“None of us, I feel, are here for the paycheck,” said Jacquise Purifoy, speaking about her colleagues at the Build Institute in Detroit. “We really come here with a passion to serve, with a passion to make the lives of ordinary people better.”
It’s not luck that Purifoy, entrepreneur-in-residence at Build Institute, is surrounded by dedicated coworkers. She became a lawyer expressly to break down barriers and lift up neighbors. Build is doing that by providing underserved entrepreneurs with training and investment opportunities.
“I’m a native Detroiter, born and raised here, and a lot of my passion for serving people of color without access to resources is because I’ve been one,” she said. “I wanted to help people who looked like me.”
A transformative moment for Purifoy was when, as a teenage mom in college, she went to a state human services office in Detroit to see how she could qualify for more public assistance. The employee pulled out a chart and explained to Purifoy that the more children you have, the more assistance you can receive.
“I was like, ‘I couldn’t even study if I had more kids,’” said Purifoy. “This is the WIC program [the federal Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children] and it’s federally mandated. These laws are written in place to keep people poor.”
Working with Build is her way of pushing back against similarly systemic issues in the business field. They provide classes, Kiva loans, retail opportunities, and connections with local financiers and peer lenders to their entrepreneurs.
Build leads a handful of creative capital programs. Detroit SOUP, for example, is a micro-granting dinner that’s open to anyone from the neighborhood where it takes place to come and pitch their business or project idea to small funders. For a donation $5 attendees receive soup, salad, bread—and a vote. Attendees hear four presentations on topics ranging from art, urban agriculture, social justice, social entrepreneurs, education, technology, and more. Each presenter briefly shares their idea and answers questions from the audience who, ultimately, votes to donate the money raised to the project they think benefits the city the most. In the five years this grassroots event has been held, there have been 95 dinners in a dozen neighborhoods that have raised $85,000 for new creative projects.
Manufacturing is like a native language to Detroiters, but Purifoy says it’s time for them to start looking beyond their borders. That’s why they joined the Pathways to Patient Capital program.
“Over 2,000 alumni have come through our program, from bakers to jean makers to candle makers to t-shirt makers, all these different makers,” she said. “We know what [making and manufacturing] looks like in Detroit, but what does it look like nationally?”
This case study was co-authored by Mark Foggin and Johnny Magdaleno and originally 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 approaches these leaders are taking to help entrepreneurs of color–including makers and manufacturers–get access to the capital and know-how they need to realize their business ideas and plans at scale.