Fueling small business growth in the United States: Meet the Mastercard Strive USA Innovation Fund winners
This is the second article of two highlighting the winners of the Mastercard Strive Innovation Fund. The first blog introduced the global winners, while this article spotlights the Strive USA winners.
Innovation funds can serve as catalysts for transformative ideas. That’s why the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth launched the Mastercard Strive USA Innovation Fund in 2023 to find and support early-stage digital- and data-centric solutions with the potential to drive outsized impact for small businesses across the United States. This U.S.-focused fund builds on lessons learned from the global Strive innovation fund launched by Mastercard in 2022 to support small businesses operating in international markets.
With more than 100 applications from across the United States, we’re proud to announce the winners of the first-ever Strive USA Innovation Fund.
“The applications submitted spanned a broad range of ground-breaking products and services, which demonstrate promising ideas and innovations for the field,” said Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth Vice President of North America, Sandy Fernandez. “We believe the four selected grantees will grow and scale their unique data-driven solutions and transform the opportunity landscape for underserved small businesses and the institutions that serve them.”
The Strive USA Innovation Fund is providing nearly $1 million USD in grant funding to four change-making organizations focused on building, testing, and scaling creative solutions that drive small business growth and financial resilience. These four winners were selected because their impact-focused solutions were uniquely primed for long-term, sustainable impact — a key consideration of the selection process.
From climate-smart financial services support to AI-enabled equitable lending platforms, the Strive USA Innovation Fund will support the following cohort of organizations and leading-edge financial inclusion products:
California FarmLink | CDFI
California FarmLink is a Community Financial Development Institution (CDFI) focused on investing in the livelihoods and well-being of farmers, ranchers, and fishers who build and restore healthy communities and natural environments. In partnership with local Resource Conservation Districts (RCDs), FarmLink will pilot a program that integrates capital tools, digital solutions, and conservation measures to better support Latino small business farmers and promote social impact investment in climate-smart agriculture.
Aeris Insight | CDFI Ratings and Information Service
Aeris Insight accelerates the flow of capital to CDFIs, whose mission is to provide financial services to underserved small business and communities in the U.S.. This grant will help Aeris establish a data repository to support analysis of CDFI industry performance and create a performance baseline for new investment and liquidity tools that expand and diversify capital resources for CDFIs, with the potential to create industry-wide impact.
Scale Link & LoanWell | CDFI and Tech Platform
Scale Link and LoanWell are piloting a scalable solution — Regional SMB Loan Digital Marketplace — that will facilitate small business lending via a common interface with a network of participating CDFI lenders, for the purposes of loan applications, matching, reporting, and recapitalizing of loans by Scale Link.
Accessity | CDFI
Accessity opens the doors of financial opportunity for for primarily low-to-moderate income and diverse entrepreneurs through access to small business loans and a community of support and resources. Accessity’s SmartLend solution will utilize Accessity’s years of lending data and integration of AI-enabled tools to improve the organization’s ability to enhance the client experience with additional education and resources, evaluate a potential borrower’s repayment capacity through predictive analytics, and simplify and expedite the loan application and underwriting process.
