Scale Up Milwaukee has created a new business training program to help central city Milwaukee businesses grow.
The four-session program caters to central city businesses with $100,000 to $1 million in revenue, with the aim of teaching practical skills that will help drive rapid business growth. Expert Milwaukee entrepreneurs will teach the program, demonstrating how to increase revenue, hiring, capital expenditures and wealth creation. Participants also will have access to new resources such as financing, marketing, legal services and workforce training.
SPARC is being offered in partnership with the African American Chamber of Commerce of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Women’s Business Initiative Corp.
Applications for SPARC are being accepted through Sept. 15. The program will be held from 8 a.m. to noon on Oct. 4, Oct. 25, Nov. 15 and Dec. 6.
Up to 30 businesses will be accepted into this pilot cohort, which is being funded by JPMorgan Chase. The organization hopes to also offer the program next year, said Elizabeth Cizinsky, program manager at Scale Up.
The SPARC program complements Greater Milwaukee Committee initiative Scale Up’s Scalerator program, which accepts businesses with $1 million or more in revenue and also aims to help drive business growth.
“We realized that our Scalerator program was not meeting the needs of some businesses that were clearly trying to grow so we wanted to create a program to focus on those growing companies that didn’t meet the $1 million mark, as well as having a positive effect on the central city neighborhoods,” Cizinsky said.
