Business grant to help the 'underestimated'

A rebranded and expanded regional program hopes to help Northeastern Minnesota entrepreneurs who are Black, Indigenous, military veterans, or women.

The Driving Access to Wealth & Networks (DAWN) program at Northspan Group, Inc., a Duluth-based nonprofit, is set to receive $2 million over the next four years from the U.S. Department of Commerce. That money is meant to help budding business leaders who hail from historically underserved communities - or, as more than one speaker at a kickoff event held Monday, Nov. 20, put it, historically "underestimated" communities.

The program will help level the figurative playing field, according to Roger Smith Sr., vice chair of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, which hosted the kickoff event.

"That's all we ask," Smith said in the Ojibwe band's Cultural Language and Learning Center. "That's all our entrepreneurs, minority entrepreneurs, ask for. Just give us a level playing field."

The commerce department is set to reimburse the program for about $500,000 worth of expenses each year through the fall of 2027, according to Elissa Hansen, Northspan's president and CEO. Beyond that, the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development is set to spend $150,000 on DAWN programming over the next two years, Hansen said.

"Our mission is to be expert navigators, turning your ideas into accomplishments," Hansen told a small crowd at the program's kickoff. The federal money is a "huge boost," she said.

DAWN aims to help those entrepreneurs in Aitken, Carlton, Cook, Itasca, Kanabec, Koochiching, Lake, Mille Lacs, Pine, and St. Louis counties, as well as the Bois Forte, Fond du Lac, Grand Portage, Leech Lake, Mille Lacs, and Red Lake Ojibwe bands - a region approximately the size of Ireland, Hansen quipped.

Anyone can use the program, according to Northspan staff, but DAWN is focused on Native nations, the Black community, and women and veterans in the region.

In a similar vein, Northspan employees are also set to help would-be tycoons get ahold of State Small Business Credit Initiative money, which flows from the U.S. Department of the Treasury to state governments such as Minnesota's and tribal governments such as Fond du Lac's.

Those governments use SSBCI money to implement credit and venture capital programs to help small businesses. In northeast Minnesota, the Grand Portage band is set to receive about $620,000 for that purpose, and the Bois Fort and Fond du Lac bands are set to receive nearly $1 million apiece, according to Northspan staff.

The money for DAWN is similarly intended but distinct from the credit initiative. About half of the federal money for DAWN will go to Northspan, where it will pay for staff there to help clients get ahold of that SSBCI money, secure funding from local banks, and so on, Hansen said.

The remaining $250,000 each year is set to go to other regional organizations that can help people turn their ideas into small businesses.

"That's the kind of program we're really trying to expand," Hansen told the Pine Knot shortly after the kickoff event. "Then we can connect them to the capital that is out there when they're ready for it."

One of those organizations set to receive money from DAWN is ILT Academy, a Brooklyn Park, Minnesota-based company that aims to help startups and their founders. Money from DAWN means ILT will host six cohorts of 24-30 students in 2024, rather than two, according to Nick Tietz, the company's founder and CEO.

Students in each cohort learn how to clearly define their business concept, Tietz said, how to pitch their idea in 30 seconds or less, how to make a one-page business plan, and how to put together a 90-day plan to bring their idea to market. The goal is to determine "product/market fit," he said, which means determining whether the market demands a student's product and whether the student's product fulfills that demand. ILT students have raised a combined $6.8 million for their businesses in the past year, Tietz claimed.

"We don't just teach and train," Tietz said. "Our goal is to bring all of these different groups of people that don't normally get together to celebrate the entrepreneur. The groups that are in the Rotary and the chambers (of commerce) and the economic development groups, they don't hang with emerging entrepreneurs because they're not in business yet, and those emerging entrepreneurs don't hang with them because they can't afford the fees and dues."

The federal money for DAWN comes from the Capital Readiness Program, a $125 million effort administered by the commerce department's Minority Business Development Agency. The agency selected Northspan and 42 other organizations across the country for portions of that money.

DAWN is essentially a continuation of the Innovate 218 initiative run by the Itasca Economic Development Corporation in Grand Rapids. The corporation was a hub for the state's Launch Minnesota grants, which also aim to help fledgling businesses. Northspan took over that role in July.