Hi, everyone. Thanks for making it. It is February 11, 2026. And this is the meeting of the Bloomington
Urban Enterprise Association. We do have quorum. And yeah, go for it, Heather. Hi, welcome, everyone.
Thanks for being here today. We will start with roll call. Kate, you want to kick us off with roll call, please?
Hey, Rosa Barger. How are you? Felisa. Hi, Felisa Spinelli. Michael Hoever. Brad Whistler. Heather Robinson.
B-U-E-A. Teagan Garner. Little louder. Teagan Garner. Say staff. Staff. Sorry. Did you know it's OK?
We didn't give you the two first notes on that one. Two first time. D. Del Rosa, staff.
Jane Coopersmith, BUBA. And then we have Emma Yoder, CBFI-friendly. And Brad? Brad. I'm Brad McConnell
from LICB Business. Great. Is it too of a form if I step out for a call? I'm sorry. There's an urgent
item. If not, that's OK. I'll just call them later. Sorry. There was an emergency. Sorry. Sorry. Once
we get through the minutes, then yeah. OK.
12 minutes. All right. December minutes. Did anyone have any questions, comments, corrections to the
minutes? Bless you. If I'm hearing nothing, I will ask for an approval and we will need to do a roll
call on that as well since we have folks online. So again, Kate, do you want to lead us off?
Kate Rothenberger, yes.
Melissa Spivali, yes. Michael Hover, yes. Brad Whistler, abstain. I wasn't here for that meeting, so
I can't tell you. You were. It was December. Oh, this was December. It was the budget approval. Yes,
yes. Heather Robinson. Yes. OK. Heather Robinson, yes. Jane Goober says yes. All right. And it's approved.
Oh, is it really approved?
You can't talk about business if you don't have a quorum. It's okay. Thank you for trying to accommodate.
A lot of things going on today. Director's report.
Some general updates. Working on the loan conversion program right now. We do have six applicants. I'm
slowly working through redacting information to get it to our little advisory committee. So still working
on that. We do have a BUBA board calendar. I have worked that out and it is in the online pack and I'm
sorry I did not get
copies of it to you. But my general question is whether you would like a living calendar, and you don't
have to decide now, or just like a static spreadsheet that I can get to all of you. So just think about
what works best for you all and I'll make that happen. And I can accommodate each of you individually,
however you'd like to do that.
So in progress, we have some changes to the consultant RFQ that is on the calendar today for me to present
or at least share. We've changed that up a little bit because I would like to introduce Tegan Gardner.
She is my O'Neill fellow for the rest of this year, next.
Highly capable and has been absolutely wonderful and helping me getting bored documents organized. Just
helping me get myself together. So it looks like we don't actually need necessarily the position that
we agreed upon in the budget. However,
I will probably need assistance with the marketing aspect that we've talked about many times. So because
it is in the budget, I will be asking the board to approve a change to that budget line for a marketing
assistant since we do have the administrative assistant covered. And the hope is that you'll mark you'll
focus on marketing since you've determined you don't have an operations administrative need. Yes.
will grow grant participation and will grow, hopefully, revenue through? Absolutely. Yeah, I think that
having someone who can help me constantly get the word out about these grants and scholarships,
because A, spending the money is what this is kind of about, and B, getting people to see what we do
so that they will be more willing to participate as far as our EZ program would be absolutely lovely.
What else is in progress? We're working on ease of reminders and invoices. Hopefully we'll be sending
them at the beginning of March. We'll say it's the second week of March. Those are a little bit harder
to get together sometimes. But what we do with that, if you're not familiar, actually I'll just say
it because
You might not know of Dagen. How we get our revenue is through the enterprise zone investment deduction
program. Certain businesses participate within the zone and it works sort of like a tax payment where
they get an 80% discount and we get the other 20% to make like grants and scholarships and that's how
we're funding. We send out communications and correspondence to remind people that this is coming up.
It's very much courtesy.
to do that, but we get response from it and we'd like to get that revenue so we can continue to do the
work that we do. Additionally, I have mentioned many times that we have a very tight quorum now that
Mary's term is up and Phil has resigned and we've also always had a resonant
seat open. Please, if you have any recommendations, please have people apply. They do need to be residents
within the zone. So we are looking, as far as the council appointments, they need to be of two different
political parties. It doesn't matter what the political parties are, but each resident has to be from
a different political party.
Then we also have, I'm also working on a downtown action plan. It's still in its draft phase. It's with
the consultant right now. This is a project to revitalize the downtown through programming
and not necessarily infrastructure.
So a lot of business involvement, community involvement. So we're working on a draft of this with Downtown
Bloomington, Inc. The consultant that we are working with is Downtown Strategies, which is a part of
Retail Strategies, who helped us implement a small business technical assistance program. It's all online.
So people and residents have been utilizing that, and it's
It's been really great. And I've taken the course and it's fantastic. So if you're interested, I am
happy to talk to you about it. We have that service for free to all residents of the city of Bloomington
until August of 2026. So they've helped us with this action plan. They do this in several different
cities. They've done this with all sorts of college towns. And so it's very robust.
There are some things that are very, very bite-sized for the community. There are things that are much
larger that are policy changes that could really help revitalize the downtown. So once that final version
is available and presented by DBI, I would like to give a presentation to the BUEA because I think that
this organization could do a lot of really great work within that plan.
Other than that, unfortunately, we will not have a financial report today. There were some transactions
that need to be finalized and Cheryl is under the weather, so we will not be having that. We were going
to push that to March.
Does anyone have any questions about anything before I ask the board, once again, to vote on changing
the budget? Yeah, just to back up a little bit. I know we did a roll call on minutes, but didn't you
need an approval before? Oh, sorry. Oh, do we? Sorry. Did I not get a first? I motion to approve.
Thank you. Sorry. We need a second. Second. OK.
great. We had the roll call. May the minutes reflect the first and the second on that. Sorry, amount
of practice. We didn't meet last one. Yeah, we are a little rusty coming back. I did have a question
on, well, actually, let me back up as well. One quick thing. I know Mary Morgan
her term ended, and so she's decided not to continue on the BUAA board. And she's not with us today.
And since we didn't get to meet last month, which would have been her last meeting, I just want for
the minutes to acknowledge Mary and the work that she's done on the committee and just to thank her
publicly for her time and all of the work that she
she has done for the BUBA and we wish her well and hope to see her again in other capacities. So just
a thanks to Mary noted for the minutes. That does actually bring up one more item that I forgot to add.
Mary was the secretary of this board. We will need to elect a new secretary. However, I would like to
wait until we have the additional
board members before we do that. I think that we can probably go at least one meeting without that happening.
Okay. But, um, regardless by April, we will have to probably make a decision on that. Okay. That seems
good. Yeah. Um, and then I do have a question. I know you're looking for an approval to change the budget. So the,
The budget for the admin originally was $25,000. Am I remembering that correctly? OK. And I see you
have the draft in here for what you're seeking for either a marketing assistant or potentially contracted
services. Is that fair to say? That's within the realm of reason, for sure. OK. And so I wonder, does
it make sense for us to,
approve the change today, which I mean, the money essentially is already allocated, you know, through
the budget, because you don't know exactly what you might end up like as you cast the net, so to speak,
which may be, you know, a person who does marketing out of their home, it might be, you know, a local
firm that does some work. And so depending on what
that result is it may change the need. So I don't know. I'm not trying to hamstring you. I'm just asking
the question. So if you come up with a firm who can do this work for you, but they say, oh, hey, this
is going to be $35,000 to do that, but we can do all of this and more potentially, do we want to then
have to come back to
to maybe make another adjustment. That's my only thoughts. I see what you're saying. So would it be
better to have Dee move through the RFP process and then come back to affirm? Yes, once she's identified.
Because I understand this isn't going to be a city employee, correct? Correct. So that to me then makes
it a little bit uncertain as to what you might
you know, find in the resources you need. So really I want to just offer the flexibility to seek out
what's needed versus. I'm happy to go through the RFP process and then come back to the board with what
may be the max goal. I know that within the RFP sometimes, I think sometimes I have to state what my
cap is or something to that effect.
Or is that old procurement process? I'm not... Let's talk to the controller's office about what has
to be indicated. I've only done a couple of them so... If you have to indicate a number, just it will
indicate the budget number that was approved. Okay, for sure. Okay. All right. Just offering that, is
that helpful? I guess that's... Yeah, I actually hadn't really thought of it that way, but yes, I think
that that would probably be helpful instead of having to do two motions. Okay.
So changing it and then coming back for more money if the board is okay Okay. All right. Great.
Good deal. Thanks All right. Well then Since we've gotten through that and we don't have financials
then I guess allies for community business and CDFI can take it away My name is Emily I work at CDFI and
Yeah, if you don't know anything about us or you just need a refresher, we are a nonprofit
here in Bloomington that connects small businesses, affordable housing developers, and child care providers
with CDFIs.
which are community development financial institutions. And they specialize in flexible, affordable
loans for underserved communities. So we're trying to bring those CDFIs here. And we've partnered with
Brad at Allies for Community Business. And he is the CEO there. And he's going to give a short presentation
on what they do and how we're partnering with them with our loan. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you
to all of you for the time
Um, what I propose to do is then somewhere between five and seven minutes walking through what we do
and how we do it and then stop. And then to the extent they'd like to have a discussion about any of
those points, I'd be delighted to do so. But obviously I'll be respectful of your time since you've
been so graceful, uh, in allowing me to just take it all. So I'll begin by sharing a screen, uh,
which I will, uh, ask if you can give us this too, please. Thank you.
Do you see that? Yes. So start, as always, with who A4CB is and what we do. Our vision is that entrepreneurs
from any background, any background at all, can start to grow a business that can create true wealth
for their families and their communities. And importantly, our mission here is to provide all three
of the capital and the coaching and the connections that entrepreneurs need to grow great businesses
for jobs for all their communities. So since the pandemic began,
talking just this 2020, we've dispersed about $8 million and helped 25,000 businesses with our coaching,
over 36,000 businesses and funding. We serve all of Illinois and Indiana, and we're based in Chicago.
And frankly, in my humble opinion, an overweighted amount of those dollars have gone to Illinois. And
I'm taking it by myself, we have much more of our work focused on Indiana. And there's one of the reasons
why I'm delighted that we partner with
Emma John and the rest of the folks at CBET-Friendly Bloomington, the same way we're doing in Evansville
and in South Bend and in Michigan City and in Gary and other places, where we recognize that there are
entrepreneurs that A4CB doesn't directly reach because we're not physically present, and yet we want
to serve, and therefore we need to partner with people like yourselves who know the entrepreneurs and
know the area, and we can be there right behind you in order to provide these services. So it's like
all the services are now,
And again, I'll do this quickly, and then we'll go to whatever questions you'd like. So the capital
we provide is a form of loans and grants. We provide a lot of money and grants in partnership with either
governmental entities or philanthropic entities, banks, whoever wants to get free money, an entrepreneur,
we're here to make sure it happens as a program administrator. But we spend most of the time here talking
about our lending. And our loans are between $500 and $500,000. And we do so in a way that's a lot different than most
lenders because we're not a heavily regulated financial institution in the way that classic banks and
credit unions are. We can be more flexible, and I'll tell you how we go about using that flexibility.
So let's start with the fact that we don't use credit scores at all. We don't put liens on cars and
houses. It leads up to $250,000. We look at how well the entrepreneur, the business owner, has managed
their debts over the last two years.
And whether there's a plausible path based on the cash flow of the business, to be able to repay us.
That's how we do it. We'll talk more in detail about that in a second. We're quite happy to work with
folks who have ITINs around social security numbers, who need smaller loans that banks typically can
provide, who don't have great credit, collateral and such. And we try very hard to be fast. We totally
recognize that our competition, in our view, is not the traditional bank branch. If you need a loan
from a bank, you should get it.
because you want that long-term relationship. We'll help entrepreneurs get connected to banks that we
think will be eligible. Our competition is the online lenders who typically hedge fund back, fintech-driven,
who will provide you with quick money, but they won't tell you how much it's going to cost in a really
transparent way until you get down to fine prints. And then you're going to struggle to repay that typically.
We've seen it over and over again. So we need to be fast and present wherever we can be online and offline
for entrepreneurs. So they borrow from us instead of from those other options because we will provide
mission-focused pricing in a way that retains the wealth with the entrepreneur, rather than extracting
the wealth and taking it elsewhere. So our APRs will range from 6% to 15%, just depending on what you're
trying to do. We'll always talk about, first, what an entrepreneur's trying to do, and what structure
is best for them. We'll talk about more details in a second. And then we'll tell them upfront, okay,
given that, here's how much it's gonna cost. Is that interesting to you? And if so, we'll proceed. Okay,
first of all, I should say, all of this is at a4cb.org.
where we list every single word of our credit policy, all the services we provide, so that any entrepreneur
who wants to, if they feel like it, can figure out for themselves how they're talking to us, how much
should they be eligible for, and what structures are available, what price that would be, in order to
be kind of as present and as transparent as it possibly can be with everybody they're seeking to serve.
So, when I went here briefly, specifically for Bloomington, the relationship we have built with CFI
and Bloomington, and I'll note that
different than we recently made a $50,000 investment in us, which we're going to repay at 2% interest.
So we can take those dollars and plow those dollars into the entrepreneurs we want to lend to. So I
view that as really important and interesting seed capital. But know that we're going to bring in money
from elsewhere and we're going to serve absolutely everybody we can in the greater Bloomington area
using other funds as necessary in order to make sure that everybody who's available to us to serve,
we can serve. So we're not limited by the $50,000, but it's a very, very good start.
so it gets moving. Okay, so how do we do our lending? Three types. Term loans, it's functionally kind
of you can think about like a mortgage, where it's you get all the money up front, repay it, and fix
the basis all the way through until it's fully advertised to the last payment. Lines of credit, which
function more like a credit card, you can borrow, repay, borrow, repay, borrow, repay. Or revenue-based
financing, which is very different, in which you get all the money up front, but you pay back on a variable basis,
each month depending on how much you earned the previous month. So in that case, for growth businesses,
we're trying to match the dollar they need to repay to us with the speed at which they're generating
the revenues. And if they have a bad month, pay us very little. If they have a great month, pay us more.
And that way, we match their on cash flow basis with the needs of that entrepreneur. So I'll talk for
a minute about how does we evaluate for these entrepreneurs? What does it be also for? As I mentioned
before, we're looking at
your credit over the last two years, and you're available on cash. This is how, and I won't drain all
this detail, because I'm gonna share this presentation with you afterwards, so you have all this detail,
so I'm gonna tell you to take, like, just so you know, so again, all of this is A4CB door, uh,
slash loans. But principally, we're looking at your credit report, you click a box, we go get
that information for you electronically, bring it in, we evaluate it about 60 seconds' time, and we're
looking at the three things you see on the screen for the past 24 months, the past 12 months of today,
What is it that we read off of your credit report? We did size the loan based on 150% of what you have
already successfully proven that you can repay in the form of a month of payment in the last 12 months.
There's a cap to startup businesses. We're delighted to help people who have nothing more than an idea
but write a line as much to them because there's nothing to evaluate on track record there other than
the entrepreneur's own credit history. So if that doesn't work,
we wouldn't switch to looking at financial statements. In this way, we ask for authority from the applicants,
go pull their bank account information. There's sort of a third widget, secure widget, ID password.
We would be able to do four of them to keep it easy as possible. We do a quick calculation,
global debt-to-income ratio using that information. And that doesn't work either. Then we move to what
we call our step three. These would be very small loans, but really for here,
Anybody who's got debts that are current and they've got more than $1 in the bank, yeah, we're gonna
make a small loan to them to help them to build their credit over time because they couldn't qualify
in any other way for us and presumably anybody else. And in this case, we're gonna help folks who otherwise
can be ineligible for capital at all and give them something to get moving to help to rebuild their
credit and be able to give you that street pay. So that's how we think about term loans and lines of
credit for the smaller size of $25,000. And for term loans and lines of credit, they're larger
It's exactly the same logic, except for it being an or, it's an and. So take the credit policy side
of it that I just mentioned, and the financial statement side of it, from the combination of both, your
bank time information, we also collect tax returns through larger loans. Put it all together, we give
them out for you and say, here's the amount for which you qualify for either term loan or line of credit.
Okay, so that's what we think about credit policy. There's no kind of backroom committee where we then
sort of value all kinds of other things that are non-financial and non-factual.
It just is what it is, and we do this in this way, so we strip out bias, we try to be fast and present
for entrepreneurs, and we communicate really clearly what it is that's required in order to be able
to borrow from us. So that's the story on turbulence lines of credit. To finish the overall story, I'll
talk a little bit about revenue-based financing, which is different. That's different by design. So
this is for the entrepreneurs who are really ready to grow, but who don't want to give up any of their
upside in the form of taking venture capital or equity investments, where, sure, you get that money,
We also give up some ownership. And so if you end up doing great later, you have to give a lot of that
to those other people. And in our case, road abuse financing doesn't require that. You get all the money
upfront, you're paying, you're done. Like all the money, all the upside, all the profit you generate
is yours. So here's how it works. We are requiring that you are really sizable, and we've got a track
record here. So at least two years of history, at least $40 million of revenue last year, we didn't
work with you to find a growth plan that we use as a basis to create
a sensible estimate for your projections wherever we grow over the next five years. We then calculate
gross and net margins for you in order to figure out, what can you plausibly repay here based on the
last 12 months of your business and where you think you're going over the next five years. And then
the way the repayments are structured is that repayments will be somewhere between 5% and 7% of the
previous month's revenue with a minimum and maximum that we would take in a month. And we had this maximum,
by the way,
So that if you had this huge month where you did like a million in revenue, because all these crazy
contracts came in, we want you to keep most of that. So we put an unofficial cap on that rather than
taking full, you know, 5% to 7% of that revenue. The APR for the whole one is going to be somewhere
between 6% and 12% typically, particularly with that cap in place on that given month. So you pay 1.25
the initial principal. Once you do that, you're done. You can pay any time you want. No pre-band penalty
or anything like that.
Obviously that will change the calculated APR because of the fact that if you pay faster, that means
that the APR will be higher because of the term, but we'll work with the entrepreneur to explore that.
And then at the end of the term, which is somewhere between 16 and 72 months, depending on who you're
working with, the entrepreneur, if any left, that's okay. We'll then take what's left and just turn
that into a normal old three-year fully advertising term loan so they get way more time than even the
original term in order to repay the balance.
And the only time we take any collateral is for the loans are about $250,000. We'll look for some security
against that because those are really large loans for us, given that our average loan size, they've
received like $15,000. So we're making a loan that big with some security, but otherwise we don't care
about that. Okay. So I want to wrap up by saying that the capital we provide is complemented by the
coaching that we provide. And so we have group coaching and individual coaching.
But most importantly here, whenever an entrepreneur is looking for any assistance at all from us where
they're trying to figure out what should I do next with the business or how should I get that business
started or all the way to the end of the spectrum. I've been around this business for four years and
now I'm trying to think through how can I monetize that asset and retain that wealth for me and my family.
All throughout that spectrum, we've got four full-time business coaches really experienced through nothing
but have conversations with entrepreneurs all day every day, helping them think through what they're
trying to accomplish and what the next step should be.
completely unrelated to whether or not an entrepreneur is interested in or eligible for a loan or a
grant from us. We've read this coaching, regardless, and we're delighted to help anybody in Boone Center
who's interested in it. We also do run a group, kind of class-based, a group program. We talk to a classical
kind of mother webinarers, that kind of thing, for particular subject matter, and we do cohort-based
work as well. All of that is largely focused on the Chicago land area. And finally, A1CB.org contains
all this stuff.
So as usual, there's the usual kind of suite of ways in which people can stay in touch with us. And
that's probably the first port of call. I'll send back to Bob on any details, or he can directly to
me. Thank you, Brad. I think it hit five minutes. So I'll be happy to help in whatever way I can if
there's any questions. Do any of you guys have questions for him? So the partnership between our local
CDFI-friendly Bloomington,
Is that focused specifically here in Bloomington or is that in the region? If it's kind of in the Bloomington
area, what are some of the other community organizations that you might be connecting with? Of course,
I'm thinking about the mill, our local incubator and startup for startup businesses and so forth. Are
you guys also marketing this and promoting that within our own
our local community of entrepreneurs. Yeah. Yeah, I can start and I'd love for you to add, please. Yeah,
go ahead. We're really excited about this because one, the dollars that we borrowed from CFA Friendly
in Bloomington, we're going to invest within Bloomington Proper. But all of the rest of the entrepreneurs
around the kind of the greater area, rich in serving, again, through dollars that we've gotten out otherwise,
and the coaching is political to everybody.
You know the area better than we do. And that's saying the fact that I find myself in Bloomington a
lot, personally, because my son's a freshman. But going back and forth, that's not the same thing as
being president and working with entrepreneurs every day, hardly. So we're really excited about working
through that, through yourselves, through everybody else who is local and much more knowledgeable to
help us to get connected to all their pieces of entrepreneurial support within the Bloomington area.
So that we can, first of all, make sure that people know we're here. And secondly, provide really good,
timely, responsive service to any entrepreneur who expresses their willingness to work with us. So it
can be a mixture of the two, I think, where we do our part, but also work through yourself to get closer
to it. And what would you add to that? In terms of promoting it here, we're partnering with the ISPDC,
the Indiana Small Business Development Center. So they know about this loan partnership.
They've started on their social media. If there's anybody that's interested in financing, I know that
they would share it with those people. I hadn't thought of the mill yet. I don't know why. So that's
something. The go-to place. Definitely. If you want to find entrepreneurs in Bloomington, you should
definitely go to the Dimension Mill and talk with those folks there. They're always, I know, looking for
capital and so forth. So that could be definitely a place to stop in there after this meeting. So that's
someone that we can be advertising these to. And then we're putting it on all of our socials. It was
already in the Bloomington Chamber newsletter and on their website. So we are trying to promote it here
in our community. We could use help. If you guys know of any small business owners or someone that's
wanting to start up a small business, feel free to
point them in our direction, we'd be happy to talk to them. Can I ask a question? Yeah. Brad, thanks
for that presentation. And I know the answer, but this comes up from the public. And so I think it would
be good to answer it on the record. And then the board can know it in case it comes up in other settings.
But the interest rates are high right now, relatively high. But CDFIs tend to have higher interest rates.
And so we're trying to obviously facilitate capital for
businesses who need it and maybe haven't had great access to it, can you talk about the 1.25x or the
higher interest rates and how we get there and just, yeah, communicating about that a little?
Great question. Thanks. So a couple things. First, we try to make sure that our rates are roughly half
as expensive as the average credit card rate. And we pin it that way because credit cards are typically,
although not exclusively,
The only way that small business owners that we serve are able to access any capital involvement because
they are inundated as a personal matter, not their business, personal credit cards get in, and that's
what they use when they need liquidity that they don't have directly from the business. Again, to repeat,
if somebody can get a traditional loan from a bank or a credit unit, we want to encourage that because
that establishes the long-term pathway towards having a long-term relationship, hopefully not just with
the institution, but with an actual banker.
And that's where you can go to get continual kind of service as your business is used to grow. But most
of the people who we work with are not eligible and can't get anything at any price from a bank or a
credit union. And therefore, we're trying to make sure that we're pricing appropriately to help those
folks. So roughly half of the average rate of credit cards we're trying to pin are rates. And the second
part of it is that A4CB will not charge the rate that would be necessary for A4CB to break even.
So we intentionally lose money on every loan. And the reason why we do that is because if we were to
cover all of our costs inclusive of the loan losses that we intend to potentially take, but we know
we're going to take, we take so much more risk on entrepreneurs than any other financial institution
we ever can even consider, if you include the loss rate plus the interest we pay on our debt, which
is very low but not zero,
You kind of, to add those, before you even get into paying for staff or technology or any of that, like
separate, we're already above what we charge. So then I gotta go off and raise all the land to be as
necessary in order to cover the difference, but that's my job, so it's fine, I'll do that. We gotta
raise five and a half million dollars a year to cover the cost that we otherwise would charge in higher
interest to the entrepreneurship circle, but we're just not gonna do that, because that's not who we
are. So that's why the range will be somewhere between
6% APR, not interest rate, APR is inclusive of all fees, everything. So we're in between 6% and 15%.
Our average APR will land right about 9%, between 9% and 10%. And that's very, very competitive with
the way that you can borrow from banks right now if you can get a loan at all. And again, most people
can't. So that's how we think about pricing, which is hard to put on a postcard, but it kind of gives
you a feel for what the nuance is
Thanks for sharing that. I really appreciate it. Can I follow up on that? On your revenue-based loans, the 1.25x
payback, was that over six years? Is that what I understand? Yeah. So when we listen to what entrepreneurs
are trying to do and calculate with them what their plausible growth path is going to be, we will either do
a 60 month, 66 month, or a 72 month term, depending on how much time we think they're gonna need. So
it's between 16, it's between five and six years, that's the length of the term. And we do that in a
way that again tries to marry up what we think will be the average payments, it's always gonna go up
and down, it's the whole point of the product, but it's gonna be an average down over that say five,
five and a half or six year term. And if we hit it exactly right,
than in like, say for example, the 72nd month, they'll make their last payment, they'll never happen,
because a lot of it will be a little faster or more because of Google nature. But yes, that's how we
think about it. So yeah, but it's, regardless of the timeline, when you hit that 1.25x, it's done. And
if I'm right, that's a substantially lower equivalent APR, right? If 1.25x over six years is like 4%, right?
Yeah, it works out to about 6%. We're including in that not just the interest, which is what you're
thinking about there, but also the origination fees and stuff. So there are some fees upfront on top
of that? OK. That's right. Yeah. Got it. So the all-in cost APR fees and everything. Most of
those revenue-based financing loans, we're going to assume we're going to do an estimated APR of about
6%, which is damn cheap money on flexible payments like that.
Yeah, I had a quick question. I know that ISBDC does business valuation. They give those services. Do
Allies for Community Business offer that in the coaching, or is that something that you would want a
lender to have when they come to you guys? Yeah, I'm up two minds here. One, we're always eager to provide
our services. This is free. It's really high quality and so forth.
But I do think that having a local, present, on-site business coaching mentor, however you phrase that,
the local business development center, there's a real value in that. So maybe the best way, in my view,
to position A4CVs for coaching services is to add extra capacity to the coaching that's already present
locally. And so we're always there and delighted to help, but we don't want to sort of
serve ourselves in front of the local people, because we're out there working with them when they can.
We're always there. And yes, I think we think about the coaching we provide along a continuum of time,
and think about the entrepreneur journey. So the very first coaching activities that we typically work
with entrepreneurs on, and then nothing other than an idea, is let's talk about establishing the business.
How do you do that? What's required? And so we talk about those basic building blocks of
the registration insurance, the basics, getting into that account, and so forth. And then over time,
we'll grow and have more sophisticated, complicated conversations about business planning, strategic
planning, pricing, and the rest, depending what industry you're in. So we're always eager to have those
conversations at whatever timeline that the entrepreneur needs. But I would like us to be supportive,
I think, of others rather than sort of stand in front of the services globally, if possible. Thank you.
Does anybody else have any more questions about this? I do. You spoke briefly about grants. What type
of grants do you provide? We provide grants based on the partner who's going to provide the dollars
and for whom we are serving as program administrator. So we give you a couple flavors of that that we've
done recently. One, we partner with City of Chicago in order to provide grants in order to help entrepreneurs
who have a physical storefront to be able to rehab that.
City didn't have any idea how to manage pay applications, GCs, all kinds of stuff. So we did that on
behalf of the city. They gave us the money, we took care of the rest. So that's just kind of one example.
Another is we recently worked with Etsy in order to help artistic businesses. And that had nothing to
do with physical infrastructure. Instead, it was about
an artist who had an idea that they wanted to be able to invest in and grow with a small amount of free
capital where they would have no logical way to repay, because it's so speculative of what they're trying
to do with their art. And so NT worked through us, and we were to find entrepreneurs and serve them
in a way that was really efficient, that got the dollars that NT would like to give to artists, but
had no idea how to do. We helped them to sort of do both finding and disbursement, and after
that pre-coaching, we helped those artists grow.
So all sorts of flavors aside from that, but I want to give you kind of an idea of what our administration
might be doing with credit. Great. Thank you. Any other questions? I don't believe so. OK. I have two
more announcements. So to go along with everything that Brad has been saying, we are hosting a webinar
with Allies for Community Business for anyone that is interested in small businesses or anyone that
just wants to learn more about what they do. And that's going to be March 5.
at 11 a.m. It'll be a Zoom, so we'll have that information on our social medias. And then, I also did
want to say we recently announced two new lending partnerships, one being the one with allies, and then
the other is a 2.25 million line of credit with Old National Bank, German American, and First Financial
that can be used for all of our focus areas, so outside of small businesses, affordable housing, and
childcare. It's great. And that's all over the region. That's not just Bloomington.
So yeah, we're really excited for that partnership and this one as well. And Brad, thank you for sharing
everything that you did. That was insightful of you, so. Yeah. Thank you, Brad. We really appreciate
your time. Thank you very much for it. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. We appreciate it. Thanks. Thank
you guys so much. Thank you, Emma. Thanks, Brad. All right. All right. All right. What's left?
One from last year, this is from this year. We have any general discussion or any general items that
the board would like to present? Does anyone have anything? Yeah, I just have a little something. Just,
is that okay? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, okay. It's just about the vacant council seat. As always,
Usually it's easy for us to find a Democrat living in the zone and then it's impossible to find a Republican
or other political party person living in the zone. So right now I just want to update you all. I'm
doing an interview with someone who applied and hopefully I can make a case to council that we can get
this person recommended by my little interview committee and then approved before our next council meeting,
which is next
Wednesday, and then they would be able to then be at the March board meeting. It's a little bit hard
because council likes more leeway time than what we're going to be able to give with our interview of
the people. So hopefully, they'll understand that we have quorum issues and we can get that done. Great.
Kate, does that word D, does that mean the neighborhood? And thank you for that.
The neighborhood resident spots, are those both council appointments? Yes. Okay. Yes. Yep. Thank you,
Kate. Awesome. Thank you so much, Kate. Thank you. Anything? Anyone else? Oh, I do have a question about
the loan forgiveness. Are we having, I know we've got six applicants.
Are you having any movement on those that maybe had fallen delinquent on their previous? I am still
making efforts to contact them. Okay. I didn't know if, yeah. Whether it was just those that currently
still have an outstanding balance or? We have had a few that are delinquent. We also have some that
have dissolved their businesses and I'm just trying to get them to just go through the process so we
can get it done officially and get the paperwork done.
appropriately. So yeah, it's been difficult trying to contact them because some of their emails are
now defunct. And so it's a little bit of investigating and trying to figure that out. So and, you know,
you can't, I wish I could just call the Secretary of State and be like, Hey, can you give me all of
this person's information so I can find them somewhere? But that's just not how how that works. So yeah.
Yeah, it's nice to at least that we have six that have
submitted information, so hopefully through your continued contact communication efforts, we'll have
more. I don't know, do we put a timeline on that at all, or is this just kind of a rolling, you know,
I don't really remember if we had like a goal in mind of like by summer we'd like to air something?
So the loans are to be paid back by the end of June. Okay. So I really feel that, you know,
By mid-second quarter, I don't think that by mid-second quarter, I'm just going to have to have to cut
it off because we need to get everything processed and moving along. And so I mean, I'll still try to
make attempts. But yeah, I think that mid-second quarter is probably when I'll get full participation,
if there is any. And I will make that known to those that I am reaching out to. So. OK. Great.
Thank you. All right. Anything else, anyone?
All right, great. Hey, we're in the meeting early. Thank you so much, everyone.