Strategic Partnerships

City of Birmingham: The biggest supporter of the BBRC is the City of Birmingham, which has consistently provided over 75% of the annual funding. The BBRC serves as the Finance Division of the City’s Office of Economic Development and works closely with other city departments as well.

Alabama Minority Business Opportunity Center (MBOC): The MBOC is a volunteer organization that is committed to the planning, coordination, creation and delivery of resources toward facilitating effective participation of the local minority business sector. The Birmingham MBOC is made possible through a grant to the City of Birmingham awarded by the U.S. Department of Commerce - Minority Business Development Agency, the only federal agency specifically created to assist in the development of minority-owned businesses. Some activities of MBOC include sponsoring events focused on the using electronic technology and exporting opportunities, visiting procurement sites to promote minority-owned business efforts, identifying business acquisition opportunities and providing direct leads to financial and procurement opportunities for minority-owned businesses.

Small Business Administration (SBA): The SBA established in 1953 provides financial, technical, and management assistance to help Americans start, run and grow their businesses. With a portfolio of business loans, loan guarantees and disaster loans worth more than $45 billion, the SBA is the nation’s largest single financial backer of small businesses. Nearly 20 million small businesses have received direct or indirect help from one or another of its program since 1953, as the agency has become the government’s most cost effective in economic development. The BBRC partners with the SBA to administer several of its loan programs and to provide technical assistance to potential borrowers.

Structured Employment Economic Development Company (SEEDCO): The Birmingham Business Resource Center and the Structured Employment Economic Development Corporation are working together to expand community economic development services across the state of Alabama. The two organizations are working on an initiative to create a Small Business Development Loan Fund as a crucial part of Seedco’s Alabama Community Preservation and Development Program. This initiative will provide loans from $7,500 to $25,000 to individual business owners affiliated with an Alabama community based incubator and to businesses outside of incubators that have substantial needs. Seedco and BBRC have identified over twenty-five businesses throughout the state that have a need for loans of this type. This micro-loan fund will be used to boost entrepreneurial activities throughout Alabama. Seedco is a widely respected community non-profit development intermediary that receives funding from private foundations, corporations and government agencies to develop innovative program strategies and to provide technical assistance to partnerships of community-based organizations and local anchor institutions that are working to revitalize low asset communities. Seedco has created economically sustainable community projects by assisting non-profits with reducing their dependence on single source financial support.

Alabama Microenterprise Network (AMEN): AMEN is a membership organization formed from the Birmingham Business Resource Center and a network of organizations within the State of Alabama that assist micro-enterprise. Through this network, individuals and organizations can improve their capacity to promote economic development by advocating for strengthening microenterprise statewide. This is done by the training and sharing of best practices with each other, advocating public policies in support of micro enterprise, educating the public on the benefits of micro enterprise development, providing guidance in the development of new micro enterprise programs, developing statewide standards and evaluation tools, and identifying sources of funding that will offer financial support to microenterprise programs.

Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta (FHLBA): The FHLBA is a privately owned $100 billion financial services organization that works with member financial institutions to build homes and provide jobs in communities throughout the South. BBRC with the assistance of AmSouth Bank recently obtained the only Economic Development Growth Enhancement Program (EDGE) awarded in Alabama during 2003. AmSouth Bank sponsored the BBRC application for a below-market rate loan to expand an existing MicroLoan Fund through the EDGE Program. Funds from this program will be used to aid 15 to 20 small businesses in Birmingham’s, federally designated Enterprise Community. The EDGE award is furthering BBRC’s technical assistance goals by helping minority businesses in the Enterprise Community gain access capital. Because of AmSouth Bank and the FHLB of Atlanta, BBRC is improving the chances of success for these small businesses. The EDGE Program fosters partnerships between member’s banks, economic development entities, state and local governments and other funding sources, which work together to develop low-cost financing for eligible projects.

Accounting & Business Consultants, Inc. (ABC): ABC serves as an integral part of the BBRC’s Technical Assistance Group. ABC assists clients in developing and evaluating business plans, but is most valuable in helping BBRC’s clients develop and maintain financial management systems.