Allison Kelly is the the chief executive officer of ICA Fund Good Jobs, a business training organization and CDFI based in Oakland, California. Her work explicitly focuses on creating more opportunity for entrepreneurs of color.
At home she seizes the opportunity to explain why to her kids.
On Martin Luther King Day 2020, Kelly took her two children, seven- and nine years-old, to the African American Museum and Library in Oakland. They watched a documentary about the famed minister and civil rights leader, which left its mark.
“They felt sad, scared, and confused,” she said. “I told them there are still places in our world that have systemic racism and sexism built in [and] we had a very wide reaching conversation on humanity.”
It was around this time that she proposed a goal to her coworkers at ICA Fund Good Jobs. “I’m hopeful that on the 100th anniversary of the death of MLK there will be no work for our organization,” she said.
To date ICA Fund Good Jobs has worked with over 600 companies that employed 5,500 people and paid out $105 million in wages. They invest in high-potential businesses that are committed to paying good wages and treating employees fairly through benefits and other means.
Food manufacturers make up a significant chunk of their portfolio. Those businesses range from vegan meat makers to manufacturers of ghee, the clarified butter.
Despite a strong two decades in existence, Kelly said they were excited to join the Pathways to Patient Capital cohort to share their expertise and absorb the expertise of others. They’re also looking for more funders that are willing to invest in the ICA Fund Good Jobs model and its holistic approach to business training and investment.
“Like our entrepreneurs, who encounter obstacles to capital access on a daily basis, ICA also faces challenges to building a network of mission-aligned capital providers,” said Kelly. “Our main challenge is to identify capital providers that align with our mission and investment strategy to provide patient, equity-like capital and fill the gaps within the small business capital ecosystem.”
They’re also looking for support as they double down on their target of supporting women entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs of color. “We still aren’t seeing the outcomes we need in terms of equity in access to capital across racial, gender, geographic, and industry lines,” wrote Kelly, in a letter that opens up ICA Fund Good Jobs’ Impact Report 2019. “With an explicit focus of directing resources and capital to these communities, ICA is testing and measuring the outcomes this kind of work creates.”
With those principles in mind, they just might be on track towards creating a better investment environment by Martin Luther King Day 2068.
This case study was co-authored by Mark Foggin and Johnny Magdaleno and published in 2020 as part of the Urban Manufacturing Alliance’s “Forging Fairness: How community-based lenders are centering both inclusion and manufacturing to promote equity [link to report].” This report highlights the work of practitioners in UMA’s Pathways to Patient Capital cohort and how these leaders are helping entrepreneurs of color – including makers and manufacturers – access to the capital and know-how they need to realize their business ideas and plans at scale.