JumpStart will lead the way on a new Ohio program to give minority-owned, women-owned and inner city businesses the technical and financial assistance they need to create jobs.
The Cleveland-based not-for-profit venture development organization today will formally unveil Launch100, a five-year program in collaboration with the Ohio Department of Development and 15 state-funded business assistance organizations. Scheduled attendees at the kickoff include Gov.Ted Strickland and State Rep. Sandra Williams.
Darrin Redus, chief economic inclusion officer for JumpStart and president of JumpStart Inclusion Advisors, says his organization will lead a 12- to 18-month pilot aimed at proving the effectiveness of such a program in advance of a statewide roll-out. He says the program will extend JumpStart's reach beyond its traditional technology-based portfolio.
"We were coming across high-potential opportunities led by women and minorities that may or may not be in some of those core emerging technologies but still represented very high growth potential businesses," Redus says. "So . . . we began to have conversation with the state around wouldn't it be great to try to position Ohio as a leader in growing minority firms?"
Participating companies must meet a number of initial criteria, including potential for sales growth, job-creation and market potential. They must be minority-owned, women-owned or operate in the inner city. Assisting promising inner-city business, regardless of ownership, is key, JumpStart says, noting a report by The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City that found growing inner city firms hire inner city residents at almost twice the rate of other inner city firms -- and six times the rate regionally.
JumpStart, which serves a 21-county area, hopes to engage 12 to 15 companies over the course of the pilot; the eventual goal statewide is 100.
Sources: Darrin Redus and Cathy Belk, JumpStart
Writer: Gene Monteith