THE TABLE
Elevate Community Business Academy (CBA) Spring 2022 Graduation Celebration & Dinner | 6.28.2022
Willmar, MN
Students gather, getting corsages pinned carefully onto them, faces smiling at one another as they arrive. Their families come in, staying in the background snapping pictures. It is a big night—graduation.
The students have met once a week for three hours for the last 12 weeks as part of the Elevate Community Business Academy. Sarah Swedburg, Business Development Manager
HUTCHINSON—More than two decades of helping entrepreneurs get started in southwest Minnesota has taught Scott Marquardt many lessons, but perhaps none so important as these.
This place grows them, and they like it here.
How else to explain the Douglass brothers, Carl, Brian and Sean, and their commitment to Douglass Innovations in northern Kandiyohi County? They turn dreams into finished products on a 24-hour cycle taking advantage of advanced 3D printer technology.
“They could do this anywhere,”
WILLMAR—The Kandiyohi County and City of Willmar’s Economic Development Commission began training the second Elevate class of entrepreneurs and local business owners Sept. 16.
The 12-week Elevate course offers hands-on training in business planning and management while providing business education and coaching specifically tailored to underserved minority entrepreneurs in the county.
The EDC partnered with the Southwest Initiative Foundation in 2017 to design and implement a Business Retention
WILLMAR—Learning how to successfully prepare, operate and manage a small business over the course of 12 weeks, five local entrepreneurs graduated June 16 from the first Elevate class in Minnesota.
In a 2017 survey, the Kandiyohi County and City of Willmar Economic Development Commission found an increasing number of minority-owned businesses opening in and around Willmar.
The EDC report was sponsored with a grant from Southwest Initiative Foundation to design and implement a Business Retention
