START SMALL THINK BIG INC

The Aspen Institute emphasizes the importance of increasing marginalized and low-income business owners’ access to capital, skills, networks, and markets as a lever to reducing this racial wealth gap, in addition to policies aimed at raising the quality of education, building savings, and increasing financial inclusion for low-income and marginalized populations.

Start Small’s intervention is in this specific area - increasing access to skills, professional expertise, and networks so that marginalized and low-income business owners’ can fulfill their potential and through their industry reduce the wealth disparity.

We help under-resourced -- low-income, marginalized, immigrant, and women -- entrepreneurs create thriving businesses in underserved areas so that they can build wealth for themselves, their families, and communities. By assisting under-resourced small business owners who typically do not have access to expensive professional expertise, we aim to a) reduce their inequity of access, b) build wealth for marginalized individuals and for their communities, and c) stimulate economic innovation and growth on underserved “Main Streets.” We enable our entrepreneurs to achieve success by activating and engaging a top-tier network of professional volunteers who provide high-quality legal, financial and marketing services at no cost.

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the landscape for the small businesses we serve, as well as the way we assist them and the kind of help they need. We surveyed our clients in March 2020 and found that the vast majority have seen sales decline 80 to 100 percent. Women-owned businesses, and those in food and retail, have been the hardest hit. Less than 10% of the businesses we serve believe that they can continue operating for 3 months or more before they will be forced to shutter for good.

In response to this historic financial and public health crisis, Start Small is pivoting quickly and directing all efforts to scale - because the need for our services is now tremendous and nationwide. Our overarching aim is to help our clients and thousands of small businesses nationwide to survive the immediate impact of COVID19, and equip them for recovery and sustainability.

Specifically, our goals over the next year are:
- Scale nationwide, and increase the number of under-resourced small businesses to which we provide our services by 150+%;
- Help at least 40% of our clients sustain and/or expand their businesses and ensure that they are able to retain at least $4.5M in revenue throughout this economic downturn and recovery period, post COVID.

Start Small provides small business owners from underserved communities with free legal, financial and marketing services through our in-house experts and extensive network of pro bono partners.

Over the years, Start Small has built a robust ecosystem with 100+ top-tier private and public partnerships, providing our clients with a caliber of support that would be unobtainable and unthinkably expensive normally.

Our programs are built around three specific intersections: 1) who we target and serve, 2) what services we offer, and 3) how we serve.

Who we target and serve: Start Small’s unique model fills a critically important gap in the entrepreneurial ecosystem: we target a population of entrepreneurs -- who have launched businesses but are still in the early stages. Businesses at this stage often go under-served by other technical assistance providers (who, on one end of the spectrum, focus — often exclusively — on pre-launch businesses, and at the other end of the spectrum, target much later stage or growth entrepreneurs and typically provide niche programming and support). Our entrepreneurs are past the initial launch phase, but need individualized one-on-one counsel and support to get to the next stage of growth.

What services we provide: Start Small offers a highly curated blend of one-on-one legal, financial management, and marketing assistance; we are the only program in the country that engages both legal and non-legal experts to provide this kind of comprehensive, wrap-around support to ensure the sustainability and growth of these entrepreneurs and their small businesses. Moreover, since very few programs offer ongoing support, they do not have the long-standing relationships with businesses to support their particular needs during this unprecedented economic recession, whereas at Start Small, our ongoing and deep relationships with clients enable us to provide the customized, responsive assistance they need to sustain their businesses in the short-term and grow them over the long-term.

How we serve: In addition to in-house expertise, we have developed a network of 100+ top-tier private and public partnerships -- including from Square, American Express, and international law firms like Skadden --- whose thousands of employees provide legal, financial and marketing services to our entrepreneurs (originally in New York and California, but now nationwide as we expand and go virtual). Through our ongoing and deep relationships with both clients and partners, we facilitate mutually beneficial relationships between under-resourced entrepreneurs and professional volunteers at hundreds of the most successful law firms, and corporations in the US.

Last year, Start Small Think Big engaged over 4,600 skill-based volunteers to provide approximately 3,500 small businesses with pro bono legal, financial and marketing and sales support valued at over $23 million.

Notably, Start Small is the ONLY program in the country that provides this kind of long-term and comprehensive, wrap-around support. Clients are encouraged to access all of our services as long as they are eligible. In addition, we encourage all of our clients to attend group workshops and classes offered regularly (now online) in both English and Spanish (www.startsmallthinkbig.org/workshops-classes).

Over the past 10 years, Start Small has built a robust ecosystem through 100+ top-tier private and public partnerships such as with Square, American Express, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, international law firms like Skadden Arps, and community organizations such as Business Center for New Americans, Latino Business Council, Catholic Charities and their Community Navigators for New Americans, and Grameen America, who provide a caliber of support to our clients that would be unobtainable and unthinkably expensive otherwise.

Start Small Think Big (Start Small) provides free technical assistance - financial, marketing, and legal - to 1,300+ immigrant, minority, and/or women-owned small businesses operating in underserved communities in New York and California, and soon across the country. Currently, our entrepreneurs are 21% immigrants and 97% minority and/or women. Among our targeted entrepreneurs, 35% live below the federal poverty line and 70% have businesses located in high-poverty communities. The average business revenue at intake is approximately $33,000 per year.

Within the first year of receiving Start Small services, the small businesses that we support:
- achieve a 50%+ increase in business revenue.
- 40% have identified meaningful new and varied distribution channels for their businesses.
- retain and/or create a total of at least 470 jobs.
- for every $1 in program costs invested in Start Small entrepreneurs, $3.3 of increased economic activity is generated.

In addition, over the past 10 years, Start Small has built a robust ecosystem through 100+ top-tier private and public partnerships who provide a caliber of support to our clients that would be unobtainable and unthinkably expensive otherwise. In 2019, this pro bono support was valued at $14 million. Start Small clients receive over 60 hours of one-on-one pro bono assistance, valued at more than $30,700 per client. Last year (2019) alone, over 2,000 volunteers provided approximately 24,500 hours of one-on-one legal, financial management, and marketing technical assistance.

Now, as a result of Covid19, in response to client need and the public health crisis, we have transitioned all client programming (client intakes, workshops, clinics) online. This change has resulted in the team expanding beyond our core geography (New York City, San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose). With an infrastructure in place that can be accessible anywhere, Start Small has “opened its doors” to business across the U.S. Our aim is to scale our work nationally, and increase the number of under-resourced small businesses to which we provide our services by 150+%, help at least 40% of our clients sustain and/or expand their businesses and ensure that they are able to retain at least $4.5M in revenue throughout this economic downturn and recovery period, post COVID.