Secondmuse Foundation

This project prototypes a distributed, digital infrastructure for mobilizing financial capital, technical assistance and knowledge resources for community funds and entrepreneur support organizations. The infrastructure operates at and among city, county and state levels, while also working in partnership with Philadelphia; Cook County, Illinois; and the state of Colorado.

It provides a shared platform and community for fund operators, facilitating their access to philanthropic and other sources of capital for the entrepreneurs they serve; leveraging pooled resources such as a credit enhancement facility and shared communications and marketing capacity; and creating operational efficiencies to enhance their service delivery.

The EDA grant advances the work of the Inclusive Capital Collective (ICC), which since late 2019, has been convening a national network of 95 community fund managers and entrepreneur support organizations to understand the challenges and opportunities for catalyzing more capital and resources for diverse entrepreneurs who are not only ill-served by the systemic biases of mainstream banking and venture finance, but also are underserved by CDFIs and SBA lenders.

The ICC is a network of organizations that have responded to these challenges in their respective communities and have diagnosed a shared set of opportunities in serving their communities better with capital and technical resources. This positions them well to proactively lead the post-pandemic recovery and resilience of their communities. The ICC will harness technology to achieve collective efficiencies and scale for its members, and to create a shared infrastructure for funneling more capital and resources to startups and early stage businesses in affected communities.