About New Growth
About Us
New Growth is West Central Community Development Corporation supporting rural community development in the west central Missouri region. We are growing to serve more of rural Missouri and Kansas.
Our Mission
New Growth’s mission is to build local ownership and lasting livelihoods from the deep rural roots of existing and emerging assets within communities.
What We Do
We build the entrepreneurship resources and culture that rural people and places need to thrive through four areas of focus: Credit & Lending, Business Development, Food Systems, and Transportation.
Lending & Credit Building
Our financing arm, New Growth Capital, is an SBA microlending intermediary and emerging Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI). New Growth Capital builds the pipeline of bankable rural businesses with micro-enterprise financing and credit building.
We finance entrepreneurs who have the character and capacity to make it but lack the credit, collateral, size and/or years in business needed to obtain traditional bank financing.
We help individuals and entrepreneurs establish and improve credit histories. This involves establishing active trade lines and credit bureau reporting as a member of the national Credit Builders Alliance.
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Business Development
We operate the SBA-designated New Growth Women’s Business Center, which serves men and women in 15 rural Missouri and Kansas counties. The New Growth WBC provides training, technical assistance, one-on-one business counseling, mentorship, peer-to-peer support, and assistance with certifications and connecting with other resources.
New Growth also convenes and coordinates the START HERE Business Acceleration Network. This team of resource partners works together through referrals and follow up to leave no rural entrepreneur behind. START HERE partners collaborate in advancing entrepreneurship as a rural economic development strategy. We want entrepreneurs to “Start Here. Grow Here. Stay Here.”
Food Systems
New Growth’s Food Systems Program with parent West Central Missouri Community Action Agency aims to increase the availability, accessibility, and affordability of locally produced foods for community and economic development. We work from rural communities to urban neighborhoods on building the capacity and connections that area food and farm entrepreneurs, as well as community-based initiatives, need to succeed.
Activity supported by more than $2.4 million in USDA and other grants since 2019 includes: Beginner farmer training in wholesale production and marketing; facilitation of business-to-business “food value chain” collaboration, including the Kansas City Food Hub; Farm-to-School programming; coordination of Double Up Food Bucks farmers’ market incentives; farm conservation education and technical assistance; and annual Farm to Fork Summit & Expo networking events.
Additionally, New Growth is a co-director, in partnership with the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, of the USDA-funded, five-state Heartland Regional Food Business Center.
Transportation
New Growth Transit, LLC, operated by parent West Central Missouri Community Action Agency, is a social enterprise organized to provide much needed community mobility coordination with volunteer drivers.
New Growth Transit provides rides through a point-to-point scheduling system. New Growth Transit’s base of volunteer, reimbursed drivers respond to ride requests. So do other transportation providers that participate in the scheduling system, which is designed to maximize and optimize available resources.
New Growth Transit works with communities, employers, healthcare organizations and others to meet constituent needs and build pools of funding to pay for rides.
In accordance with federal law and U.S. Department of the Treasury policy, this institution is prohibited from discriminating based on race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability. Submit a complaint of discrimination, by mail to U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Civil Rights and Equal Employment Opportunity , 1500 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20220, (202) 622-1160 (phone), (202) 622-0367 (fax), or email crcomplaints@treasury.gov