Driving Our Economy Forward: TVFCU Idea Leap Grant

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF) — If you’re looking to start a small business, look no further than TVFCU.

The Tennessee Valley Federal Credit Union has $225,000 to give away next year.

Applications are open if you’d like to compete for some of that Idea Leap Grant money.

Let’s see how it’s driving our economy forward.

“Idea Leap grant is an offshoot of our Idea Leap loan program,” said Tommy Nix, TVFCU’s VP of Business and Commercial Services. “The loan program started in 2016. It was so successful that we wanted to find another way to reinvest the proceeds from the loan, and we started the grant in 2018. So this will be our 7th grant, and when we finish up, we will have invested over $700,000 in grants into the small business community in our 17 counties.”

“I’m the owner of Cocoa Asante, and I am a previous grant winner for the Idea Leap Grant Competition,” said Ella Livingston. “Cocoa Asante is an artist and chocolate company, were we handcraft chocolate bars and bon bons that are literally to pretty to eat. We source our (unintelligible) from our home country Guyana. And we manufacture our bon bons and bars right here in Chattanooga.”

Winning the grant meant honestly, everything to my business. We actually applied three times before we even made it to the next step. And the third time we tried, we not only made it to the next step, but we took it all the way and brought home $30,000. What’s awesome is that typically for businesses like mine, it’s difficult accessing capital, and $30,000, especially for a grant, is hard to come by. And so we’re really grateful to TVFCU for providing opportunity and access to resources like this.

“Any business that can potentially be a member of the credit union qualifies, if they’ve been in business at least a year, they have at least one other employee besides the owner,” Nix said. “That employee can be part time, seasonal, whatever. We’re fairly flexible in that criteria. They have to have no more than 25 employees and no more than $2.5 million in revenue. We are kicking off the Chattanooga region today. We’re announcing that we are opening applications this morning for all regions, but we are focused on Chattanooga this morning.”

“The goal of anything that you do like this reinvesting back into the community, because that’s how we look at it as an investment in the small business and an investment in the community,” Nix said. “And there are multiple benefits of that. One is that obviously we can make those businesses stronger. And as we make that business stronger, it makes Chattanooga stronger, or the Ocoee region or the Northwest Georgia region. So the phrase I like to use is high tide rises, all boats. And so we believe that we’re making the business community stronger, which makes Chattanooga overall stronger.