Two years after launch, Mastercard Strive USA is working with 34 small business-focused organizations and building a program that is already more than a sum of parts. As of September 2024, the program had unlocked over $44 billion in capital, reached nearly one million small businesses, and engaged more than 682 small business intermediaries.

The fifth Mastercard Strive USA Summit recently took place in Lawrence, Kansas in partnership with the Kansas Department of Commerce. The focus was on driving new small business-focused partnerships within Kansas as well as applying lessons learned from other regions to those collaborations.

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.

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.

To create an equitable economy, grant makers should address the financial and training hurdles that cause so many entrepreneurs to fail. This article from the Chronicle of Philanthropy by Sandy Fernandez explains how.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.