Access Point

In 2020, District Bridges launched Access Point, our online technical assistance platform which gives businesses access to free training videos and materials on demand. This internet-based tool brings all the resources, knowledge, and experience of business development professionals to the fingertips of business owners through their data-enabled devices. The platform’s professionally produced content covers a variety of critically important subjects designed for self-paced, adult learners to develop their business knowledge and hone skills. We developed Access Point to remove the barrier of access to triaining for businesses who could not attend traditional in-person business development workshops and for those who have other barriers to access like language or accessibility challenges. Access Point builds greater equity into small business support in Washington, DC. 

Phase 2 will launch the partner platform integrated with Salesforce enabling the business support ecosystem to better collaborate and serve businesses holistically. With API integration, Access Point pulls publicly available business data including business license, location, and other valuable information to enable technical assistance providers to better support businesses with compliance. Additionally, through geolocation, the platform will connect business owners directly with technical assistance providers in their area sending those providers automated emails about business signups and prompting them to connect with the business. This integration is where the digital and physical worlds converge making the business owner the focal point of technical assistance. Further, this integration will provide better data about business needs, enabling us to create better training and resources for the platform.

District Bridges fundamentally believes ecosystem development is essential to building thriving, equitable, resilient communities. When community organizations, government agencies, businesses, and residents work together collaboratively we can address even the most intractable challenges. Technology is a critical tool to empower communities with solutions that make collaboration and collective action possible. 

Access Point is a tool that addresses both the capacity and collaboration challenges the small business technical assistance providers are facing in Washington, DC. There are over 37,000 small businesses in DC, however, the 28 Main Street organizations responsible for providing direct technical assistance only serve 3,700 small businesses, meaning many businesses are left out and left behind. Further, most Main Street organizations only have one full-time staff member, significantly limiting their capacity to serve businesses. Through Access Point, rather than a Main Street Director having to provide the same training repeatedly to multiple businesses individually, they can provide businesses with professionally developed video trainings that cover the same topics but are available 24/7/365. This means Main Street Directors can prioritize businesses that require one-on-one support.

Additionally, in September, we are launching the Access Point mobile app which will make the platform even more user-friendly and accessible. According to a 2023 study, 67.8% of web visits are done using mobile, compared to 32.2% that use desktops. For busy business owners, the more easily they are able to access and navigate the resources they need the more likely they are to take advantage of them. 

Along with the launch of the Access Point mobile app, we will be launching the Partner Platform. This platform will be transformational for several reasons. First, through automation, we will be able to better connect businesses with a real technical assistance provider that can support them with in-person technical assistance if needed. This will help to close the gap between the business owner who is looking for help and the technical assistance providers who can give it. This automation will also expand our partners' capacity enabling them to be more consistent in their support and follow through with businesses. 

The Partner Platform will give our technical assistance providers, like Main Street organizations, and other important stakeholders like government agencies the ability to streamline support for small businesses by giving them a single resource to direct businesses to where they can gain access to the information, training, and resources they need to be successful businesses in DC. 

One lesson learned during the Covid-19 pandemic was that every organization was creating content to try to help small businesses. The content was often redundant or poor quality. As we launch the partner platform and develop Access Point to be a one-stop clearinghouse for small business training and resources, we will dynamically shift the small business ecosystem from a fragmented approach to support to a unified comprehensive approach that centers the needs of the small business first and builds support and resources to meet them where they are at.

Access Point was developed for the small business owner in Washington, DC. While the US Small Business Administration defines a “small business” as one employing fewer than 500 employees. By SBA’s definition, there are approximately 72,837 “small businesses” in DC. These businesses employ 243,121 people, accounting for almost half (47.4%) of the District’s private workforce. Among DC’s 72,837 small businesses, 29,958—or 41.1%—are owned by people of color. However, the number of businesses owned by people of color, as well as by women, has grown particularly fast in recent years. These are also the business owners most likely to be excluded from accessing traditional sources of capital and technical assistance. The demographics of those we serve are White: 36%, Black/African American: 45%, Native American: 0.6%, Asian: 4.5%, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0.1%, Biracial: 2.8%, Hispanic: 11%.

While DC boasts of a large number of small businesses per SBA’s standard, District Bridges actually narrows the scope of small businesses significantly. We define a small business as one employing less than 50 employees. By this definition, there are approximately 37,000 small businesses in the District. The reason we narrow the definition of small business is because the challenges a small owner-operated business faces verse a business that has a larger staff and therefore capacity is vastly different. Additionally, through our hyper-local neighborhood-based Main Street programs we also know that the small businesses we are targeting are those who are traditionally less likely to access the support they need - these businesses include women and minority-owned businesses, immigrant-owned businesses, and owner-operated businesses. While Access Point can be a resource for any and every business in the District, our priority is reaching those businesses that experience more barriers to receiving direct support.

Our solution aligns with two of the Challenge’s priorities, business development & procurement, and support scaling. As an organization dedicated to developing solutions to support small, local businesses, District Bridges has developed a standardized process to meet business owners where they are at and work with them to identify their unique goals and aspirations and then align the resources and support that will help them achieve the goals they want to achieve. Additionally, while scale looks different for every single business, we recognize particularly in urban environments experiencing rapid commercial gentrification, that if your business is stagnant, it’s actually dying. We work with businesses to identify their goals and pursue what scaling looks like for them. Most often, our priority is ensuring every business that wants to remain in place can. 

While the goals and aspirations of each business owner are unique, many of the solutions to help them achieve those goals are not. This is where Access Point is an incredible resource. For business owners who are in the weeds of running their business the realm of the possible can be blurry. By creating accessible content that business owners can watch at their convenience, we can introduce ideas that may be initially scary to talk about with a technical assistance professional. Baseline knowledge and language to describe what they want to pursue can be transformational in helping businesses pursue succession planning, business sales, building purchases, and more.

In 2020, District Bridges developed a theory of change that would guide all of our strategic direction and programming into the future. That theory of change includes three ultimate outcomes that we are pursuing. They are: 

1. Community-driven and designed action resulting in equitable, strengthened, and connected communities with a strong sense of place

2. Sustainable and self-determined small businesses

3. Growth-minded organization, setting the standard for nonprofit, community development work

Access Point is a solution that furthers all three of our ultimate outcomes. First, it the platform is building greater equitable access into the traditional model of how businesses access technical assistance while also strengthening the ecosystem through the partner platform. Additionally, Access Point enables businesses to access the type of training they want and need rather than what is being offered by various providers at a single point in time. The partner platform also enables us to support other community development nonprofit organizations in building their internal capacities to have a greater impact in our ecosystem. 

In terms of intermediate outcomes, our goal is to dramatically increase the number of Access Point users over the next year, by leveraging the existing relationships that our partner organizations have. This will enable us not only to holistically serve more businesses but also better collect data about the needs of our target population. Access Point has built in robust data collection and user testing capabilities which enable us to proactively iterate and create solutions based on the trends we are seeing to best meet the needs of our businesses.

A partnership with MIT Solve and Truist would provide District Bridges the opportunity to exponentially increase our reach across the District. There are currently 400 users of the Access Point platform. With your investment, we anticipate increasing our active users to 1,000 over the next year and over 10,000 in next five years. We anticipate this impact to have a ripple effect on the community. Resources that are helpful become sticky and we believe tha Access Point has the ability to become one of those resources that is synonymous with small business support. We are confident that this platform can become the single source clearinghouse and go to resource for DC businesses accessing the support they need. 

There are two primary audiences for Access Point, our small businesses and small businesss technical assistance providers. The platform was developed specifically to meet the needs of small business owners in Washington, DC. However, as we have scaled the platform we have developed the partner platform to help technical assistance providers work smarter not harder. The DC Department of Housig and Community Development has been our key funder over the last few years, they have continued to help connect us with other DC agencies to further expand the content available on the platform to support businesses with government compliance. The API integration we are currently testing on Access Point is using the open-source data available from the DC government. This data will enable us to support businesses with compliance but also give superior data about our businesses which will inform future interventions and development priorities.

District Bridges' most deeply held value is relationships. Our program staff do in-person outreach on a weekly basis as well as daily social media postings, and a weekly business newsletter. Through consistency and follow through we have built trust with business owners and built a reputation for going the extra mile to support all of our businesses. Additionally, we believe in continuous improvement. Each year, we conduct an organization-wide assessment that evaluates how our programs are performing and how was can improve their impact. We utilize the feedback of our program advisory boards, businesses, and community residents to hear directly from our stakeholders through interviews, surveys, and visioning sessions. This feedback is then incorporated into the planning for the coming year. This year with the launch of the partner platform, Access Point will become another tool of consistency as automated correspondence will help keep businesses engaged and learning.

As cities across the country face rapid gentrification and small neighborhood-serving businesses are pushed out in favor of new businesses that can afford higher rents, community development organizations need new tools to help businesses be competitive and remain in place. Supporting business owners who are at risk of displacement must go beyond simply providing support, we must look at dismantling the systemic inequities within our cities that make certain businesses more vulnerable than others. 

Access Point seeks to be a tool that breaks down the inequities of access to the training and resources businesses need to be successful. Through this platform, location, schedule, disabilities, and language are no longer barriers to entry. Additionally, by maximizing the time of technical assistance providers and streamlining and automating many of the common necessary communications we are also building a stronger ecosystem. 

Investing in and strengthening the small business support ecosystem will enable providers to increase their internal capacities so that they can exponentially grow their external impact in our communities. Over the next year with the launch of the Partner Platform, we plan to add 30 new partners and 20 new courses. In five years, we want Access Point to be the single entry point to technical assistance training and resources for the city of Washington, DC. We want to partner with all the relevant government agencies and technical assistance providers to build a platform that centers the small business owner and sets the standard for integrated small business support in our country. 

A partnership with Truist Foundation and MIT Solve would provide District Bridges the capacity to build equitable, resilient, connected communities here in DC where all people and businesses thrive together. We believe leveraging the knowledge of respected institutions like MIT and Truist will enable us to improve our platform, and rapidly test and iterate new solutions that will further the vision of Access Point. Additionally, we believe that only through strategic networking can we propel Access Point forward to reach the businesses we are trying to serve. The benefit of the MIT Solve network would be invaluable to us in reaching national and local partners. 

Through the workshops and wraparound services provided to Challenge Finalists, we could really benefit from support and guidance in making meaningful pitches to investors for funds to expand the training capacity of this solution. These investors would include government agencies as well. We want to gain skills in helping them perceive the importance of this solution for the entire economic ecosystem.