Program Update
Inner City Capital Connections
ICIC’s signature program, Inner City Capital Connections (ICCC), launched in 2005 with a founding grant from Bank of America to help small- and medium-sized businesses in under-resourced communities build capacity for sustainable long-term revenue growth, profitability, and local job creation.
ICCC’s has grown dramatically over the past 17 program years, with the 40-hour, “mini-MBA program” providing more than 5,800 small business owners with tuition-free capacity-building education, one-on-one coaching, and connections to capital and capital providers. More than 10% of those 5,800 small business owners have participated in multiple ICCC cohorts.
Impact to Date
Since 2005, the Inner City Capital Connections alumni have been making lasting contributions to the small business ecosystem and to their communities.
All alumni achievements (2005 – 2020)
Jobs created
Revenue growth
Total capital raised
2021 Impact Snapshot: Inner City Capital Connections
2021 was a year of transformational growth for ICCC as the program expanded into new cities and states, including Houston, New Jersey, and Northern Virginia, as well as a return to Detroit following an eight-year hiatus; and, we made our international debut with the launch of ICCC Canada. In total, ICCC offered 21 virtual cohorts in 2021 training 1,212 entrepreneurs across the U.S. and Canada. We are indebted to Kaiser Permanente which funded 12 of this year’s cohorts in whole or in part.
In addition to expanding the geographical reach of the program, we deepened the ICCC learning experience with the creation of a customized, self-paced digital learning platform to further engage and better equip our community of small business owners with resources, tools, and strategies for sustainable growth and resilience. The platform, which launched in Spring 2021, puts program lessons learned into practice through interactive online exercises, immersive case studies, and engaging discussion forums that create unique opportunities for networking and peer learning between participants.
Small business owners in under-resourced communities and neighborhoods have been impacted by the pandemic’s economic fallout and are in need of additional support to recover and emerge stronger. ICCC continues to provide local entrepreneurs with relevant programming, actionable strategies, and access to resources that help address their evolving challenges and critical needs.
Read more about the impact of Inner City Capital Connections »
Snapshot of 2021 ICCC Participants
Number of businesses served
BIPOC-owned Businesses
Woman-owned Businesses
Average revenues
Average age of businesses (in years)
Average number of full time employees
Alumni Spotlight
“While my tenure with ICCC has been brief, I feel as though I am now part of a family – a caring and concerned community. As the global economic future remains influx and each day often brings about more questions than answers, I feel beyond privileged to call myself an ICCC alumni and I feel more confident than ever that I am on a path to phenomenal success.”
Barry Love
Virtual Concierge Solutions LLC
Atlanta, Georgia
“I realized that most business owners started their own small business not because they planned it from the very beginning and went to an MBA program. It’s because we have a talent, service, or product that we want to offer. We just went into opening our small business without really having a full strategy that people with MBAs have gone through. This [ICCC] program … it’s an MBA on steroids. I am so glad I took the time to do it.”
Jhoiey Ramirez
Studio Jhoiey, Inc.
West Hollywood, California