Trust Talks, The Podcast – Episode 27: Fueling Small Business Growth in Chicago

Small businesses are essential to stabilizing neighborhood economies. They create jobs, activate commercial corridors, and provide the goods and services that help communities thrive. Yet across the Chicago area — particularly in historically underinvested South and West Side neighborhoods — many entrepreneurs continue to face structural barriers that make it difficult to access the capital, technical assistance, and business networks needed to start, sustain and grow their businesses.   

To help address those challenges, The Chicago Community Trust and four philanthropic partners launched the Fund for Equitable Business Growth in 2019. Guided by research from Next Street, the funder collaborative invests in organizations that strengthen Chicago’s small businesses by improving access to capital, business services, and coordinated resources. Since its launch, the Fund has supported 46 business service organizations, helped nearly 6,000 small businesses access coaching and training, and connected entrepreneurs to more than $22 million in grants and loans. Today, new research from Next Street reveals that significant gaps remain, with small businesses seeking far more capital than traditional lenders provide, and many businesses that are ready to grow are unable to access the financing to do so.   

In this episode of Trust Talks, Earl Grandberry, director of the Fund for Equitable Business Growth, hosts a conversation with Sara Dinges, head of ecosystem solutions at Next Street; Niharika Hanglem, program director at The Richard L. Duchossois Foundation (RLD); and Linda McGill Boasmond, president and CEO of Cedar Concepts Corporation. Together, they discuss what the latest research reveals about Chicago’s small business ecosystem, philanthropy’s role in strengthening that ecosystem, and why investing in trusted business support organizations is essential to helping entrepreneurs build stronger businesses and more resilient neighborhood. They also explore the Fund’s next phase of work, including strategies to address capital access, operational challenges, growth-stage support gaps, and the policy and systems changes needed to unlock opportunity. 

This episode was produced by Juneteenth Productions and recorded at WBEZ.