DETROIT (WXYZ) — Since it was established in 2016, the University of Michigan's Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project has helped approximately 700 small businesses.
Now, DNEP is working to improve Detroit businesses by providing them with access to the program's entrepreneurial offerings.
"DNEP was successfully incubated at the Ford School as a race/wealth gap intervention as about 90% of the businesses we work with are minority-owned. Ford gave us an economic and community development lens for our work," said Christie Ayotte Baer, managing director of DNEP.
"As the program grew, it made sense to shift the focus to tapping greater entrepreneurship expertise, and move to the Ross School. Plus, our accounting services and our summer internship program both originated at Ross and are housed at Ross."
The Impact Studio, a business incubator that focuses on student-led impact businesses and ran by Michigan's Ross School of Business gives program participates the opportunity to take a course focused on creating green businesses in Detroit, along with a DNEP/Impact Studio summer internship program to support Detroit businesses.
Most recently, DNEP has focused on specific Detroit neighborhoods, including Jefferson Chalmers, Southwest and Six Mile/Livernois.
The program also works to recruit businesses to set up shop in the identified neighborhoods of focus.
"We appreciate the value that's added to our business owners when they get to sit with a team from DNEP and really dive into their business and figure out what could be done to improve it," Sanifu said. "Most of our business owners are microbusiness owners or solopreneurs, if you will. Having extra minds at the table to help build out their process is critical to their success," said Lutalo Sanifu, director of Neighborhood Resilience, Safety & Business District Services for Jefferson East Inc.
