Building an entrepreneurial ecosystem throughout the Shenandoah Valley
By ANN RILEY HUBER on DECEMBER 13, 2023
(Lexington, Va.) – The Walker Program, a Rockbridge area community business initiative, jumps leaps and bounds over their initial startup goal after launching in August 2020.
With the initiative of addressing racial inequality in the local economy, the Walker Program set an opening goal of establishing four to six successful, entrepreneurial start-ups in the greater Rockbridge area by December 2021. They have now opened 19 local businesses with 7 more coming soon.
Gabrielle Cash, current program coordinator and graduate of the program, says there has been chatter of revamping this pilot goal, but the importance of revitalizing the economy with people of color remains at the forefront of their mission.
Many families of color left town in the 1960s after desegregation due to the thinning out of the middle class.
Cash said, “a lot of folks moved away and with that took their businesses.”
By the 1990s there were only three black-owned businesses in Lexington, including a pharmacy and two barbershops, according to the program’s “Small Town Economic Revitalization & Racial Justice Guide.”
By 2020, there were zero black business owners in Downtown Lexington, the guide says.
This shocking statistic was not the only spark for the creation of the local entrepreneurship program. Recent events including the murder of George Floyd and increased, obvious pain in the community contributed highly to this realization that change was necessary, Cash said.
With the help of the Shenandoah Community Capital Fund the Walker Program was up and running by August 2020 under the basis that business diversity would allow for new people, new thoughts, and new ideas to thrive.
Much like the Walker Program, the Shenandoah Community Capital Fund (SCCF) is an entrepreneurial support organization in the Shenandoah Valley. They help to provide funding, resources, and a community to build an ecosystem for local entrepreneurs.
Anika Horn, the director of ecosystem building at SCCF, said they make sure that entrepreneurial support organizations like the Walker Program talk to each other to build a sense of belonging in the community within the valley.
“We try to break down barriers between those organizations so that entrepreneurs can freely move and that the information, the talent, the resources that entrepreneurs need, are accessible in a more equitable fashion among different organizations,” she said.
Horn said that for the Walker Program this meant an initial grant for start-up funding.
She said that the grant program, called the Community Navigator Pilot Program, was a two-year program financed by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). This program built a “consortium,” or hybrid-spoke model, which means the SCCF as the hub had different spokes throughout the Shenandoah Valley. These counterparts working with the SCCF were efforts to support and encourage women and/or black and brown entrepreneurs throughout the valley.
“The Walker Program was one of those partner organizations. So for two years we were able to fund their activities through this grant that we got from the government, and worked closely with Gabrielle Cash who was program manager at the walker program at the program in general, to help them build their capacity and support them in supporting the entrepreneurs that they were working with in the area,” Horn said.
She said initial grant for the program was the biggest way they could aid the Walker Program in carrying out their mission. Providing funding allowed them to hire a part-time program manager and begin advisory and trainings (what they call “technical assistance”) in the early stages.
As the grant wrapped up in November of 2023, the SCCF now sees themselves as more of an entrepreneurial support and ecosystem building organization, much like the Walker Program is for standing businesses in the Rockbridge area, Horn said. They will continue to support the Walker Program as best they can non-monetarily through regular check-ins.
Horn said she visits the Walker Program once a month to meet with program coordinators and entrepreneurs.
Check ins typically include chatter about what they are working on, what lies ahead, and what roadblocks they have faced. Following these questions comes a determination of how the SCCF can best support them in overcoming the challenges any entrepreneur may face.
“I’m luckily often in a position to make introductions and referrals and pull the right resources together that then cater to the needs of entrepreneurs down in that area,” she said.
Horn said just because the money runs out does not mean the collaboration between the Walker Program and SCCF is cut off. Like the Walker Program, she said they are doubling down on building relationships and figuring out ways to continue to support the underserved entrepreneurs throughout the valley.