SPRINGFIELD — If you ask Roberto Nieves, Common Capital is a street level service that needed a street-facing location to meet their clients where they are at. So naturally, they found the new location to match their service.
After spending some time operating out of the Way Finders building on 1780 Main St., the nonprofit community loan fund opened a new business resource center at 270 Bridge St. a few months ago to expand some of their services for small businesses in Western Massachusetts.
“We’re really about being accessible,” said Nieves, who serves as the director of outreach and communications for Common Capital. “We’ve never really been street level before, but now we are.”
Common Capital, a subsidiary of Wayfinders, is a community development financial institution that lends money to small businesses that are unable to access capital from conventional sources. They also augment that money with free business assistance to support its borrowers’ growth and success.
With the new resource center now available on 270 Bridge St., the loan service provider can offer services that are “free and available” to any small businesses operating out of Hampshire, Hampden, Franklin or Berkshire County.
According to Nieves, their eight, and soon-to-be nine-person team, offers in-person or online business planning and financial projection services; in-house business training curriculum for entrepreneurs, start-ups and existing businesses; and business assistance services for all borrowers in accounting, financial reporting, marketing, human resources and operations.
Nieves said Common Capital currently provides free webinars to registered businesses in English and Spanish covering anything from marketing to business planning, to accounting, to revenue planning and more.
The eventual goal is to offer these webinars in person using the spacious room in the back of the new resource center, which Nieves noted will also be a place for trainings and a curriculum called Initiate.
“The Initiate curriculum has everything from startup businesses all the way to existing businesses, and it has a whole bunch of other trainings that we can assign,” Nieves said. “The goal is to start utilizing that in person and online … [and] to do these webinars instead of over Zoom.”
Beyond the trainings and curriculum, Nieves said the new resource center will also be a place for Common Capital to strengthen their partnerships with other economic development partners across the four Western Mass. counties.
To do that, Nieves said Common Capital has gathered as much information as they can from their partners in the business development realm, like local chambers for example, to create a rack of brochures and other information for those looking for a one-stop shop on how to start a business.
“This is an ecosystem we’ve developed that creates a pathway for small businesses,” Nieves said. “There’s such a huge entrepreneurial resurgence going on here that we think it’s important to pool our resources together.”
Common Capital began 34 years ago in Greenfield under the moniker Western Mass. Enterprise Fund. Outside of Springfield and Greenfield, they have also resided in Holyoke at one point.
As of the end of their fiscal year on June 30, 2023, Common Capital made loans totaling $32.7 million to more than 800 businesses, which helped create or retain over to 2,000 jobs, according to its website.
The nonprofit has also been recognized as the No. 1 microlender in Massachusetts by the U.S. Small Business Administration for three years running.
“One of the biggest challenges when starting a business is access to capital,” said Common Capital President Raymond Lanza-Weil, in a statement. “Often an entrepreneur needs training, education, or support before they can even apply for financing. That’s what they receive at our Business Resource Center.”
Readers can learn more about the institution by visiting its website: https://commoncapitalma.org/.
