From theory to practice to scale: Mastercard Strive USA’s impact on small businesses in year 2

Mastercard Strive USA significantly grew its portfolio, impact, and voice in Year 2 and set the stage for strengthening small business ecosystems further in Year 3.

When the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth launched its U.S. small business-focused initiative, Mastercard Strive USA, in 2022, its guiding principles were heavily grounded in lessons learned from previous programs.

Most notably was the experience of partnering with Grameen America, a nonprofit community development finance institution (CDFI) that provides microfinance loans to low-income, entrepreneurially-minded women. The Center quickly recognized the outsized impact that came with supporting Grameen America’s digital transformation from a mostly analog organization to a technologically-driven one. Philanthropic investments in software and related change management systems drove efficiencies, unlocked more capital, and improved the experience for their small business clients. Mastercard saw similar results in other programs they sponsored and, importantly, observed how digitally-enabled organizations were also much more resilient to economic shocks such as the global pandemic.

Being a party to Grameen America’s skyrocketing growth, including its expansion to 23 physical locations and deployment of more than $4 billion in capital into 200,000+ women, crystallized the three pillars that would make up the foundation of Mastercard Strive USA: help small business intermediaries and small businesses go digital, get access to affordable capital, and grow their networks and know-how.

Now, two years after launch, Mastercard Strive USA is helping 34 different organizations across the country achieve the same type of impact. 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 (including numerous CDFIs). This accelerated progress signals the program’s potential to exceed ambitious goals and deepen long-term impact on small business ecosystems nationwide.

Growing the portfolio, reach, and impact

In its first year, Mastercard Strive USA took the lessons learned from its digital transformation investments as it built its grantee network, aligning with both national organizations such as Next Street, Community Reinvestment Fund, USA (CRF) and Inclusiv, as well as nonprofits with deep roots and connections to specific communities and regions such as Our Village United, St. Louis Development Corporation, and Birmingham Business Resource Center. The products and services Mastercard Strive USA supported in Year 1 through its partner network reached nearly 70,000 businesses in 43 states, lifting entrepreneurs at a moment when several key factors were converging, including record-high small business growth in the U.S. and unprecedented initiatives directing billions of federal dollars toward entrepreneurs from historically underfunded communities.

In the past year, Mastercard Strive USA grantees have hit a number of key growth milestones, including:

• CRF significantly grew the reach and capabilities of their CRF Connect platform, which connects community lenders, technical assistance providers, and small businesses. Over their initial grant period they reached nearly 80,000 small businesses and supported the deployment of nearly $30 million loans to small businesses.
• Grameen America expanded its digital transformation with the introduction of a mobile app for both staff and borrowers. The app, available in both English and Spanish, allows borrowers to more easily stay on top of loan payments, as well as offers a host of educational resources. It will soon be rolled out to all 86,000 members.
• Next Street launched and grew NYC Funds Finder, a platform integrated with New York City’s Small Business Services that provides one-stop shopping for entrepreneurs where they can obtain business permits, find business advisors, and get access to affordable capital through a host of CDFIs. More than five thousand small businesses have used the platform to date, receiving more than 830 hours of technical assistance and connecting directly to scores of community lenders.
• Momentus Capital facilitated the flow of tens of billions in affordable capital to communities through their underwriting, alternative lending, and credit products.
• Accion Opportunity Fund has nearly completed a new online learning platform that provides a customized experience to each small business owner who uses it, highlighting the specific information they need when they need it.
• Accessity is piloting SmartLend, a tool built with predictive analytics to streamline the mobile-friendly, app-based loan application process. The tool will increase loan deployment to underserved communities.

Sharpening and growing our collective voice

In its second year, Mastercard Strive USA launched a new event series around the U.S. to share its learnings with key leaders to drive new collaborations and locally-led change.

These five events, “Mastercard Strive USA Summits,” were held in New York, Washington D.C., St. Louis, Raleigh and Kansas, bringing together leaders from national and local government, philanthropic and private sectors, alongside the small business community, to discuss topics such as how to best tap into unprecedented federal dollars or use new technologies to unlock capital to help underserved entrepreneurs. Many of these summits included a separate policy roundtable focused on ensuring the effective and targeted deployment of federal investments to grow entrepreneurship, such as the $10 billion State Small Business Credit Initiative and the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a role in which grantees like Opportunity Finance Network and Inclusiv are already deeply entrenched.

To create more awareness around the challenges and opportunities facing small businesses and their intermediaries in the U.S., Mastercard Strive USA also prioritized storytelling in year two, elevating the stories and insights of its grantee network and covering cross-cutting topics within the small business landscape through various blog articles, while also garnering media coverage in Forbes and The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Through these concerted efforts to foster connection, the exchange of ideas, and drive lasting change, Mastercard Strive USA has put significant emphasis on surfacing and sharing learnings from its work. This will continue into 2025, with coalition-building emerging as an avenue to scale community-based initiatives across its growing network of grantees.

Building a program that is more than a sum of parts

Although we’re still strengthening the linkages among our partners, the benefits of small business intermediaries forging both likely and unlikely unions within the program are already emerging.

For example, in California, Mastercard Strive USA helped fund a first-of-its-kind collaboration between two similarly mission-driven grantees — Next Street and Community Reinvestment Fund, USA — to bring the new California Loan Match program to life to start dispersing the state’s $1.2 billion allocation from the U.S. Department of Treasury’s State Small Business Credit Initiative. With each organization focused on their respective strengths — Next Street handling the go-to-market strategy, and CRF utilizing its cloud-based technology, CRF Connect, to match businesses with lenders via its proprietary matching algorithm — as of October 2024 the unique partnership resulted in over 120,000 page views, 4,000 applications submitted, and 2,600 matches between small businesses and lenders.

This type of intra-portfolio collaboration among grantees signals Mastercard Strive USA’s intentions as it heads into its third year. With a solid network of grantees already in place, the focus will shift from growing the portfolio to deepening relationships with existing grantees and supporting meaningful collaborations as the mission evolves into establishing a resilient, long-lasting small-business ecosystem nationwide.