April is National Financial Literacy Month, a month dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of financial literacy. If you have ever considered yourself having little to no education on finances, then you are not alone! It does not matter if you have just started earning or have been earning for a long time, every day is a chance to reflect upon your spendings and improve your finances.
Grow Nebraska Women’s Business Center celebrates Financial Literacy Month by offering resources that you may need to become a bankable new business. Being bankable is one of the most important things to start out. Your business can’t be a success without funding to launch it. You need to have the awareness of how the financial process works.
GNWBC has partnered up with some incredible resources such as Nebraska Enterprise Fund (NEF) and Lending Link to help with this. Lending Link provides responsive financial coaching coupled with affordable alternative loans in a low-income business and supporting long term financial stability. While NEF provides business development services and financing to micro and small businesses across Nebraska who are traditionally disadvantaged businesses. This includes people of color, low income, women, and veterans.
We asked a couple of the experts their thoughts on being bankable. NEF’s Deputy Director of Lending Jamel Hamilton states, “Background research is very important in understanding the need of your product/service and who is going to buy into that product/service. Being able to understand these two facets will make you more confident when conducting your business. Also understanding that it is ongoing research as market trends and communities change. So being sure you are being open.”
First National Bank of Omaha, Community and Employee Involvement Manager, Johnny Nesbit states, “Make sure your business looks “bankable” or creditable. If someone you didn’t know wanted, you to invest thousand or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in their business wouldn’t you do your research on that business before you truly considered investing? So do lenders.
Johnny goes on to say, “There are several ways for a business to ensure that they are bankable or attractive to banks and other financial institutions. They include making sure your business is structured properly, maintaining accurate financial records, developing a comprehensive business plan, building strong credit history, maintaining healthy cash flow, and keeping debt levels low.” This is just a little advice these two gentlemen had to offer.
We want to help everyone in the GNWBC community celebrate this Financial Literacy Month and honor this upcoming Tax Day by offering you the resources you may need. Lending Link has an opportunity to file taxes for free. While NEF has a series about financial bail coming up called Building a Business: Legal Series. For more information on this please contact us or visit our website! We would love to help you!
About the GROW Nebraska® Women’s Business Center
The Grow Nebraska® Women’s Business Center’s mission since 2021 is to serve all Women, Cultures and Communities in achieving their Educational, Professional and Entrepreneurial goals. We believe in the potential of Women, Minorities, Immigrants and Families and choose to Educate, Train and help them obtain successful business ownership and employment.
