LANSING, Mich. — New businesses always need money, but where can they find it?
Kimberly Lavon, the CEO and Creative Writer at Mint Maven, has made it her mission to help women and people of color not only find but also get the money they need.
"Women and people of color often have financial obstacles as they enter business or do anything else," said Lavon.
With her new business Mint Maven, she helps other business owners find grants. She can then help apply for grants and other funding opportunities by submitting an “enticing proposal,” submitting profit and loss statements and business documents.
One of her customers is Chaz Carrillo, the president of the Greater Lansing Hispanic Chamber.
“Grant applications are usually long and tedious," he said. "You have to find, first, the opportunity. So, you have to figure out where those opportunities are. And then you have to tell your story to make sure it lines up with the opportunity.”
Lavon wants to help make this process easier. “It's just a matter of knowing that it's there, doing the work to get it and then just getting it and doing what you said,” Lavon said.
“I think that she has really focused on an area that a lot of nonprofits need and an area that for-profits don't look very often as far as what available grants are there for certain types of businesses,” Carrillo said.
Lavon pointed out that “99 percent of all businesses in the U.S. are small.”
According to Forbes, 42 percent of small businesses are owned by women, but only about 2.3 percent of venture capital goes to female entrepreneurs.
“I wanted to make the job market the professional market, more equitable for women and people of color because of all these obstacles that we currently consistently face,” Lavon said. “When you boil it all down, it funnels down to lack of funds, lack of money, lack of power that comes with money. And if I can kind of switch the tables here and give power to those who normally don't have it even for just a little bit, that's amazing. Secondly, because me being a lifelong creative, with funding being cut with art not being in schools, that was my second kind of really big passion to make sure that those people are also helped.”
After applying and receiving multiple grants herself, Lavon realized that she was talented at filling out grant applications quickly.
After being a part of “One and All,” an entrepreneurial support program by the Lansing Economic Area Partnership, Lavon participated in the Brand Strategy Program by Melinda Livsey, funded through the Ingham County Sunrise grant. She then decided to move forward with her business idea.
With Mint Maven, she additionally offers a membership for biweekly meetings with other business owners and even other grant writers.
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