17 groups across state to share nearly $1.5M in grants from NC IDEA Foundation

DURHAM – Seventeen groups across North Carolina will split nearly $1.5 million in grant money from the NC IDEA Foundation.

The grants are part of NC IDEA’S Ecosystem program.

Recipients are:

Bunker Labs (Durham; Serving All NC)
Code the Dream (Durham; Serving All NC)
Crisp Small Business Resource Center at ECU (Greenville; Serving Eastern NC)
ImagineHub (Greensboro; Serving Eastern NC)
Mountain BizWorks (Asheville; Serving Western NC)
Natural Capital Investment Fund (Chapel Hill; Serving Eastern NC)
Network for Entrepreneurs in Wilmington (Wilmington)
North Carolina Business Council (Raleigh; Serving All NC)
Piedmont Business Capital (Greensboro; Serving the Triad)
Provident1898 (Durham)
RIoT (Raleigh and Wilson; Serving Wilson and Eastern NC)
S.G. Atkins Community Development Corp. (Winston-Salem)
Thread Capital (Raleigh; Serving All NC)
VentureAsheboro (Asheboro; Serving South of Greensboro)
Ventureprise at UNC Charlotte (Charlotte)
Winston Starts (Winston-Salem)
Young Founders Institute (Chapel Hill; Serving the Research Triangle)

“There hasn’t been a more vital time in recent history to support the organizations that are helping people start high growth companies,” said Thom Ruhe, CEO of NC IDEA about the grants. “Adding these 17 organizations’ efforts to our ECOSYSTEM partner network will improve our ability to support new firm formation and the jobs they create; which will be vital to our economic recovery,” Ruhe concluded.

The recipients were selected from 65 applications.

NC IDEA noted that it “required that proposals focus on supporting “under-represented” entrepreneurs building scalable businesses; defined as: (1) entrepreneurs that identify as Female, and/or (2) entrepreneurs that identify as Minority (or Persons of Color), and/or (3) entrepreneurs that are located in counties designated as Tier 1 or Tier 2 by the N.C. Department of Commerce. Proposals had to focus on at least one of these three populations of under-represented entrepreneurs, but could aim to support more than one of the described populations.”

Ecosystem grants earlier this year went to: