Recap: The Call for Capital: How Mission-Driven Financing Supports Our Small Businesses
March 3, 2026
On March 3, the Boston Foundation convened a timely forum on how mission-driven financing institutions—ranging from Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) to mission-driven venture capital and business acquisition organizations—can close capital access gaps and build wealth for historically underserved entrepreneurs. Chief Program Officer Orlando Watkins opened the session, underscoring why this ecosystem matters: “Small businesses are a vital part of our community…. For many entrepreneurs of color, small business ownership is a way to build wealth and accumulate assets.”
He noted the Foundation’s decade of grant and impact investments in this space, including the Business Equity Fund’s track record: $20 million deployed to individual businesses has yielded around $80 million in revenue growth and nearly 2,000 jobs. Watkins acknowledged that the challenges of rising costs and federal headwinds have created a growing need for support to the entire small business ecosystem—including mission-driven finance institutions of all kinds. With that, he invited Matt Brewster of P2 Advisors to share an overview of the Massachusetts small business landscape and the institutional barriers and emerging opportunities affecting it.
Keynote Findings
Brewster started the discussion by quantifying the Commonwealth’s capital access gap: “Entrepreneurs of color in Massachusetts have two times the rate of financing shortfalls as their peers, and over $1 billion in unmet financing demand on an annual basis.” He shared research indicating that traditional financing through banks and venture investors isn’t reaching communities of color, while financing from mission-driven lenders is—with client bases that are majority low- to moderate-income and 50 percent people of color. He showed that, though the mission-driven finance sector is small in Massachusetts, it is effective and has potential to scale tens of millions more dollars per year.
However, Brewster cautioned that the federal government’s actions have hurt the sector, including through threats to the CDFI Fund, a federal entity that’s sole purpose is to promote economic revitalization and community development through investment in CDFIs across the country. These threats include the Office of Management and Budget’s freeze of the CDFI Fund’s deployed awards, a shutdown-related staff layoff, and the funding cuts that would lead to a “wind-down” of the Fund itself. Though the individual states can play a role in stabilizing the ecosystem, the public sector alone cannot fill in the gaps created. His bottom line: Patient, flexible, and multi-year funding from mission-aligned funders is catalytic and can be used to leverage significantly more dollars to support small businesses.
Panel: Models That Work
Moderator Courtney Brunson, TBF’s director of community equity initiatives, positioned the discussion beyond CDFIs to reflect the broader ecosystem, which the panelists’ organizations represented. Cooperative Fund of the Northeast (CFNE) is, in fact, a CDFI, but one that specializes in cooperatives, community-oriented nonprofits, and worker-owned businesses in New England and New York.
Agenda
Opening Remarks
Orlando Watkins, Vice President and Chief Program Officer, The Boston Foundation
CDFI Report
Matt Brewster, Principal, P2 Advisors
Panel Discussion and Audience Q&A
Daniel Acheampong, Co-founder and General Partner, Visible Hands
Josie Shagwert, Capitalization Manager, Cooperative Fund of the Northeast
Allegra Stennett, Co-founder and Managing Partner, New Majority Capital
Courtney Brunson (Moderator), Director, Economic Equity Initiatives, The Boston Foundation
Co-ops are unique in a few ways and have some distinct legal and procedural challenges. As CFNE Capitalization Manager Josie Shagwert said, “Cooperatives are a vehicle… whereby folks can do more and accomplish more together than they could as individuals. But because they are jointly owned or operated, they face structural barriers around personal guarantee rules and equity expectations incompatible with democratic governance.” Yet, she added, history, research, and practice show they are resilient and powerful for wealth building. Shagwert shared the story of Eastern Garage Door in Lawrence, a worker buyout CNFE supported, which saved a multigenerational business by transitioning ownership to its workforce—mostly Dominican and female—a number of whom had worked there for decades. “It was complex and took time but demonstrated how conversions to a cooperative model can both preserve local enterprises and create broad-based ownership.”
Panelist Daniel Acheampong, co-founder and general partner at Visible Hands, explained how his mission-driven venture capital organization backs diverse, tech-forward founding teams with capital, technical assistance, and wraparound support focused on founder well-being and mentorship, with the aim of helping the enterprises establish their customer base and scale their products and market. He also spoke about how leveraging AIhas helped the startups lower their build costs and accelerate their product cycles amid a time of capital scarcity, enabling founders to do more with less. He spoke of a nurse, who, with Visible Hands (and AI) support, was able to turn her idea and experience with direct patient care into a viable health tech solution. On a broader scale, Acheampong stressed creativity—for entrepreneurs and funders alike—in connecting capital across public, philanthropic, and private sources.
Allegra Stennett, co-founder and managing partner at New Majority Capital (NMC), noted that her organization also adopts the financing-plus-training approach but observed that in general “entrepreneurs of color may be over-mentored and under-funded.” NMC focuses on helping individuals acquire and operate established small businesses. This work is timely since there are thousands of Baby Boomers seeking to sell or close their businesses, a phenomenon called the “silver tsunami.” In addition to offering a 10-week accelerator (in nine cities across the country) that trains entrepreneurs to acquire a business—from valuation to how to find and structure a deal, negotiate with the seller, and more—NMC has a fund to provide capital to these entrepreneurs as well. All these efforts aim to advance NMC’s mission: to address the racial wealth gap in our lifetime.
Policy & Ecosystem Needs
Panelists flagged recent policy shifts as threats to small businesses and local economies. For example, starting March 1, green card–holders are no longer eligible to receive Small Business Administration loans, which presents a significant barrier to the capital access opportunities of immigrant entrepreneurs. Acheampong emphasized that we’re seeing the impact of capital constraints across multiple environments, whether venture capital firms, CDFIs, or even philanthropic organizations. Panelists called for the state and philanthropic sector to play a more significant role in providing patient, flexible capital support to stabilize and scale all types of mission-driven finance lenders. As Shagwert put it, aligning capital with mission and broadening investor participation through a variety of tools and arrangements can build durable community wealth at speed.
Stennett put it more bluntly: “Move money, period.” She urged more decisive action from capital providers to address current inequities, citing a recent McKinsey study calculating that, even holding White wealth constant, at the current rate of wealth-building for Black Americans, reaching parity would take centuries. The need is now.
From Watkins’ community-first charge and Brewster’s ecosystem data to the panel’s expertise on how to support small businesses, the throughline was clear: Patient, flexible capital paired with hands-on support is not just filling gaps—it’s building engines of inclusive prosperity. It is the obligation of the state, banking and finance institutions, and philanthropic sector alike to make sure these resources are available to the entrepreneurs who need it.