28 years building this region's entrepreneurs.
The Greater Cincinnati Microenterprise Initiative is a certified Community Development Financial Institution serving low to moderate income individuals and underserved communities across Greater Cincinnati.
We work with people at every stage, from a first idea with no sales yet, to a side hustle that is making money, to a business that is outgrowing its owner. What we offer depends on where you are.
Supporting a small business starts with meeting the business where it is. The goal is not to move every entrepreneur through the same sequence of services. It is to identify what will move your business forward now and prepare you for what comes next. That means the right resource at the right stage, whether that is talking to the right consultant, getting additional training, or finding the right amount of capital for your business.
GCMI has always sat at the cross section of dreams and opportunity. If you have an idea or a concept, they will listen and see if they can give you the fundamentals to get started. It is an essential place to begin your journey toward business ownership.
When you are trying to start a business, sometimes you do not know which direction to go in. Without the help of a program like GCMI, sometimes we are just lost. And when we are lost, it keeps us from starting the business.
Getting funding for marketing is one of the biggest challenges for small and minority owned companies. Traditional banks do not provide it, or not enough. Funding from GCMI that we can actually use for marketing is huge for us.