Rende Progress Capital

Rende Progress Capital RPC has continued in its mission and impact in providing two core services in FY 2024 of 1 small business lending and 2 free business Technical Assistance TA to diverse entrepreneurs in our primary market of Kent County as well as expansion of services in Kalamazoo, Muskegon, and Holland. In addition, RPC has grown in resources and work focused within portfolio management. The aforementioned core services and activities portfolio management, strategic management, fiscal management, and loan servicing with customers related to core functions contributed to additional microloan deals to eight new loan customers. Those new additional loans led to RPC achieving its $1 million plus historical-to-current deployment of loans to diverse entrepreneurs in businesses such as technology our first double digit revenue earning software company in Ada, MI and first diverse-owned franchise business Kalamazoo.

Technical Assistance: FY 2024 TA, upon the hiring of our Manager for Business Engagement and Cultivation, continued our new TA strategy to focus our TA more on pre-loan readiness to select non-customers while providing TA to customers. To that end, in Q2, RPC served our first FY 2024 six-week pre-loan readiness incubator cohort of five selected Excluded Entrepreneur of Color non-customers on July 6. 2024, along with individual TA to our customers. These activites produced the following impact and output to forty-one business owners of color: 41 businesses - 34 businesses of color in group and individual TA including the 5 new selected non-RPC customer business participating in the Q3 Pre-Loan Readiness Program that started on Thursday, October 10, 2024. Gender: 58.3% Female 99% Women of Color Businesses abd 41.6% Male 99% Men of Color Businesses.