Grants and Loans for Small Rural Businesses

Resource Document

Learning Lessons
By the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Prepare your organization or business to pursue funding opportunities.

• Differentiate between grants, loans, and other public or nonprofit-specific options.

• Understand the role of banks, CDFIs, and other financial partners.

• Evaluate funding options to determine what’s best for your project or organization.

• Explore how local governments and communities can create their own grant or revolving loan funds.

• Access resources to continue building your funding capacity.

Speaker Bios

Jessi Burg

• Jessi Burg knows that community support is vital for successful business owners. She launched her first business, a landscaping company, by spending her evenings researching in the public library and enrolling in a business boot camp for low income entrepreneurs. As the business grew, she joined networking and industry groups, with a focus on learning additional skills from more experienced entrepreneurs. With her current company, Outgrow Your Garage, Jessi focuses on using these skills to support business communities across the United States. By working with public institutions, local governments, non-profits, lending institutions and more, she is helping to create a more equitable economy and stronger communities in rural and urban areas. Jessi lives in western Colorado and spends her free time working on her small farm with her spouse and dog.

Karen Wainscott

• Karen Waincott’s consulting firm, Community Centric Development, provides services to individual organizations, private public partnerships, and government entities focused on education. They do strategic and development planning facilitation and are a full cycle grant management service from research to reporting. Her background is working in state government and also as a freelance grant writer for counties and towns, but mostly rural communities.