixwell neighborhoods, the grant is timely.

To hear Highsmith, who serves on the board of directors at KeyBank, tell it, it’s also crucial. 

To underscore the issues besetting Black business development, Highsmith cited a 2019 Newhallville and Dixwell Neighborhood Community Index created by ConnCAT in partnership with the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.

“One of the highlights for me was the lack of quality and scalable Black-owned businesses capable of creating jobs,” he said. 

That’s where ConnCORP, a for-profit subsidiary of ConnCAT, as well as the Entrepreneurship Academy, come in. 

“Local minority-owned businesses and entrepreneurs in the Newhallville and Dixwell neighborhoods suffer challenges like lack of access to knowledgeable networks and, most importantly, access to capital,” said ConnCORP Lab Executive Director Aya Beckles Swanson. 

The grant, she said, ​“will be used to develop the entrepreneurial support ecosystem ConnCORP is building in these neighborhoods.” For local businesses, ​“it will help bridge the gap between the initial idea and business success.” 

That’s the objective of the Entrepreneurship Academy, which kicked off last weekend with the first cohort of 20 minority-owned businesses from Greater New Haven. 

The academy and clinic, which is being taught by Quinnipiac professors and business students, will culminate in a pitch competition and up to $5,500 in seed money from the federal Small Business Administration for each participant who makes it through the course. 

“It’s going to be spread over 12 weekends,” Swanson said of the program, which will use a blended format of in-person and virtual coaching. The Lab at ConnCorp will host the in-person workshops and virtual business clinics.

Click here to read a list of all of the entrepreneurs participating in the program. According to this Patch article, some of the participants include BLOOM’s Alisha Crutchfield, Ekow Body’s Candice Dormon, and Noir Vintage & Co.‘s Evelyn Massey.

A stipend will afford the small business owners and ​“solopreneurs” the financial wherewithal to engage in the program. 

“A lot of the businesses selected don’t have staff to support them, and they need not just that support, but also support to continue to stay in the class, so over the course of the training program, they’ll receive funds for child care, for travel,” Swanson said. 

In addition to the Academy, KeyBank’s funding over the next five years will help the Lab sustain its mission as a business incubator for the exchange of ideas and support among new and existing community-based businesses. 

“We have 100 people coming to networking events, mixers, and training in financial literacy, and also the speaker series,” said Anna Blanding, ConnCORP’s chief investment officer. There’s also a quarterly investment roundtable for women of color designed to overcome the intimidation many feel about investing in capital markets.

CEO Erik Clemons praised KeyBank for its ​“unwavering commitment to our mission.” 

“What the Lab is doing in the name of creating businesses and filling in gaps of existing businesses is addressing poverty,” he said. ​“A lot of time, if not always, organizations address disparities in poverty but not poverty itself.”

The partnership with KeyBank has helped in that regard as well.

“It’s really, really special because a lot of Black-owned businesses and black-governed organizations do not have the luxury of having an incredible financial institution who backs them up on everything they do,” he said.