Strengthening Minority-Owned Business

The Quinlan School of Business is strengthening Chicago’s women and minority-owned businesses, starting with a pilot project in the Rogers Park and Edgewater neighborhoods surrounding Loyola’s Lake Shore Campus.

The three-year project will help address inequality by collecting data on equity gaps faced by minority-owned businesses and by developing equitable outreach strategies to:

• Reduce information gaps
• Build capacity in Chicago’s minority-owned business ecosystem
• Strengthen knowledge sharing among minority-serving organizations and businesses

By 2026, the project will support the creation of collaborative systems for connecting businesses in underserved communities with available business development resources, including a dashboard enabling minority-owned businesses and service providers to easily access support services.

Supported by a $625,000 grant from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), the project will pave the way for expanding these practices to all Chicago neighborhoods, with a focus on the south and west sides.

Get involved

• Sign up to receive news and updates about the project.
• Save the date for our Capacity Building Workshop for Capacity Builders on June 6, 2024.
• Connect with the project team by contacting QuinlanServes@luc.edu.