Banking on Communities

The nonprofit lender backing small businesses Up North

By Kierstin Gunsberg | May 17, 2025

From crunching numbers to pinpointing a target market, launching and running a business can feel like a fresh experiment every day. But one thing most seasoned entrepreneurs will tell you is it’s all about who you know.

That’s how Nick Olson connected with Venture North, a nonprofit lender that provides low-interest loans and mentorship to small businesses across northwest Michigan. At a networking event at Commongrounds in Traverse City, a friend suggested that Olson (who recently opened the indoor public gym and climbing facility Elev8 and wellness startup Hearth Sauna) should check out Venture North.

As it turned out, the organization, which started as the economy recovered from The Great Recession, was just a stone’s throw away in the same building as that networking event.

“Everything we do is available to small businesses for free,” explains Venture North’s president, Laura Galbraith. “Our mission is to serve them across the 10-county region.”

One of the ways they help is by guiding new entrepreneurs through the complexities of starting or expanding a business, connecting them with experts in everything from tax laws to marketing and through partnerships with other business-focused organizations like 20Fathoms.

Besides free consulting, they also offer accessible low-cost loans, something that can be hard for new businesses to come by. Last year, Galbraith and her team secured over $1.5 million in loans for 22 northern Michigan businesses.

“We try to make our loans available at an affordable price,” says Galbraith of the organization’s three loan programs which cater to different stages of business growth.

The New Business Micro Loan offers up to $50,000 to help startups get off the ground, while the Energy Efficiency Micro Loan provides the same amount for businesses making energy-saving upgrades. For more established businesses, the Existing Small Business Loan offers up to $350,000 to support expansion. Some of their most recent loan recipients include Traverse City cheesemakers Saltless Sea Creamery, Kalkaska’s youth-centered L.A. Gymnastics & Fitness, and a mixed-use development in downtown Manistee.

“A lot of times, we’re working with businesses that don’t have the cash flow or reserves to pay higher interest on loans,” says Galbraith, noting that because Venture North is a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), it’s able to offer below-prime interest rates to borrowers.

Successful Businesses = Successful Communities

What exactly is a CDFI, and why does it matter for northern Michigan? Traditional banks are often limited in how many brand-new businesses they can fund, especially in rural and underserved areas where the stakes are bigger and the market smaller. All 10 counties served by Venture North are considered rural by U.S. Census standards.

CDFIs, on the other hand, are built for exactly this kind of lending. Certified by the U.S. Treasury, they’re required to direct most of their loans to the very businesses that banks tend to reject.

Galbraith and her colleague Tim Ervin, Venture North’s resource development and communications specialist, say that’s important because when small businesses get up and off the ground, they’re able to make the communities they operate in better places to live and work by offering more resources and more jobs.

Jobs—and how many could potentially be created by the launch of a new business—are top of mind as they go through loan applications. (Last year, the organization received 237 applications.) According to the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, 1.9 million Michigan employees are employed by a small business. That adds up to 48.3 percent of the total workers throughout the state.

“Our loan committee [and] our board is really looking at ‘what is the socioeconomic impact of a project?’” explains Galbraith.

As the winter lull makes way for a surge in spring applications, Galbraith and Ervin say that funding essential services that are sorely lacking Up North will be another big focus. “We’ve been helping a lot of daycare centers with coaching, consulting, and SBA loans for startup capital,” Galbraith says.

And, as conversations around agricultural supply chain issues ramp up, they say that farms and food producers (especially those working to bring more eggs to market!) and the restaurants that source from them are getting a closer look.

As those USDA loan programs that cater to agriculture industries face uncertainty due to the recent federal funding freezes, Galbraith says that so far, Venture North hasn’t been directly impacted but, “We don’t know what may change in the near future. Fortunately, $1 million of the USDA capital has been ‘defederalized,’ so we don’t have to worry about those funds getting taken away.”

In the meantime, she says, “We pay attention to what the community needs,” by checking in with Venture North’s team members who are dispersed all over the 10-county area for insight on what’s needed and where.

Investing in (New) Ideas

One thing Galbraith and Ervin say they don’t want to see is too much repetition. Instead, they want to meet the needs of northern Michigan by giving all different types of businesses a chance to make their mark.

In Traverse City, Olson’s startup, Hearth Sauna (located next to his other business, Elev8) presented a unique social offering outside of the bar scene. There, guests sip water and gather between a toasty 160-degree sauna and a chilly ice plunge, sparking conversations along the way.

“We’re trying to give people a happy, healthy space to be with others, especially in the winter months when people can kind of pull into themselves,” says Olson. A loan from Venture North “allowed us to do it faster” and, he explains, to reach more people on the east side of TC by helping him secure enough funding to launch a second location at Mt. Holiday.

That doesn’t mean Olson didn’t still have to jump through the proverbial lending hoops—he stayed busy gathering all of the documents, numbers, and info that banks would want to see. Likewise, anyone borrowing from Venture North is counseled on the realities of the market.

“We talk about risks and challenges with all of our clients,” and ask the tough questions, like will this business be profitable? says Ervin.

From start to finish, Olson still found the process to be faster than what he’s experienced with traditional lenders. Once the paperwork was filled out, “Venture North set up a meeting, and I met face-to-face with someone who asked me a few more questions,” he says. “About a month later, I had secured a loan, which allowed us to open our second location.”

But, Venture North doesn’t just hand out checks and walk away.

“There’s a lot of other resources that come along with the loans. They want to help you grow and assist you,” says Olson, who saw a huge boost in traffic to Hearth Sauna after Venture North sent out a press release about the new location. “They also set up a free marketing meeting where we received around 20 hours of completely free services. An expert talked through our business, put together a comprehensive report, and we still reference it every month in our marketing meetings.”

Still, notes Galbraith, “It’s not a relationship for life. Our goal is for them to reach a stage where they [the business founders] may not need us anymore. Sometimes it’s sad when they get there,” she admits.

Then again, one of the best parts of letting those founders ride off into the sunset is when they return as a success story. “Some want to become advisors or mentors,” Galbraith says. “They want to give back, work with startups, and share their stories, which is really fabulous to see.”