Empowering small businesses for a digital future
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Programs
Featured Program
Strive Women: Her Business, Her Financial Future
Supporting women entrepreneurs to grow their businesses, confidence, resilience, and control.
Pakistan, Peru, Vietnam
It Goes Forward: Redesigning the e-commerce return process to reduce small businesses’ environmental impact and costs
Enabling small online retailers to resell return items directly between consumers, cutting warehouse costs and waste and reducing transport time for a positive environmental impact
The Netherlands
Michael Miebach
CEO, Mastercard
“When small businesses thrive our local communities and economies thrive, but when they struggle, the impact is widespread. What small business owners need right now is partners who listen to them and develop innovative solutions that help them grow in the wake of the pandemic. That’s what makes programs like Strive so critical today and tomorrow.”
From the Blog
Featured Article
A new milestone for Strive Community: We’ve reached 5 million small businesses
Challenging assumptions: How a distinct operations model sets CDFIs apart in a vast financial…
Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) are mission-first financial institutions that have seen rapid growth in assets in the past five years, partly because CDFI investors are challenging a set of assumptions about how CDFIs operate that could have otherwise held back their success.
Getting impact capital off the sidelines: how CNote aligns investor interests with community…
A two-year Mastercard Strive USA grant has paved the way for investment platform CNote to strengthen their organizational capacity, enabling them to scale operations, enhance their technology, and better serve the communities and institutions at the heart of their mission.
The unique partnership at the center of California’s new loan match program
A unique and first-time partnership between two mission-driven organizations, Next Street and Community Reinvestment Fund USA, is behind a new small business lending program in California that aims to connect small businesses with historic federal funding designed to help them grow and strengthen their financial resilience.
How local government can help more small businesses succeed: A fireside chat between St.
This conversation on the role of local government in helping small businesses succeed took place at the Mastercard Strive USA Summit in St. Louis, Missouri, between Tishaura O. Jones, mayor of St. Louis, and Salah Goss, senior vice president for social impact at the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth.
Inclusive growth for entrepreneurs in North Carolina — and beyond
Entrepreneurship is booming in North Carolina by many measures, but not all small businesses have equal access to opportunity. This article highlights key themes and moments from the fourth Mastercard Strive USA Summit held in Raleigh, North Carolina, where conversations centered on how to ensure that all entrepreneurs — in North Carolina and nationally — have access to the resources they need to succeed.
Behind the headlines: The critical role of credit unions in deploying $27 billion in federal…
Inclusiv’s experience building trust in Puerto Rico, as well as its 50-year history working with Community Development Credit Unions (CDCUs) throughout the continental U.S., will likely serve as a critical backdrop as it moves forward with its recent $1.87 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund Clean Communities Investment Accelerator grant.
Toward a green economy: Enabling small businesses to become more sustainable and resilient through…
Opening doors and connecting dots: How the small business ecosystem in Missouri is meeting…
How can organizations that support small businesses take advantage of historic federal investments and new technologies in an increasingly diverse landscape? This was the major theme of the third Mastercard Strive USA Summit, which brought together national and local leaders from government, philanthropy, the private sector, and others in St. Louis, Missouri.
Meeting small businesses where they are: Technical assistance models that work in an increasingly…
There is an increasingly diverse range of technical assistance models, making it challenging to provide the right information to the right entrepreneur at the right time. This article highlights where leading technical assistance providers are focusing to help more entrepreneurs succeed.
Driving innovative solutions for small businesses: Reflections from our first Strive Innovation…
How trust scales impact: The role of local partners in federal programs for small businesses
Building trust with local communities is hard. The key to driving inclusive growth starts with recognizing and valuing the trust local organizations have established with communities, and then building on that foundation to help them succeed and grow. This was the cross-cutting theme of the second Strive USA Summit in Washington, DC.
Unlocking new markets and faster practices: How digital tools support small businesses to become…
Public-private partnerships and small businesses: A conversation on what is working in New York…
This conversation between Kevin D. Kim, Commissioner of the NYC Department of Small Business Services, and Shamina Singh, Founder & President of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, took place at the Mastercard Strive USA Summit in New York.