WINTER 2022 / REAL-LEADERS.COM 81 LEADING LEADERS about 35 entrepreneurs meet with a relationship manager. Meetings are mandatory, and attendance is taken. Members must bring proof of repayment of that week's installment and participate in financial literacy training designed to help their businesses succeed and enable financial mobility out of poverty. The weekly meetings create a peer-to-peer learning environment that nurtures success. “Our members learn the discipline of borrowing money, see everybody else in a similar position, and share what they're doing with the money,” says Gough. “You have this wonderful social capital model that gets developed. If we were giving the money without any accountability or community, we would lose that.” Grameen America, led by former Avon CEO Andrea Jung, has ambitions to scale up its reach into communities across the country rapidly. To do so, Gough says the nonprofit will need to operate like a social business that is as selfsustaining as possible. “We need to deliver in a businesslike way so we can cover our costs,” he says. “If we're going to ask our members to pick themselves up by their bootstraps, we should do the same as an institution. So, we run it as a business to be reliable to our borrowers.” With 29 branches in 23 cities, Grameen aims in 2022 to add six new branches in underserved communities in Atlanta; Phoenix; Riverside, California; Philadelphia; and a second location in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Miami. The organization tracks key performance indicators for every branch they open to ensure it can cover direct costs and achieve full sustainability within five to six years. The organization is reaching deeper into communities with initiatives like the $100 million ‘Lifting America: The Campaign for Her Future,’ as well as the 'Elevating Black Women Entrepreneurs' Initiative, which launched in May 2022 and aims to expand to $1.3 billion in loans to more than 80,000 Black women entrepreneurs by 2030. Grameen is also leveraging technology to drive efficiencies, including digitizing loan disbursements and repayments. During the pandemic, it pivoted to using services like Zoom and WhatsApp. “We were worried about members being able to adopt the technology, but to our great joy, they learned it well…with a little help from their kids,” says Gough. Perhaps most ambitious, Gough says, are Grameen’s plans to grow its loan portfolio — from $158 million currently to $600 million in ten years. While some money can be raised with philanthropic donations and bank Community Reinvestment Act lending, Grameen is also tapping impact investors with a debt investment targeting foundations, banks, and highnet-worth individuals, as well as offerings through ImpactAssets. But no matter how big Grameen gets, the bottom line comes back to people like Sheila, who took out a Grameen loan to start a mobile boutique on 125th Street in Harlem, next to the iconic Apollo Theater. “Our borrowers are some of the smartest people when it comes to generating income and going out and hustling to get it,” he says. “They just need access to an affordable microloan and a little support to help them reach their goals.” n Amy Bennett is the chief marketing officer of ImpactAssets.
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