$1,000 Start-Ups Consortium is a nonprofit dedicated to reducing the wealth gap by increasing equitable access to business ownership for underserved individuals such low-income workers, single parents, women and retirees. Our work is grounded in the belief that when people have the tools, training and capital to launch businesses, they can better navigate the systems that have historically excluded them from economic opportunity.
Since our founding in 2020, we have delivered an ... Read More
$1,000 Start-Ups Consortium is a nonprofit dedicated to reducing the wealth gap by increasing equitable access to business ownership for underserved individuals such low-income workers, single parents, women and retirees. Our work is grounded in the belief that when people have the tools, training and capital to launch businesses, they can better navigate the systems that have historically excluded them from economic opportunity.
Since our founding in 2020, we have delivered an entrepreneurship program that blends practical education with real-world application, with annual updates to always reflect the most current information available. Our Entrepreneurship program includes the following classes:
Practical Considerations
Professional Bio, Elevator Speech, and Pitch Deck
Competitive Analysis
Basic Marketing, Branding and Story Telling
Prototype Planning
Build and Document Your Prototype
Social Media Marketing
Social Media Workshop
Basic Financial Principles and Tools
Communications and Customer Relationship Management
Preparation for the Prototype Vendor Market
Prototype Vendor Market
Prototype Market Self Assessment (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunity, Threats)
Business Structure, Department of State and Federal Registration
State Department of Revenue Registration, Sales Tax, Banking
Back Office
Supply Chain, Supplier, and Inventory Management
Organizational Planning
Creating Your Business Website and Website Workshop
Entrepreneurship Course Review
Our Financial Management program includes Avatars that each participant chooses to best represent her situation. We created avatars to help participants solve their financial situation without the real world stress of it. The classes in that program include:
Introduction of the avatars and an explanation of each of their current financial situations.
Cash Flow
Methods of Reducing Monthly Expenses
Understanding Credit and How to Improve Your Credit Score
Methods of Income Based on Your Skills
Financial Management Course Review
Our Life Skills Program classes include:
Positive Self-Talk
The Four Agreements You Make with Yourself
Taking Care of Yourself the Way Your Best Friend Would
Prioritization with the Eisenhower Method
Win the Day with the Maxwell Method
You’re the Boss
Throughout the program students receive coaching, complete assignments and have access to mentors, helping them apply each lesson directly to their business in real time. The program also offers free, life-time access to a consortium of business owners to network, ask questions, promote their businesses and get much needed feedback and support.
Since 2020, we’ve helped individuals successfully launch or grow businesses and 95% remain in operation. Each year the number of participants grows.
Additionally almost 200 businesses have participated in our vendor markets, resulting in more than $825,000 in measurable economic impact. Many of these entrepreneurs are the first in their families to own a business—an important step toward multigenerational financial stability and racial equity. To date 88% of our program participants are women. Women make up the majority of single parent households, low income jobs and have fewer economic opportunities for financial stability.
Our model is built on the belief that solutions must be led by the people most affected. More than half of the members of our Board of Directors are graduates of the program and more than half are women. They help shape our curriculum, serve as mentors, and ensure our decisions reflect the lived experiences of our community. Our Executive Director, Leah Ward-Lee, volunteers full-time, bringing her decades of business experience to every aspect of the program—from instruction to mentorship to curriculum development. The organization runs on the dedication of the many subject matter experts who serve as volunteer instructors, coaches and administrators who give their time, expertise and energy to make this work possible.
In 2025, we hired our first paid staff member to support this growth, a Director of Operations. Through a thorough hiring process, we’re delighted to have Kim Murray as the Director of Operations, not just because of her work history and experience, but because she’s a program graduate who successfully launched and continues to operate her business.
What truly sets our program apart is its focus on pairing education with access to capital for our in person participants. Each participant is eligible for up to $1,000 in reimbursement for documented business expenses, distributed in phases as they reach critical benchmarks like registering their business, developing a prototype, producing marketing collateral and participating in public vendor markets. This structure ensures that funding supports meaningful progress and empowers participants to apply what they learn immediately. Due to the scheduling of the classes and how they overlap from one year to the next, distribution of funds to the participants is usually split between the end of the first year and the beginning of the second year.
Our nonprofit helps build multigenerational financial stability in marginalized communities by providing free access to an entrepreneurship program, blending practical education with real-world application, creating a network they can turn to for answers and support and having constant access to mentors and guidance.
Each year the number of applicants to the program increases. We have an application process and conduct interviews for the in person program to help ensure the applicants understand the program and level of commitment to it and the steps needed to complete in order to qualify for the $1,000 reimbursement.
Over the next three years we’d like to be able to expand the 9-month in person program from once a year to twice a year. One class would start in January and the second would start in July. This would allow us to increase our current 50 applicants per class to possibly 100 a year. However, to manage this growth and ensure that each cohort member still gets the same amount of assistance, time, attention and high quality of education, we need to hire more staff.
The next program hire will be a full-time Program Manager who would be focused on managing the program and overseeing the Cohort’s progress. The Program Manager would teach the classes, keep program content updated to meet state and federal guidelines, stay on top of business trends and research to keep the cohort members updated and make changes to the program as needed. This would put in place a dedicated staff member who would be available to Cohort members during the 9-month long program and beyond their graduation as a resource. This support will not only help individuals access opportunities, but also contribute to systemic change by building a pipeline of successful minority-owned businesses that strengthen families, neighborhoods and local economies.
We will also hire a full-time Administrative Assistant to help support both the Director of Operations and the Program Manager as they grow the nonprofit and work with the participants.
One of our main goals over the next three years is to expand our reach and make the program more accessible to individuals who need it the most. Currently our program serves mostly members from local communities, with some distance learners from other states. However, it’s an “in-person” program with bi-weekly zoom meetings, homework and a certain level of required participation. So in addition to our in-person program, we want to be able to help people no matter where they are. Since January we’ve been converting our 9-month in person program to an online platform.
We understand that many of the individuals that we are trying to help, particularly low-income workers, single parents and women, don’t have the extra time or flexibility in their schedules to participate in bi-weekly zoom meetings, markets and complete homework. To make the program more accessible and provide flexibility for those individuals who need it most and to expand our reach to help more people, $1,000 Start-Ups is about to launch the Entrepreneurship program, in an online platform. Phase 2 will launch our Financial Management program. Phase 3 will launch our Life Skills program. Online participants will also be included in our social media platform where they can network, promote and learn from each other.
With the conversion of our 9-month in person program to an online platform, we will broaden our reach from a regional level of marginalized communities to a national level. The access to this training will not only help individuals access opportunities, but also contribute to systemic change by building a pipeline of successful minority-owned businesses that strengthen families, neighborhoods and local economies. Our goal is to see at least 25 online users the first year, understanding that it will have to be marketed and tweaked. With each consecutive year, it’s our goal that the number of online uses will at least double.
The online platform will cover everything the in person programs cover. The curriculum covers Entrepreneurship, Financial Management and Life Skills. We’ve created Avatars for the financial management portion of the class so that they can pick an avatar that resembles their situation and work through the problems without getting stressed about their current financial situation. They will be able to ”coach” as many avatars as they like to deepen their financial acuity.
Hide Full Text
