Johnnie Edwards
A local initiative that provides business and financial resources to Black entrepreneurs is expanding its scope.
Targeted Investment in Minority Entrepreneurs (TIME) has begun work with the Latino community, said Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce President Cindy Frey.
“It had been a goal of ours to move into the realm of supporting Latino-owned businesses as well,” she said. “There are 70 Latino-owned businesses that we know of, and we’re working to connect businesses to SCORE volunteers. And when needed, we have funds to support an interpreter.”
The TIME program is a collaboration between several partners, including the Columbus/Bartholomew Area Chapter of the NAACP and the chamber. The latter serves as the program’s fiscal agent.
To date, there have been 31 participants in the program, said program leader Alexis Odiase with TIME. Nineteen businesses have received financial help, including forgivable loans totaling $152,000.
“The results of the program have been powerful,” said Johnnie Edwards, president of the local NAACP chapter and chair of TIME’s board of directors. “The impact that it has made within the Black community, for Black-owned businesses, has been just overwhelmingly positive.”
Black business owners have not only gained funding, but also learned about how to become bankable and make improvements in their long-term viability, he said.
TIME was introduced in March of 2021, with the Cummins Advocating for Racial Equity (CARE) initiative providing a $150,000 grant for the program. First Financial Bank provided $100,000 in microloan funding, along with a grant to support administrative fees.
Cummins recently provided an additional $200,000 grant for TIME to continue its work with Black entrepreneurs, which Frey described as an endorsement of TIME’s good work in its first phase.
“In the second phase of the program, we’ve added a few things based on our learning in round one,” she said. “And that is to continue the one-on-one counseling that worked in the first phase but to add to the available options for our cohort businesses, a way to partner with legal support and accounting support.”
The funds from Cummins will be used to support these additions, said Frey. The grant will also support continued counseling services, forgivable loans and marketing to promote Black-owned businesses.
“One of the biggest challenges is getting the community to know that they’re there,” said Edwards. “So the Black History Month program has been a great contributor to that, to help make our community more aware of the Black-owned businesses that are here in this community. So that’s been our largest challenge, is just getting that information out to the community to help them understand the services that can be provided by our minority-owned businesses.”
“It’s not widely known that we have 30 or more Black-owned businesses,” said Frey. “And so we want to want to kind of help spread that word.”
The expansion to serving Latino entrepreneurs is the result of additional fundraising, separate from the Cummins grant, she said. This work is still in the early stages and is part of TIME’s second phase. A report from the program provided the following outline for growth:
- Phase 1: Black Owned Business Pilot
- Phase 2: Latino Business Expansion & Round 2 Black Owned Businesses
- Phase 3: Sustainability
Plans for the third phase include continuing support from the first two phases, creating new avenues for business support, exploring “broader minority focus” and looking at multi-year funding strategies.
“I think the board is very proud of the work so far,” said Frey. “We learned a lot in year one. We definitely learned that you have to build trust with the African-American community. We’re learning the same is true with the Latino community. We have to build a trust so that we can have a good working relationship.”
She added that the program has also helped financial institutions hear the voices of minority customers and make changes based on what they’ve heard.
“We need to be able to draw individuals to our community and help them understand what Bartholomew County, especially Columbus itself, has to offer minority-owned businesses,” said Edwards, in discussing the program’s importance. “When you look at society and everything that’s going on today, there are a lot of communities that don’t feel as welcoming. In light of what just took place in our community, where you have signs of racism go up, that can be a deterrent. So we need something that’s on the positive side to help draw minority businesses to communities such as ours and help them understand that there’s some great opportunities here for growth, a great opportunity here for collaboration.”
