When COVID-19 hit the Bronx, NY, a longtime LISC partner, Mosholu Preservation Corp. (MPC), leveraged its hard-won role as a trusted community resource to help small businesses survive lockdown. Now, with support from LISC and MetLife Foundation, MPC is providing the technical assistance and financial resources entrepreneurs need to move on from a year-plus of restrictions and prepare for the challenges that lie ahead.
In small business development, as in life, trusted partners are essential. But trust takes time to build, and when Mosholu Preservation Corporation (MPC), a longtime affordable housing developer in the Bronx, began offering support services to small businesses, local entrepreneurs were skeptical.
“I remember when I first started at MPC, business owners looked at me with a side eye, ‘Who are you? What are you going to do?’” says Jennifer Tausig, director of Community & Economic Development at the 40-year-old nonprofit founded by Montefiore Health System, an anchor institution in the Bronx. MPC’s mission is to help make the neighborhoods around Montefiore’s campuses cleaner, safer and more vibrant for local residents, its workforce and its patients.
For decades, MPC had focused on affordable housing and neighborhood beautification, but in recent years began thinking about the critical role robust businesses play in the economic and social health of a community. MPC now concentrates this work in three commercial corridors around Montefiore’s Moses and Wakefield campuses.
“We call them ‘convenience corridors’ because they offer goods and services to support the people who live, work, and play in area,” says Tausig. “There are a lot of hair and nail salons, bodegas, hardware stores, pharmacies, and a few sit-down restaurants, but mostly takeout places.”
MPC typically works with microbusinesses with fewer than 10 employees. They are mostly immigrant-, minority- and women-owned businesses. “We focus on businesses that are harder to reach, that are left behind,” says Tausig.
Tausig learned quickly that MPC had to nurture alliances with these businesses in order to be an effective bridge to the resources and support available to them. “We’ve spent the last five years or so really building our relationship capital because there’s a natural mistrust of government and outsiders,” she says.
MPC did this by talking to small business owners about their needs and aspirations, identifying specific ways they could help, and delivering on what they said they would do. These, says Tausig, are the smaller wins that give MPC credibility. Examples include relocating a trash can that attracted rats to a storefront, helping a business fight a City fine for having an outdoor display too far out on the sidewalk, and providing legal help to negotiate with a landlord.
“It’s the small things that matter,” says Tausig. “Meeting businesses where they are and responding to their immediate needs.”
When COVID-19 first hit last year, MPC was able to leverage the confidence they had developed to become a go-to resource for small businesses during a scary and uncertain time.
“Communications was a huge piece of the early COVID response,” says Daniela Beasley, manager of Small Business Support at MPC. “We saw a 65% increase in traffic on our website the first two months of COVID. We posted info about any resources we could find. We also kept people informed about the COVID rules and regulations because they were changing daily.”
While a few businesses on the MPC-supported corridors were deemed essential and allowed to stay open, many had to shut down, with nail and hair salons especially hard hit. MPC knew these closures would be devastating to their owners and staff, and quickly responded by helping some to apply to open as essential businesses, when feasible. (One beauty supply store was able to qualify when they added hand sanitizer and masks to their inventory.)
MPC also assisted business owners to navigate social distancing protocols. The group worked with a local architecture collaborative to help businesses retrofit their interiors and post signage about standing six feet apart and wearing masks.
“We tried to make sure businesses had all the info and tools they needed to be open as best they could,” says Beasley.
As efforts moved from relief to recovery, MPC knew it was time for bigger wins. Small businesses needed access to capital, specifically grants, because they could not afford to take on additional debt. LISC and its funding partner MetLife Foundation stepped up to help MPC provide these grant resources, which further cemented trust with the businesses they serve.
“Businesses were applying for so many different grants just absolutely blind and they’d either not hear back or get rejected,” says Beasley. “When they applied for the LISC grants through us and got the money they needed, that was just integral to keeping our relationships with the businesses strong.”
When awarding the $2,500 grants to a dozen businesses, MPC prioritized businesses that would use the grants for a specific bill they had to pay or for a specific action they wanted to take.
“This money would help push them over the line a little more in their fight to recover and rebuild,” says Beasley.
At the outset of the pandemic, for instance, the owners of Mother’s Deli Grocery wanted to make sure they took care of their loyal customer base, comprised mostly of seniors and other at-risk people reluctant to leave home during a pandemic. Because they did not have much fresh inventory due to high costs, the store’s management started a service to purchase and deliver groceries from a large grocery store nearby. With the grant from LISC and MetLife Foundation, Mother’s will fine-tune its efforts to serve their regular customers by continuing the new service but also adding more fresh produce to its own store.
“That’s a good example of a program that the business owners were already building, and this funding really helped them take that extra step,” says Beasley.
Of course, there are still hurdles for MPC’s small business partners to overcome.
“I’m concerned about what’s going to happen when the state lifts the eviction moratorium on commercial leases,” says Tausig. “Even before COVID, a lot of businesses were just getting by and having to pay back rent will be crushing.”
The LISC and MetLife Foundation support is making it possible for MPC to offer technical assistance to help businesses set themselves up so they can survive when the moratorium is lifted.
“Many people are looking towards the future saying, ‘Yeah, now I’m getting customers again but there’s no way to make up the amount of back rent or utility bills I haven’t paid,’” says Beasley. “Our focus right now is making sure businesses have their financial books in order, they understand grant application processes, and they build out e-commerce functions where it make sense.”
Unwanted changes like these can be a hard pill to swallow.
Says Tausig, “Businesses that have been operating for a long time often say, ‘We do what we do the way we do it, and it’s fine.’ That’s been the mentality but I think this crisis really helped change some minds. More people are saying, ‘OK, you’re right. I do need some help with my online presence or thinking about my finances and business planning in a more thoughtful way.’”
The trust it has built with small businesses will anchor MPC’s work going forward.
“We always say that our relationship capital is one of the most valuable assets we have,” says Tausig.