By Megan Sayles, AFRO Enterprise Author,
Report for America Corps Member,
msayle@safro.com

Capital Impression Companions and CDC Small Enterprise Finance, two established nationwide nonprofits based mostly in D.C., lately merged and joined forces with Ventures Lending Applied sciences to create Momentus Capital, a corporation that gives a continuum of social, monetary and information capital for native leaders, companies and neighborhood organizations to bolster financial mobility and wealth creation. 

Momentus Capital significantly seeks to assist African-American entrepreneurs and communities who proceed to be excluded from conventional monetary companies and the banking system. 

“In the end, our imaginative and prescient is to create a diversified, mission-driven monetary companies agency that gives communities with the chance to to construct inclusive and equitable alternatives of their communities,” mentioned Ellis Carr, president and CEO of Momentus Capital. 

Every of the organizations beneath Momentus Capital, which have already invested greater than $250 million in D.C. extra time, will proceed to function as separate entities to serve their key markets, however they may pool their assets and provide new merchandise. 

The Impower mortgage, Momentus Capital’s different to the Small Enterprise Administration’s (SBA) 504 mortgage, targets entrepreneurs who’ve been denied a business actual property mortgage and assists them in creating new ventures in low- to moderate-income communities. It additionally has no minimal credit score rating requirement. 

With its Equitable Growth Initiative, Housing Fairness Accelerator Fellowship and Rising Various Housing Builders program, Momentus Capital will present coaching, mentorship and avenues to financing for Black and Brown builders, in addition to larger entry to inexpensive housing for the bigger neighborhood. 

“It’s essential that we offer alternatives to have earnings and wealth technology in communities, and the way in which we take into consideration that’s by means of small companies and possession of your constructing that you simply’re working in as a small enterprise,” mentioned Carr. “We additionally know that foundationally a wholesome neighborhood is outlined by having protected and inexpensive housing that doesn’t take up an astronomical share of your earnings.” 

Though Momentus Capital has a presence nationwide, it takes a neighborhood, place-based strategy to raised attain small enterprise house owners, social entrepreneurs, equitable builders and policymakers.

In Michigan, the group has already begun piloting a brand new lending program, Activate Detroit. The mortgage product is credit score blind—utilizing character-based evaluations as a substitute— and targets Black small companies. 

The group determined to launch the product after discovering that only one % of African-American entrepreneurs in Detroit, which is a predominantly Black metropolis, had been eligible for SBA neighborhood benefit loans resulting from poor FICO scores. 

After refining the product, Momentus Capital plans to scale the Activate mortgage nationally, and D.C. will probably be one of many subsequent markets to supply it. 

This fall, Momentus Capital will even launch an Impression Investing group, which can present fairness investments and enterprise debt for minority-led corporations in order that they have the required capital to scale their companies.  

“It’s about constructing new capabilities in order that we will actually present and marshal the best sort of capital into the neighborhood in order that the residents in these communities can actually fulfill the desires that they’ve for themselves,” mentioned Carr.

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