LIFT Entrepreneurs: Creating Pathways to Economic Mobility

Income inequality

County of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a countywide benefit)

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

Poverty, like wealth, is passed down from generation to generation. Decades of systemic racism and disinvestment have kept families stuck in a cycle that is difficult to escape. LIFT-LA’s entrepreneurship program breaks this cycle by equipping parents with the tools, training, and support to launch small businesses, creating lasting pathways to economic mobility and generational change.

Entrepreneurs do more than launch ventures. They:
Create jobs and build local wealth
Support one another through a network of referrals and partnerships
Strengthen communities by keeping dollars circulating locally
Drive systemic change by advocating for policies that remove barriers to small business success

In some of Los Angeles’ most vulnerable communities— where poverty, systemic barriers, and now wildfires intersect—this work is more critical than ever. LIFT-LA provides not just an opportunity for individual entrepreneurs, but a catalyst for community-wide economic empowerment and resilience.

This grant will support LIFT-LA's holistic, strengths-based, trauma-informed model designed to empower low-income families to overcome barriers to financial stability and mobility. The program includes a range of financial education and empowerment services that improve financial knowledge, skills, motivation, opportunities, and well-being. In 2022, LIFT launched a new entrepreneurship program based on Rising Tide Capital’s established program model specifically tailored to low-income women and minority entrepreneurs.

The cornerstone of the entrepreneurship program is our Community Business Academy (CBA), an intensive 12-week course on business management skills needed to start, fund and operate a business—skills like budgeting, cash flow, pricing, marketing, bookkeeping and financing. LIFT-LA provides ongoing support to CBA graduates through two distinct components: 1) Business Acceleration Services (BAS) to provide skill-building workshops (on topics such as registering your business, developing your business website, establishing your brand voice, business taxes and accounting, etc.) and to partner new and aspiring entrepreneurs with established business owners who act as mentors to help them set goals, develop action plans and overcome obstacles to success; and 2) Credit to Capital (C2C) technical assistance services that provide entrepreneurs ready to pursue financing for their business with loans and financial products calibrated to their individual needs.

Imagine an LA where every family—and every neighborhood—thrives. Our vision for the future of LA County includes an inclusive economy through which every parent can achieve economic mobility, creating a better future for themselves, their children, and their communities. We envision a future in which Angelenos who have historically been excluded from economic opportunity—due to barriers like lack of capital, legal rights to work, or traditional credentials—can become successful entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs can have an important multi-level impact by stabilizing their family’s finances, creating jobs, and stimulating economic activity in their communities. In fact, Rising Tides’ proven entrepreneurship model, which LIFT has adopted, has produced $3.80 in local economic impact for every dollar invested in its programs. In a future economy powered by diverse entrepreneurs, businesses grow, hire locally, and reinvest in their neighborhoods—creating a better LA for everyone.