Comprehensive effort unlocks capital for small businesses in New Orleans

When you're a small business, you often don't have the cash-on-hand to compete with bigger, more capitlized companies. Often, the critiera to even bid on certain contracts or pull a permit will rule you out. 

That's what the BuildNOLA Mobilization Fund seeks to solve. By provided financing and technical assistance to Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBEs), it helped company's like Iam Tucker's ISLI Engineering to bid and secure contracts on public infrastructure projects in New Orleans.

Iam is an entreprenuer and a former police officer and is now the President and CEO of this company, a female and minority-owned civil engineering firm. She says, "We don't always have the same access to capital as everyone else. Start up costs are a serious thing."

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DBEs are historically considered to be higher risk from a lending perspective and face credit challenges, limiting their access to capital. When city contracts become available, these businesses rarely have the capital needed to compete for them. 

Enter the BuildNOLA Fund. It will strengthen disadvantaged businesses’ ability to bid and execute on a pipeline of public contracts, access roles as prime contractors and, over time, build wealth among these business owners and their employees. 

BuildNOLA began with an initial investment of $1.6 million provided, in part, by Living Cities. This was fully committed in loans to six African American-owned firms working on municipal projects throughout the city.

In 2018, NewCorp, a CDFI, began to assemble a second round of funding, aiming to build a $10 million pool for additional New Orleans-based, minority-owned and operated businesses to receive this kind of support. The Fund provides financing for small contractors that have the technical capacity to meet the requirements of public sector contracts but need cash to manage the unpredictable payment schedules of public sector work.

The BuildNOLA Fund will allow more DBEs to access the $3.3 billion anticipated to be spent on public infrastructure in New Orleans during the next seven years.