September has been a busy month for people thinking about the future of business in Minnesota.
Founders, investors and corporate leaders gathered for Twin Cities Startup Week and, last week, the Minnesota Capital Forum, where much of the conversation returned to a familiar question: what will it take to grow the next generation of Minnesota businesses?
GroundBreak’s portfolio offers another way to answer that question.
It includes more than 50 businesses, with $16.2 million in reported annual revenue and 152 employees across businesses that shared those figures.
Among those that shared ownership data, roughly two-thirds are Black-owned and two-thirds are women-owned.
These businesses are already part of Minnesota’s economy. Owners make payroll, pay vendors and keep their doors open. What many need now is room to grow.
That context is especially relevant now: the Federal Reserve’s latest Beige Book for the Minneapolis district found that activity among minority- and women-owned businesses had edged down, with customers spending more cautiously while input costs rose considerably faster than the prices businesses could charge.
That gap is where our work with origination partners like NDC, entrepreneurs, and where philanthropy, community finance and institutional capital can make the biggest difference. Across our full portfolio, $17.3 million has helped mobilize $103 million.
By working with partners grounded in the neighborhoods they support, we help ensure the capital they deploy becomes something a business owner can build a future on and pass to the next generation.
We can’t talk about growth in our region without discussing who is allowed to participate. That’s more than a financial issue — it’s a democratic one. On Tuesday, Sept. 22nd, at the North Star Summit, GroundBreak CEO Adair Mosley made the case for economic democracy:
“When we change who can OWN in a society, we change the basic relationship between people and the economies they inhabit. We grow their practical capacity to participate in the places they call home.
Our work now is to ensure that far more people enter that journey of ownership than ever before — by orders of magnitude.”
In Gratitude,
The GroundBreak Coalition Team
