Client & Projects - Entrepreneurship

Introduction.  For many years the housing and community development clinic has assisted entrepreneurs in starting and expanding their businesses.  As with the housing side of the clinic, we look for businesses that will be community based and/or employ community residents and that will have a lasting beneficial impact in the neighborhood.  Our caseload has a mix of basic startup services and more complex corporate and financial activities.  Our clients include individuals, local Community Development Corporations (CDCs), and national nonprofit organizations.

Business development.  Our practice is varied.  We represent individuals and community groups.  We work with for profit and non profit organizations.  We work with startups and with established business.  For example, we have assisted a CDC in setting up a network of new CDC owned businesses.  We assisted another CDC in spinning-off two of their businesses to worker ownership.  For yet another CDC, we prepared proposals and operating manuals for a micro-loan fund and for a community credit union.  We represented a local resident who ran a social service program for a national nonprofit to spin her program off and to create a separately funded, free standing nonprofit organization.  This involved complicated financial transactions in which grants made to the national nonprofit were transferred, mid-grant, to the new local organization.

We have also assisted dozens of small business owners and entrepreneurs wishing to start or expand businesses.  In this regard, we have put together financing for major asset acquisitions, created partnerships, protected intellectual property, negotiated commercial leases and negotiated bank loans.

On a smaller scale, we have assisted clients, often residents in the buildings with which we work, to set up home-based businesses.  These produce additional income for the entrepreneur and additional goods and services for consumers.  Moreover, the skills learned and utilized by the entrepreneur in operating the business are translatable into other areas of the entrepreneur’s life.  They build social capital that is valuable to the individual and to the surrounding community.

Entrepreneurial training.  Since 1998, the clinic has offered each semester one of a variety of entrepreneurship training courses.  These typically involve weekly two hour classes for 8-10 weeks, covering a variety of legal and non-legal topics such as choice of form, licensing, insurance, financing, accounting, record keeping and creating a business plan.  Students for these classes are selected from among lower-income residents of the District of Columbia.  Information about the courses is distributed by the clinic and many of its community collaborators.

During the past year, in addition to the entrepreneurship course, we offered a course on financial literacy and one on negotiation.  These courses differed in format from the entrepreneurship classes, usually being one or two day workshops, held on weekends.  For these classes, as well as for the entrepreneurship classes, we have brought in outside experts to teach when necessary or appropriate.

Typically about 30 people begin the class and 20 to 23 people complete it.  The feedback from participants has been very positive, yet each year, we do a self-evaluation.  As a result of these reviews, we have honed the courses and developed new ones to meet the changing needs of our potential students.  No other course offered in the District offers the combination of legal and business information or the possibility of technical assistance to bring the new information to bear on a start up or expanded business.

Collaborators

• Funders
• The Enterprise Foundation
• US Department of Housing and Urban Development
• DC Department of Employment Services
• DC Housing Authority
• Government
• DC Department of Housing and Community Development
• DC Housing Authority
• Community
• One DC (Formerly Manna Community Development Corp.)
• Latino Economic Development Corporation
• Various MainStreets Programs
• Latin American Youth Center
• Other
• United Bank
• CityFirst Bank
• Capital Area Asset Building Corporation (CAAB)
• Coalition of Non Profit Housing and Economic Developer
• Recent student work products
  • Various Corporate documents
      - Articles of incorporation
      - Bylaws
      - Corporate resolutions
  • Applications for federal income tax exemption
• Memos on the feasibility of a micro-loan fund or credit union
• Memoranda of understanding
• Curricula for various courses
  - Entrepreneurship training
  - Financial literacy
  - Negotiation

	Harrison Institute for Public Law Georgetown University Law Center 111 F Street NW, Suite 102 Washington, DC 20001 Phone: 202-662-9600 Fax: 202-662-9613 Email: see staff link above