Reflections on 2022
It’s been quite a year. After two years of adjusting and adapting to the “new disorder”, our team and our partners were tasked with stepping up to do big things in 2022. It has simultaneously been an honor and a challenge to tackle systemic issues while the world continues to serve up chaos. We’ve learned a lot along the way. Reflecting on this year’s journey, there are three undeniable truths that stand out. Lessons we feel in our bones, and will continue to live out in 2023 and beyond.
Small Business Is Big
The Impact Hub team has loved entrepreneurs, innovators, doers, and dreamers for our entire existence. They are the center of our world, and the engine of hope, vision, and progress for our city. In 2022, we deepened our appreciation for a certain profile of entrepreneur who humbly shows up to anchor our communities and neighborhoods every single day–the small business owner. More specifically, we doubled down on microbusiness owners–businesses who employ 10 people or less.
Microbusinesses get overlooked when it comes to most economic development strategies. They can be difficult to measure. And when you look at them one by one, they appear to be very small shops that come and go with time. They often fly under the radar in formal business metrics, they rarely borrow capital from banks, and at the outset they may not sustain a full-time gig for one person.
When you take the time to look at microbusinesses in aggregate, the picture changes. Baltimore City is home to over 36,000 microbusinesses. They operate out of storefronts, warehouses, makerspaces, coworking communities, and living rooms. For each entrepreneur who starts a microbusiness, they create two more jobs on top of their own–generating over 100,000 jobs for our economy. As they grow, they generate wealth not only for their owner, but for their employees and their communities. Increasing the volume of microbusiness in a community measurably reduces unemployment rates and increases median household incomes. The vast majority get started with less than $5,000, and 83% never access outside capital over the lifetime of their business.
This data points to huge potential. With relatively little upfront investment, Baltimore can spur job growth, generate civic wealth, and develop vital community assets by backing our city’s small and microbusiness owners. And in 2022, the city made some progress in that direction.
Impact Hub has stepped into this sphere as a skill builder, storyteller, and systems advocate. We partnered with The Medicine Show to share our love for neighborhoods and the small business community at our Empower Launch event. We shared resources and information at the GoDaddy Open event, and our Small Business Mini Summit. We shared vital lessons and insights with stakeholders at the Baltimore Together Summit, Mighty Dream Forum, and Mission Investors Exchange conference. And we were thrilled to be featured in the Made In America docuseries that shared the trials and triumphs of Baltimore small business owners.
This year, we became an unapologetic advocate for Baltimore’s small business community. Don’t let their size fool you. The potential for small business to revitalize our city from the ground up is huge.
Networks Work
Anyone who has lived in Baltimore for some time will tell you this is a relationship town. “Smalltimore”, we say. And for people who are connected to opportunity and resources, this small town feeling can make it easier to get things done. Tragically, decades of segregation and disinvestment have left hundreds of thousands of residents outside of resourced circles and locked out of opportunity–often along lines of race and class. To shift those patterns takes the same level of intentionality as it took to create these divisions in the first place, or perhaps more. It takes time and care to rebuild trust with people who have been harmed and neglected by the systems that are supposed to help. And it takes a clear-eyed view of power and equity to shift the status quo. In order for this city to live up to its full potential, it is vital to bring all of its talent, perspective, and drive to the table.
These beliefs have been core to Impact Hub’s model from the outset. Our team has been organizing for a decade to build relationships between diverse, visionary, and committed people in order to drive change. Before we had a space, we had a network. Before we had grants or logos or contracts, we brought people together to build a common understanding of where we stand and where we need to go. And ten years later, we have been thrilled to see those investments in people and relationships perform in ways that grow real opportunity, distribute real dollars, and solidify real collaboration.
In 2022, we have been core contributors to the Baltimore BASE Network. This network has deployed $8.5M in small business grants in less than 12 months with tremendous coordination by the Baltimore Development Corporation. Grants have supported over 470 small businesses across the city. In our first round of funding, our grantees were 88% BIPOC business owners and 78% women business owners. In our second round, over 90% of grantees are BIPOC & women. These are outcomes we rarely see from top-down or government-led initiatives, due to issues of reach and trust. The BASE Network wisely pairs the strengths of the public sector with the unique strengths of 15 diverse partners who lend their reach, trust, time, and expertise to deliver these results. Our partnership is made up of neighborhood groups, business networks, incubator programs, and community lenders (CDFIs) with an explicit focus on equity. We meet weekly to intentionally deploy capital to businesses who have often never had outside investment. This initiative is systems change in real time.
This year, we also built a powerful network of partnerships around the Empower program with GoDaddy. The partnership opportunity came directly to Impact Hub Baltimore through our global network–building on the success and reputation of Impact Hub teams in London and Munich. To reach our audacious goals, we knew we could not go it alone. We assembled a Program Committee of 18 partners to help us with program design, awareness, outreach, referrals, and application reviews. They expanded our reach into neighborhoods and networks that Impact Hub never touched before, and lent their relationships to open doors to vital training and resources for the businesses they love. And the 140 microbusinesses who participated in the Empower program became a tight knit community who lent support to each other to level up and perform in new ways. They carried each other’s products, organized vending opportunities, collaborated on product development, and lent an honest and sympathetic ear to their peers as everyone expanded their digital skills and reach.
Networks are kind of magical. They can become conduits for incredible things to happen. They help people to accomplish things that would otherwise be impossible on their own. Once you organize people around a common set of goals, values, and mindsets, they will begin to move together. This year proved that investing in diverse networks drives new possibilities and can shift systems for good.
Community Is Strength
Being surrounded by smart, committed, creative people is a true privilege of this work. To be immersed in a sense of possibility feels energizing in any time or place. Over the past few years, it has been a vital shield against the storm. An incredible feature of working alongside social entrepreneurs is that we clearly see the flaws and failures of the systems around us, and yet we show up every day to try to build something different. It’s a bold endeavor, and can be tough if you try to go it alone.
Our small team at Impact Hub has gone through many iterations over the years. Each composition of the team brings different talents and ideas to the community we support and serve. We consistently lead this work with only 5 or 6 people on the core team, and accomplish big, bold things that none of us could do on our own. The secret to our success is community. We draw inspiration, skill, and capacity from people all around us–our members, funders, partners, advisors, and supporters.
In 2022, we are still operating because longtime members have stayed in our corner and we’ve stayed in theirs. We are serving more people because our partners, funders, and supporters show up and help us to drive results. We are continuing to evolve because our stakeholders share their needs, their experiences, and their ideas with us when we reach decision points and lean on them for direction. And we manage to sustain those vital relationships because we give back, double down, open doors, take chances, and share credit and resources with the people who consistently show up for our team and for the community we serve. Over 50 outside partners made significant contributions to our work this year. We strive to be sure they get just as much as they give. And we know that we are collectively tackling forces much bigger than any of us could address as individual people or organizations. Community is not just a set of people who make you smile when they walk into the room. It’s also a set of people you rely on and lock arms with to build resilience, beauty, and joy.
A huge lesson of this year is that to truly break our old patterns and forge new ones, we need each other. Outside forces that try to divide us or wear us down will be weakened as we learn to build common understanding, common vision, and a common strategy. Our greatest assets are not just inside of us, but between us–in the spaces of imagination and motivation we create together.
To all of you who have been part of this community in 2022 and beyond, thank you. This city is a stronger place because of how you all show up. Wishing you all space to rest, reflect, and recharge, so that we can continue to move forward in the new year.
Acknowledgements:
There are so many people who have made our work possible this year–our team, funders, partners, members, neighbors, collaborators, followers, and supporters all play a huge part of our work. If you spoke on a panel, led a class, joined a call, reviewed applications, planned an event, gave us advice, paid for space, wrote a check, signed a contract, or lent your time, talent, and energy in any way to Impact Hub and its community…thank you.
Key contributors in 2022 include: Q Ragsdale, Eric Lin, Bakari Jones, Genae Butler, Nacoya Villegas, My-Azia Johnson, Gab Sussman, Aliya Muhammad, Jade Harris, Velesha Louise, Saba Saunders, Jane Slaughter, Ben Seigel, Rebecca Ewing, Paul Taylor, Colin Tarbert, Ajamu White, Nicholas Mitchel, Chris Landrum, Saba Hamidi, Golshan Javadian, Arturo Osario, Nicholas Fletcher, Emily Wheeler, Ebony L, Stacy Cline, Matt Gallagher, Jan Rivitz, John Brothers, Sabrina Thornton, Kerry McHugh, James Wahls, Erika Davies, Wally Pinkard, Mary-Ann Pinkard, Barbara Shapiro, Petr Skvaril, Grace Rodriguez, Michelle Avalos, Pres Adams, Rodney Foxworth, Jay Nwachu, Maggie Villegas, Andy Cook, Will Holman, April Lewis, Dan Stokes, Kaetlyn Bernal, Jennifer Clark, Brion Gill, Cydni Stewart, Shawn Gunaratne, Christa Daring, Kate Khatib, Amanda Smit-Peters, Sharayna Christmas, Jas Turk, Charlyn Nater, Jason Hardebeck, Jamie McDonald, Jamye Wooten, Nichole Sullivan, Todd Sheridan, Kila Johnson, Brandi Mebane, Jill Fannon, Tatiana Mullin, Shalita O’Neale, Parag Khandhar, Dorcas Gilmore, Michelle Antoinette Nelson, Susan Clayton, Tyron Harper, April Harper, Mariah Philips, Simone Philips, Charlotte James, Ore Oladuni, Peter Yeargin, Hilary Cottam, Sophie Harris, Jaz Erenberg, Curtis Wilson, Keisha Reed, Elyse Robinson, Leah Abrams, Casey McKeel, Travis Hamburg, Tara Huffman, and all of our members, program participants, and friends.
