Entrepreneurship

April 5, 2022

  As part of our strategic plan learning agenda in entrepreneurship, Coleman co-hosted a virtual workshop for Business SupportOrganizations (BSOs) in February with the Fund for Equitable Business Growth (the Fund). The Fund, a collaboration between the Chicago Community Trust and several Chicago foundations including Coleman, is committed to building a more just, equitable and resilient society by creating a marketplace of services for entrepreneurs of color in the Chicago region. The workshop was attended by...

November 30, 2021

Clark McCain, Senior Program Officer reflects on The Coleman Foundation’s pivot to support entrepreneurship education in Chicago’s low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, and its strategy to grow a support network for them. Decades of support for entrepreneurship education and lessons learned from the UrbanMain pilot program shape the program....

June 4, 2021

Coleman Foundation funds community-based business support organizations to provide financial literacy training, but many entrepreneurs still don’t know they need it. A significant number of business owners in low and moderate-income neighborhoods were not able to access capital or apply for PPP loans. Learn more about what grantees are doing to address this financial literacy knowledge gap....

March 10, 2021

A recent report from DePaul University's Coleman Entrepreneurship Center connects the Coleman Foundation's past and future efforts and sets the course for new directions. After making a critical contribution to establishing the field of entrepreneurship in higher education across the nation for forty years, the Foundation began to shift our focus closer to our Chicago home in 2017. We believe that what we've learned about improving entrepreneurship education at the university level can be deeply...

December 20, 2020

Funding in partnership with the Chicago Community Trust and others, we share news of the Fund for Equitable Business Growth’s 14 recent awards to create a marketplace of services for entrepreneurs of color in the Chicago region. The Fund's vision is to close the racial and ethnic wealth gap and build a more just, equitable and resilient society. The Fund's BSO Collective Impact Initiative aims to support partnerships that are preparing entrepreneurs of color to...

September 16, 2020

More than 3,000 Chicago-area workers who serve individuals with disabilities will receive a special gift of appreciation this week—and those gifts provided a financial boost for six local small businesses; five of which are female- or minority-owned. Chicago-based Coleman Foundation donated $50,000 to a network of nonprofit agencies, Intersect for Ability. In turn,the agencies bought products from these businesses to celebrate Direct Support Professionals Recognition Week. The businesses include Chocolate Inspirations, a mother-daughter team who makes...

October 1, 2019

On October 1, 2019, The Coleman Foundation joined Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and a group of six Chicago banks and three fellow grantmaking organizations to announce its recent support for the Entrepreneurs of Color Fund. The new investments bring the total funding committed to the Entrepreneurs of Color Fund to over $9 million to support minority entrepreneurs on Chicago’s South and West sides....