Entrepreneurship Award Corp dba Envolve Entrepreneurship

Founder Forward is a tech-enabled community platform dedicated to creating wealth and equity for diverse founders through support services targeting early stage capital and advising gaps. In our model, a powerful network of partners converges to back four early-stage startups per campaign. Currently, our model leverages the capital and human power of corporate and foundation partners whose social impact goals align with our mission. Sponsorship provides a direct investment in BIPOC owned businesses through unrestricted capital grants while skilled professional employees volunteer their time and expertise. 

To date we have worked with 96 entrepreneurs, disbursed $290,000+ in funding, and facilitated $35,441 worth of advising hours.

Founder Forward has 3 main engagement verticals: 

1. Skilled professional volunteers engage with founders on our site by offering feedback on pitch decks, graphics, prototypes and more. Volunteers are also matched to businesses based on their expertise to provide 1:1 and group advising sessions that focus on covering a specific need (e.g. reviewing logos, adapting a marketing plan, HR strategies). 

2. Businesses receive critical capital through unrestricted grants

3. Post-campaign, our founders receive ongoing support, resources and funding pathways through our alumni community. 

Harnessing technology, we are creating an extended virtual community of support around BIPOC small businesses based on their own determination of their needs. Our model is always founder-first, rather than prescriptive, and we have included founder input at every stage of developing this solution. 

Founder Forward serves as a tech-enabled solution to systemic market barriers diverse entrepreneurs face across the country: the lack of capital, advising, and resources during the start-up launch years. In the last 30 years, Black and Latinx families have only increased their share of the nation’s wealth by 1% (6%-7% of the total), contributing to why Black entrepreneurs typically collect only a third of what their white counterparts raise from friends and family in their launch years. Further, only 1% of Black business owners secure a business loan in their first year and whereas major banks approve around 60% of loans applied for by white small-business owners, they only approve 50% by Latinx small-business owners, and 29% by Black small-business owners. 

These difficulties raising capital combined with an identified lack of personal connection to business and venture capital networks, professional services, and mentors cause 96% of Black businesses to fail in the start-up stage. In fact, only 33% of small businesses overall survive longer than 10 years. 

The challenge addresses solutions that provide support to grow, develop, and sustain racially diverse and/or women-led small businesses in the United States. Founder Forward connects Black, Latinx, and Indigenous small business owners to pro bono advisers, and capital grants to support their growth and help solve urgent business challenges. Our solution addresses systemic market barriers these diverse entrepreneurs face that hinder their ability to scale to levels that build generational wealth  The lack of capital, advising, and resources during the startup launch years locks the economic potential of entire communities. This is critical because while 20% of Black Americans start businesses, only 4% survive the start up stage (McKinsey). According to Kabbage, 92% of small businesses agree that mentors have a direct impact on growth and the survival of their business, yet only 39% reported having a mentor or paid advisor when they started. Diverse businesses also struggle to secure funding, only receiving half the amount in investments than their white counterparts (MBDA). 

This aligns with two challenge dimensions; connecting small business owners and key stakeholders with the relevant experience to improve coordination, collaboration, and knowledge bases within the small business ecosystem and assisting with access to capital, capital campaigns, and/or financial education and information. 

Our solution targets early stage & emerging Black, Latinx, & Indigenous founders. Our typical beneficiary is in the startup or growth stage, has earned under $250,000 in revenue, and has clearly defined challenges in their processes and operations. Geographically we target the “mighty middle,”  communities that have a thriving entrepreneurial base but lack the attention and resources of the more dominant startup markets. These communities generally have median household incomes under $55,000, which is well under the national average. The demographics of our alumni to date are 75% Black, 15% Latinx, 10% Indigenous, and 58% female. 

We know that systemic market barriers can hinder BIPOC business owners’ access to capital, resources, advising, and networking. Black and Latinx families are twice as likely to have zero or negative wealth compared to white families (inequality.org). On average, minority owned businesses receive half the amount in new equity investments than non minority owned businesses and while minority business ownership is on the rise (up 35%), their average gross receipts have decreased by 16% (MBDA). This is why we believe the work we are doing is critical to long term equity and generational wealth building for BIPOC small business owners. 

These statistics confirm what we have learned ourselves from our founder community. The launching point of this program was a solution session at SXSW in 2019 where founders shared their top 3 pain points: access to capital and mentorship, and lack of community storytelling. This inspired us to create a mentorship and capital access program where cohorts of entrepreneurs would be grouped thematically in order to boost their collective narrative. As we continue to improve our solution, our founders are included in every step and we are constantly collecting their feedback through surveys, focus groups, and UX/UI testing.

Our solution has already been implemented in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, Kentucky, the DMV (Washington, DC, Maryland, Virginia), Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Minnesota. 

Envolve works with underrepresented founders to build a community and platform that advances equity and access in the entrepreneurship ecosystem. Our mission is aimed at helping sustain and level up early stage and emerging small businesses so that they can successfully grow and scale. At this time we do not provide resources to support businesses that are in the ideation stage. 

Our ultimate goal is to help underserved communities build generational wealth and financial independence through small business ownership. In the short term, we help BIPOC-owned small businesses grow and become sustainable. The SBA reports that 20% of small businesses fail in the first year and only 33% survive over 10 years. We believe that our model addresses multiple opportunity and access gaps that hinder BIPOC-owned small business’ long term growth and success; unequal access to capital, lack of mentorship and access to business networks, and lack of representation. 

• Multiple sources state that cash flow is a primary reason small businesses fail. 79% of businesses that fail start out with too little money (US Bank). Through grantmaking, business owners receive unrestricted working capital usable towards start-up costs, growth of their products, team, or services, equipment etc. 

• We also know that mentorship and advising can be a game changer for small businesses, helping them achieve higher revenues and growth. 70% of small businesses that receive mentorship survive more than five years, which is double the rate for those who receive none (UPS). Through our solution, business owners receive tailored guidance and advising to solve urgent challenges, which strengthens their business acumen and internal processes which in turn strengthen their productivity and rate of success.  In addition to advisers, we connect founders to peers, investors, and ecosystem builders which helps build a long-term growth support network.

• Through story amplification, business owners’ narratives and social impact goals are shared across multiple channels, with new audiences, leading to increased representation and awareness, not only of the individual business, but on the importance of supporting BIPOC owned businesses. McKinsey reported that if existing privately held Black-owned businesses had the same revenue averages as white-owned businesses, it would add $200 billion into the US economy. 

Emphasizing these non-prescriptive measures as an integral part of service delivery best helps communities of color adapt technical knowledge to their unique circumstances and maintain sustainability. We aim to assist entrepreneurs in developing the foundational skills needed to create their own pathways to generational wealth, social innovation and community economic development.

To date, our solution has served 96 small businesses in 8+ communities. Through our sponsored campaigns, we currently have the capacity to serve about 40-48 small businesses a year through 10-12 campaigns. In one year our goal is to increase that number to about 15 campaigns a year (60 founders), through an increased internal capacity. In 5 years we are expecting to serve exponentially more small businesses by building out a fully automated SaaS platform that scales our curated approach. The goal is to create an employee engagement software solution that allows small business owners to connect with corporate professionals providing pro bono services as well as raise funds through employer matched dollars. This enterprise model would be mirrored by a public “marketplace” (think Upwork) where small business owners would be able to post projects or challenges they are looking to solve, and to match with a pro bono adviser. With that future state model, we are hoping to serve at least 100 businesses a year to start. 

Our solution serves early stage and emerging Black, Latinx, and Indigenous small businesses. We target communities such as Louisville and Albuquerque that have a thriving entrepreneurial base but lack the attention and resources of more dominant startup markets.

Organizational strategy is led by our staff and board of directors but is driven by our community of founders who provide feedback on the structure, efficiency, and impact of our service delivery programs such as Founder Forward. Other key stakeholders include community organizations who help with founder sourcing and ecosystem growth, and corporate partners who provide funding and pro bono consulting hours to our founders. Our model can be deployed anywhere, however we are building deep relationships in specific communities, like Louisville, KY where organizations such as the NBA, FISLL, FutureLou, and Amplify Louisville have committed to continuing to support their local small businesses through our solution. 

We work with the community and our stakeholders to create community-based solutions by providing a framework for impact that is able to adapt to local ecosystems in real time. We do not enter a community without having partners on the ground who can guide our understanding of the local ecosystem and can connect us with the small business owners who are the pulse of it all.  

Given that our model is flexible, our method of service delivery can look different based on community need. A perfect example of our intentionality in community and place-based solutions is the network we have built-in Louisville, Kentucky in such a short timeframe. Our mission to establish our platform as a national leader in innovative solutions and creative capital for diverse founders placed us in a region healing from the trauma of the pandemic and the senseless murder of Breonna Taylor; Healing and rejuvenating through critical business growth and collective success to stimulate the local economy and mobilize the community. We stepped in with one goal, to provide unrestrictive capital to founders of color and place an impact model in the hands that were driving change in the city. 

The Founder Forward platform attracted investment from corporations and high profile citizens that call Louisville home and that capital was given directly to the founders breaking ground in access to food insecurities, quality healthcare, and co-working spaces designed to lift a community through entrepreneurship and community wealth. As the city of Louisville recognized our non-prescriptive and non-extractive measures of support and investment, we have started to evolve into more of a hub and spoke model, converging existing resources and valued partners, accelerators, incubators, and investors around our small business owners. We have now supported two founder cohorts in Louisville, with a third in the making, and solved over 80 business challenges for those founders. As our presence grows we learn more about the ecosystem and adapt to the needs of the founders, and celebrate the local history. We aim to replicate this model in every impact region so our roots remain local even with a national reach. 

We build trust within our communities by listening first and adapting based on the community and individual founder needs. Our approach is unique in that while it provides a framework for service delivery, it is adaptable to how those services are delivered and is non-prescriptive. We connect with local stakeholders to determine how our solution can add value to the existing ecosystem, rather than dictating it. In some communities that takes the form of connecting existing resources to scale impact, and in others we introduce new resources. 

We communicate with the founders and stakeholders at every step of the process, and have multiple opportunities to collect their feedback. We have recurring standing meetings with our community and corporate partners, collect survey data from volunteers and founders, and include the founders in focus groups and UX/UI testing. 

Over the next year, our goals for impact include:

• Increase the number of small business owners served from  40 to 52 a year by running 3 more campaigns a year and attracting more corporate sponsors.

• Increase the average grant size to founders from $5,000 to $8,000. We hope to do this through both increased sponsorship size, and by starting an independent fund, separate from sponsorship.

• Help small business owners solve 1-3 immediate business challenges. 

• Retain an official amplification partner who can assist business owners with marketing and storytelling.

• Retain an official mentorship/advising partner that can fill gaps not serviced by each cohort’s corporate sponsor employees. 

• Show correlation between our services, and meaningful growth or hurdles overcome for the small businesses served.

• Contribute to building a community of support around diverse founders.

Assuming a steady rate of growth, over the next 5 years, we are hoping to operate and scale to a place where we can sustain a minimum of 15 campaigns a year, and increase the average grant size to $10,000 per business. Long term, our goals for scaling the program are to create an operating fund and retain multiple advising partners that would allow us to run campaigns without relying on specific corporate sponsorships. In the future state of our solution, we also envision creating a ‘marketplace’ where any small business owner could be connected with a pro bono adviser to help them solve a specified challenge.  

Our team and Board of Directors are made up of diverse individuals who represent the populations that Envolve serves: BIPOC and female founders. Our Board members are small business owners themselves, or ecosystem builders. Our Acting Executive Director has been with Envolve for 3 years in various capacities and comes from a small business and policy background. Our Program Manager has professional experience in grassroots small business equity and community building, and our Tech Strategist leverages 20 years experience as a social impact leader in the racial equity space with the MBK Alliance and with empowering professionals in pro bono service to drive social change with the Taproot Foundation.

 Our team collectively has years of experience running other entrepreneur support programs through Envolve that have served 3,000+ business owners with $700,000+ in funding and countless hours of advising and support resources. That experience, as well as the input of our community, has helped guide the design of Founder Forward. The premise for the solution was born from a solution session at SXSW where diverse founders shared their most pressing needs: funding, mentorship, and representation. The evolution and improvement of the program is also guided by feedback from its participants. For example, many advisers and small business owners have indicated that they would like a more structured way to connect long-term and follow up on the challenges they are solving, so that is a main focus area for improvement going forward. 

We are applying to the Truist Foundation Inspire Awards because we have a proven, desirable MVP that could be strengthened through the challenge’s support services, scaling and deepening our impact. We mentioned that some of the barriers we face are a dependence on corporate partners, small internal capacity, reliance on manual processes, and the need for a more fully developed strategy around long term engagement with the small business owners. After reviewing the support services offered to challenge finalists, we believe that partnership with the Truist Foundation and MIT Solve can add value in the following ways: 

• Guidance around adapting and refining our business model to be more sustainable as we scale so that we can leverage our corporate partnerships without being solely reliant on them. 

• Helping to build our impact measurement practice so that we can better track the long term impact of our support services, which will in turn help us identify ways to improve the program in the future based on the founders’ needs. 

• Leveraging peers and resource partners who can help advise on how to start building out our future state model for the solution and how we can integrate more tech -enabled automations for a more streamlined user experience. 

Business Model: In refining our business model, we are looking to develop strategies around incorporating new partners so that while some of our campaigns can be run exclusively through corporate sponsorship and strong employee engagement, we can also have the option to finance and run other campaigns without needing a flagship sponsor. 

Monitoring & Evaluation: Our goals for monitoring and evaluation are to create a more meaningful set of impact metrics and methods for data collecting and evaluation of that impact. We’d like to be able to draw a direct correlation between our support services and the growth and longevity of the businesses served. We are currently only able to track our short term impact, with longer term impact being perceived through qualitative sources such as check ins, testimonials, and survey feedback. 

 Technology: Our technology goals include upgrading our platform to include more automations and strategizing on how to build out our future state model. Currently our team manually handles a lot of the processes around founder-advisor matching, scheduling, and network building. Automating these processes would allow our time to be used elsewhere, such as community management, outreach, and partnership development. 

In general we look to partner with the following types of organizations: 

• Community organizations that help us understand local ecosystems and source applicants.

• Resource partners who can provide mentors, tailored technical assistance for small business owners such as legal and financial, or help with additional funding opportunities.

• Corporate partners who are invested in racial equity and supporting small business ecosystems, who can provide financial and advising support. 

In building up our internal capacity, we are looking to partner with organizations who have a deep understanding of building tech-enabled ecosystems and systems of change, who can advise on our platform growth and adaptation. 

Lastly, we want to break into the venture capital arena. As impact investing has evolved into a more powerful tool for good, so too have investing platforms for large-scale socio-economic mobility. We want Founder Forward in those conversations because we believe we have an investable model that can help donors achieve their philanthropic goals by offering both thematic impact portfolios and private impact investing solutions.