Entrepreneur support organizations (ESOs) experience many of the same challenges faced by Kansas City’s diverse small business community that stifle their effectiveness. This includes staffing and resource constraints, lack of business education and practical experience, and fragmented systems of support. Without addressing these structural and systemic constraints, enabling equitable and inclusive small business growth will remain an unattainable goal.  

Our approach is to design and implement a city led resource partner enhancement residency program that will provide systemic enhancements to a selected group of local BIPOC led non-profit organizations arising from network research and development (R&D) that informs organizational capacity building, process improvement, systems integration, and offerings development activities.

The program will also enable referral partner development and alignment with our state, local and federal regulatory requirements (i.e. business license, permits, certifications) and support delivered through the municipal/city partner and other participating government agencies.