Multi-Stakeholder Approaches to Capital Deployment
We know that modern manufacturing companies, especially those led by entrepreneurs who identify as Black and Brown, need specific capital support if we are all going to grow and maintain an equitable economy. Based on extensive research obtained from this journey with community lending partners and others, we’ve mapped out a series of PATHWAYS to capital through our PATHWAYS to Patient Capital initiative.
Although our PATHWAYS may work for ANY business, our main focus at UMA are modern manufacturing businesses because the face of manufacturing has shifted in our country.
We stay personally connected to these modern manufacturers, and thousands of others like them, because we are committed to seeing them thrive on the PATHWAY that works best for them, despite their specific capital-intensive needs.
- Theodore Roethke
When UMA launched PATHWAYS years ago, the focus was to elevate the innovative financial products and policies that our cohort and others were utilizing. We now recognize it is time to journey farther and to do so with more travelers. We realize that what is needed now is a community of practice of people and organizations who work in collaboration and who build a nationwide network to more effectively support manufacturers across the US and beyond.
We must create a map for both the manufacturing businesses and for community-based, manufacturing-forward, racial-equity-centered lenders in order for them to find one another. We must be the cartographers of change, drawing connections that can fix or find ways around the broken paths in our financial and policy system.
This new PATHWAYS community will unite a range of capital providers—such as CDFIs, public agencies, financial institutions, educational institutions, impact investors, and place-based philanthropies—that work together to address the capital needs of local manufacturers, through a racial equity lens. We will build upon and benefit from the best research and practices in the field. We will come together with intention and purpose to build this movement, to share knowledge and resources, and to celebrate moments of joy. If you are committed to this path of collective action – supporting manufacturers of color with just capital – we invite you to join us.
