Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month by Supporting Spanish-speaking Entrepreneurs

Each year, from September 15 to October 15, Hispanic Heritage Month celebrates and uplifts Latinx, Central, South Americans, and people of Spanish descent for their achievements, culture, and contributions to the community and society.

This Hispanic Heritage Month, Start Small Think Big is honing in on our goal to have 25% of the entrepreneurs we assist be from the Latinx community and be able to provide services to them in Spanish if needed. According to the SBA, an estimated 4.65 million Hispanic-owned businesses in the U.S. have grown by 34% in the past ten years, making them the fastest-growing segment of U.S. small businesses.?

It is paramount for small business owners to receive assistance in their native tongue and the languages they are most comfortable communicating. True language accessibility is what we strive for because we believe small business owners need a wide range of support, and language should not be a barrier to access.?

This year alone, we've turned our mission into action, hosting 10+ workshops directly in Spanish or interpreted into Spanish across all of our finance, legal and marketing programs, and community. We've also onboarded about 20 Spanish-speaking small business owners with a wide range of needs and types of businesses. We know we have a long way to go and have worked to address and own some of the hurdles we face trying to build multi-lingual support systems.?

One of the pertinent issues is trust building between our organization and Spanish-speaking communities. Due to a long history of predatory behavior by institutions, especially towards Black and Latinx communities, there is a strong culture of entrepreneurship in the Latinx community. Still, many businesses prefer to operate informally and within their communities and do not see the benefit or value of seeking external assistance—especially when the perception is that nothing is truly free and there will always be a catch.?

We also know that we need to dedicate more to recruiting Spanish-speaking volunteers to provide finance, marketing, and legal technical assistance for Spanish-speaking small business owners.?

• We need Spanish-speaking support for workshops on key financial topics and direct services in bookkeeping, pricing, and projections.?
• We need pro-bono legal professionals to help Spanish-speaking small business owners with contracts, entity selection, corporate governance advice, trademarks, and commercial lease reviews.?
• We want to offer direct marketing services in Spanish and not ask entrepreneurs to come with a translator and/or an interpreter.?

While our organization engages with a large number of volunteers, over 2,900 in 2021 alone, only a small amount have Spanish language capacity to support Spanish-speaking small business owners. Unfortunately, our volunteer capacity is currently unable to meet the needs of small business owners needing assistance in Spanish.?

Our solution is to change intentionally. Strengthening our relationships with trusted community partners and members already known in the community and being present at local events has allowed us to grow the Start Small Think Big brand through consistency and dedication. We work with a group of cooperative women leaders who share stories about the value of our services. In turn, we incorporate their feedback and the feedback of the larger community into our strategic and operational planning.?

The road to a more language-inclusive organization depends on our internal policies too. We are committed to hiring staff with language capacity to support our monolingual Spanish-speaking clients better and improve processes and resources. Our free workshops and content are interpreted in Spanish and other languages, and we have a growing library of Spanish-recorded resources on various topics.

Most importantly, since connecting skill-based volunteer professionals to small business owners is a significant component of our small business services, we are completely revamping our volunteer programs. We plan to partner with affinity groups within corporations on identifying and reaching out to professional organizations and other groups that would allow us to connect with prospective Spanish-speaking volunteers with the support of our Associate Board.?

HOW YOU CAN GET INVOLVED

If you or your organization has Spanish language capacity and is interested in deepening their commitment to diversity and inclusion by partnering with Start Small Think Big and supporting our community of small business owners, please reach out to us.?

We partner with volunteers from the United States but also welcome volunteers from Spanish-speaking countries with overlapping time zones.?

Learn more about volunteer opportunities and become a volunteer today. https://www.startsmallthinkbig.org/volunteer-support-small-businesses?utm_campaign=resource&utm_medium=organic&utm_source=LinkedIn&utm_content=become_a_volunteer&utm_term=