When leaders empower people, they transform lives.
When lives are transformed, businesses are too. Empowering the people around you is what smart leaders do.I first met George Wright, the Midwest Region director for Citi Community Development, through an initiative we designed together to empower students to make informed decisions about their college experience through the lens of cost-benefit analysis.
I quickly learned that this approach — empowering the people around you — defines not only his work but also the work of Citi.
Citi’s goal is to develop scalable solutions that enable greater financial capability, access to financial services, economic development, job opportunities, neighborhood revitalization and asset building for low- and moderate-income communities in some of America’s largest cities.
They accomplish these goals through a collaborative approach that seeks to first identify community assets and then community needs. Citi works with municipal governments, community organizations and agencies to establish productive and meaningful partnership practices. This approach provides space for community input and idea exchange — empowering their partners along the way.
“We value being a true partner on community projects that we believe will benefit from our experience and collaboration,” Wright says.
A targeted solution
Citi took this approach in creating the Chicago Microlending Institute, a first-in-the-nation institute to train new lenders to make targeted loans to Chicago’s smallest businesses. They started gathering information and learning the facts, both from academic research and from conversations with individuals from local community organizations.
They found that more than 20 percent of Chicago’s residents work for firms with five employees or less, many of which are located in low-income communities and provide crucial income to local residents.
Many of these businesses, however, have difficulty accessing capital from traditional lenders due to language barriers, lack of knowledge about the loan process or because business owners had low credit scores. Without capital, these businesses would be unable to grow and create much needed jobs.
Wright and his team looked at this issue and saw a solution: Provide training to new lenders to make targeted loans to empower small business owners.
Citi partnered with the city of Chicago and Accion, a leading small business lender, to build a network of microlenders across the city. Mayor Rahm Emanuel established a Small Business Loan Fund, a $1 million pool of loan capital, which is used to underwrite loans to Chicago’s small businesses.
Citi’s program is contributing to a more inclusive Chicago where previously marginalized small business owners can thrive.
A model for others
Since 2011, the program has helped create or preserve more than 700 jobs and distributed $1.6 million in loans to 179 businesses.
“I am so pleased to see this program is having such a positive impact on our small business owners and thrilled that it has become a model for other similar programs around the country,” Emanuel says.
When leaders empower people — they transform lives. This project draws on the creative energy and innovation that public-private partnerships can generate to empower the small business owner — and the impact is transformational. Smart leaders like Wright and the partners he works with see a need and create a solution that empowers people, and you can too. ●
