By: Amy Rencher, SWOT City Director
We are kicking off 2020 with gratitude and thanking YOU, our program alumni, for your support!
As a nonprofit organization, TechTown seeks funding from philanthropic and corporate partners as well as individuals to continue our work with entrepreneurs like you. This generous support from funders is sustained in part through regular grant reporting, which serves as evidence of our impact in Detroit. This often means that we ask for information through the completion of online surveys such as an increase or decrease in revenue, loans or grant funding acquired and the number of employees retained or newly hired. Please consider this blog a heartfelt thank you for the effort you’ve taken in helping us share your tremendous stories of growth and for providing honest feedback about obstacles you’ve faced as an entrepreneur and ideas about how we can improve TechTown’s work in Detroit.
Many of you took the time to complete the Inner City Capital Connections (ICIC) survey last year. This is one of the more in-depth surveys that clients and alumni are asked to complete, so thank you again. ICIC is a national research and advisory practice that is engaged by many leading corporate and philanthropic entities to help measure the impact of their financial support. As a JP Morgan Chase Small Business Forward grantee, TechTown’s work is reviewed annually by ICIC along with 21 other nonprofit organizations who serve people of color and women and veteran-owned small businesses across the U.S.
ICIC publishes this data in aggregate, by city, to help determine national trends annually. You can find the 2019 report here. We are proud to share that TechTown has again been recognized as an entrepreneurial support organization (ESO) which exemplifies innovative models for driving small business growth through its SWOT City and Retail Boot Camp programs.
Finally, a word about data. In this day and age, it is important to be cautious of how you share personal and business information. TechTown will never share your individual business data. For general grant reporting purposes, data is shared in aggregate (by group) unless we ask for your permission to share more individual details (such as a testimonial on behalf of the organization). The ICIC reporting is one of a few circumstances in which aggregate data is shared publically as part of a multi-year national research campaign on urban small business growth and the challenges that underrepresented entrepreneurs face across the nation.
