Small Business and Economic Development

Small businesses are the lifeblood of American communities and of our national economy. Along with critical goods and services, they bring energy and distinctiveness to rural Main Streets and urban commercial corridors. They create jobs for local people; small businesses employ nearly half the country’s private workforce. And for proprietors, launching and growing a small business can be a vital onramp to family wealth creation.

At LISC, we focus on bolstering entrepreneurs whose lack of access to capital and services reflects deep, longstanding structural inequities—businesses owned and operated by people of color, women, immigrants, and veterans, and those located in low-wealth, underserved places.

We seed economic opportunity with every tool at our disposal. Our work creates opportunities for people to find quality jobs that boost their income and assets, and then the financial know-how to reach short- and long-term life goals. It equips entrepreneurs to launch and grow businesses that are engines of economic activity, generating wealth for families and communities. And it rebuilds disinvested neighborhoods and rural areas, along with their economies, through a set of integrated strategies that address the needs of residents, small businesses, and the community at large.