Program Creates Inner City Business Growth

 
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Small Business Administration, the Initiative for a 
Competitive Inner City, and Bank of America have announced they will work 
together to advance inner city small business growth by supporting the Inner 
City Capital Connections program. 

ICIC, which educates investment-ready inner city companies about equity and 
other sources of growth capital and matches them with potential investors, 
will hold its sixth annual ICCC investment capital matchmaking program in Los 
Angeles Nov. 15-16. The event will feature a full-day matchmaking session 
with potential investors, along with workshops and assessments of investment 
potentials. Preparation sessions for inner city businesses from around the 
country that plan to take part in the event will take place Oct. 11 in New York 
and Oct. 27 in Los Angeles. 

To be eligible for the program, companies must be: headquartered in or have 
51 percent or more of a physical operations presence in an economically 
distressed urban area; and be a for-profit corporation, partnership or 
proprietorship with revenues of more than $2 million in 2009. More than 75 
companies, in various industries ranging from technology, business services 
and manufacturing, participated in the program last year.

"Access to capital is critical to small business growth and job creation in 
America’s inner cities,” said SBA Administrator Karen Mills. “Supporting these 
entrepreneurs is at the core of SBA’s mission and an essential component of 
keeping our economy moving in the right direction. SBA is proud to play a role 
in facilitating connections between investors and emerging inner city 
entrepreneurs and to accelerate opportunities for small businesses in these 
markets." 

Established in 2005 by the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City and Bank of 
America, ICCC is a free program designed to stimulate capital flow to inner city 
businesses. 

“We are pleased to once again have the expertise of the SBA behind this 
important program that can help our nation’s small business community obtain 
investor capital to grow and generate jobs,”explained Ed Powers, BAML Capital 
Access Funds managing director. “ICCC has helped hundreds of growing small 
businesses get even stronger by connecting them to millions of dollars in 
investor capital. We look forward to continuing this momentum this fall in Los 
Angeles.” 

“ICCC opens the door to a network of financial options that these firms had 
limited or no access to previously,” stated Mary Kay Leonard, ICIC president 
and CEO. “For many inner city entrepreneurs, the executive education around 
the options that exist for growth capital is as important as the investments 
their companies may ultimately receive.”

Initiative for A Competitive Inner City
Since ICIC’s launch of the ICCC program, participating companies have raised 
more than $335 million in capital and experienced a compound growth rate of 
23 percent. To learn more about ICCC, go to: www.icic.org. 

The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) is a nonprofit strategy and 
research organization based in Boston, MA, and the leading authority on U.S. 
inner city economies and business development. For more information go to: 
www.icic.org.

Bank of America
Bank of America is one of the world's largest financial institutions, serving 
individual consumers, small- and middle-market businesses and large 
corporations with a full range of banking, investing, asset management and 
other financial and risk management products and services. For more 
information go to www.bankofamerica.com. 

U.S. Small Business Administration 
The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) was created in 1953 as an 
independent agency of the federal government to aid, counsel, assist and 
protect the interests of small business concerns, to preserve free competitive 
enterprise and to maintain and strengthen the overall economy of our nation. 
For more information go to www.sba.gov.