Regional Economic Development Center President

Laurel Adams

‘It’s been an incredible pleasure to work with so many inventive entrepreneurs and see them enter New Hampshire’s ecosystem and be able to start and grow their businesses,’ says Laurel Adams of her organization’s New Americans Fund, which supports businesses launched by refugees and immigrants in New Hampshire.

Laurel Adams is president of the Raymond-based Regional Economic Development Center, one of 10 regional development centers in New Hampshire whose mission is to retain and create jobs. Through its various programs, the REDC offers technical assistance, financing and business development training to disadvantaged borrowers who have more challenges finding funding through traditional sources. Among its programs is the New Americans Loan Fund, which focuses on supporting businesses launched by refugees and immigrants in New Hampshire.

Q. Can you talk about your New Americans Loan Fund?

A. It’s a statewide program that we run that was born out of a couple of different events. The city of Concord, which is one of the four welcoming communities in New Hampshire, reached out to us via my colleague in Concord, (Capital Regional Development Council President) Stephen Heavener, to ask us if we could look at running a microloan fund specifically tied to immigrants and refugees, who traditionally have a tougher time getting startup financing, for various reasons. It could be cultural barriers, lack of net worth, lack of credit history — there’s a whole host of reasons why it can be more challenging. The idea was if we could give them a hand up earlier on and get them ready for bank financing, they could enter the market earlier and be able to jump up the income ladder.

Concurrently, a second program that we run, called the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy, showed us that the only demographic in New Hampshire that had grown at that time were foreign-born immigrants. We had several programs to come out of that research, so it really made sense to us to look at this market.

We started kind of quietly in Concord in 2016, and by the end of 2017 it became very clear that there was more statewide demand. In the spring of 2018, we launched the program statewide and began raising equity to fund the loans and support the technical assistance for borrowers.

Q. How many businesses has the program supported so far?

A. To date, we’ve had 35 loans all over the state — everywhere from Laconia to Nashua to Portsmouth to Dover, a huge variety of businesses. It’s been an incredible pleasure to work with so many inventive entrepreneurs and see them enter New Hampshire’s ecosystem and be able to start and grow their businesses.

Q. How do you do your outreach?

A. I spent time visiting other similar loan programs in Maine, Massachusetts and Connecticut, and the lesson that we learned is that you have to have community outreach. So we went to a lot of community group meetings. I attended some wonderful church services and was able to speak with parishioners after. We went to festivals, refugee and immigrant resettlement and aid groups — a lot of grassroots outreach.

What we have found is that our clients are really the best marketing and referral source we have. They have a great experience with us, and a lot of them stay in touch years after their initial loans are paid off. They send people to us all the time, and they have become our biggest referral source.

Q. What size are the loans you provide?

A. We use the Small Business Administration definition of a microloan, which is $50,000 or under, but in reality our loans usually start at about $10,000. This specific program was designed to be a startup fund, and $50,000 seemed to be an appropriate amount in New Hampshire.

We also do all our loan servicing, and a big component of that is the technical assistance that comes with your loan. We help businesses with every aspect. Your traditional business advising would be marketing, profit margin, sales strategy, developing projections. But we go further.

We have a graphic designer on staff that helps with logos, websites, social media photography. Our accountant helps businesses set up their QuickBooks. Everyone in the organization helps in some way. Our goal in the 24 to 36 months that they’re with us is to get them to the point where they’re completely bankable and ready to move on to the traditional market.

Q. Can you give an example of a business you’ve supported through the fund?

A. An example I can give is someone we worked with who was in financial services and had spent nine years in a refugee camp and then came here and had to start over. It was just an incredible pleasure and a wonderful warming moment to see them open their own financial services agency. They’ve now grown that to four different offices and are completely launched way beyond us, but it’s a real point of pride for REDC to have been a part of that evolution and helping that person succeed and get back to the core business that was really their passion.