Rohan Mathew, right, and Joe Shure founded the Intersect Fund to help low-income residents start and grow small businesses. Rutgers University students volunteer their time to teach business training courses and consult with entrepreneurs. — A. Ferrandini photo

The Catholic Campaign for Human Development is the anti-poverty effort of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. CCHD’s mission is to address the root causes of poverty in America through promotion and support of community-controlled self-help organizations and through transformative education. Many of these groups do their work through community organizing and economic development efforts. This series will examine the work of the three local CCHD grant recipients: the Intersect Fund, Unity Square and New Labor. The final article in the series will explore the origins of the CCHD and how the campaign is supported in the Diocese of Metuchen.

 

By Kathleen Ogle
Managing Editor

For years, Zakiyia Forbes was running her own business selling jewelry, lotions and essential oils extracted from plants and flowers, and other specialty goods. But despite trying various ways to grow the business, her results were the same. Year after year she was unable to increase revenue.

One day, a Rutgers student stopped by the George Street storefront she shared with a friend to tell them about the Intersect Fund which helps local entrepreneurs start and grow businesses. Forbes attended their orientation and signed up for their business training classes. She was especially interested in the loan she would be eligible for to grow her business.

In the classes she learned about pricing, how to expand her product line, branding and new marketing strategies. She learned so much from the course that she was able to expand her business and increase revenue without the loan.
“Without them, I could have gone out of business,” said Forbes, a lifelong resident of New Brunswick and single mother of two young children. “Every step I take forward, the Intersect Fund has played a part in it.”

Founded by Rohan Mathew and Joe Shure, the Intersect Fund is a student-driven, nonprofit organization that empowers entrepreneurs to start and grow strong businesses through education and business training. The fund uses microfinancing to offer small loans to entrepreneurs who cannot obtain capital via traditional sources. Clients include people who are interested in starting a business or business owners who are looking to grow their business or solve a particular problem.

The eight-week business planning course helps entrepreneurs analyze all aspects of starting a strong business including a mission statement, financial capital projection, bookkeeping, market trajectories, how to price products, understanding how much is spent to produce a product, advertising and marketing, and registering a business.

As part of the course, clients write business plans and receive copies of QuickBooks as well as business cards designed specifically for their businesses. Services available to graduates include website development, coaching, networking events and selling opportunities like the holiday bazaar at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in New Brunswick that the group sponsored a few weeks before Christmas.

To date, graduates of its business training course include a glass blower, housecleaners, landscapers, physical therapists, fashion designers, bakers and chefs.

When asked about how they started such a venture, Mathew, 23, and Shure, 22, recent graduates of Rutgers University, point to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.

“When we were shopping this idea around, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development was the first and only organization to get behind us in a serious way. They believed in what we were doing and without their support we never could have grown the Intersect Fund to what is today and what it will be tomorrow. For that I will always be eternally grateful,” Mathew said.

Mathew and Shure’s introduction to CCHD came by way of Nancy Finn, founder and then-program manager of Unity Square, which is based at Sacred Heart Parish, New Brunswick. Finn helped them arrange a class at the parish, and later she e-mailed Mathew to tell him about CCHD.

“We had raised $1,000 up to that point,” Mathew recalled. “She brought me to Father Joe [Kerrigan, director for CCHD in the Diocese of Metuchen, and pastor of Sacred Heart Parish], and we had this great meeting. We ended up applying for a $10,000 grant, which was 10 times as much as we had raised to that point.”

Since then, the Intersect Fund has raised $166,000 through a variety of sources.

“In many ways it is humbling to have an organization that is so big and so established recognize you and say we think you’re worthy,” Mathew said. “When we talk to some other funders they are always impressed that we got support from the Catholic Campaign because they have this perception that it’s quite difficult.”

Unlike some other donors, CCHD “got what we do instantly,” he said. “The best relationships with donors are the ones that I consider partners, and I consider the Catholic Campaign a partner.”

The grant helped Mathew and Shure launch the Intersect Fund, and their relationship with CCHD has assisted in their outreach to city residents. Working with a Catholic priest and parish has shown them positive impact a faith community can have on a city and in people’s lives

“That’s something that we want to be a part of,” Shure said.

Working for social justice

Neither Mathew nor Shure are Catholic, but their approach to fighting poverty sounds a lot like Catholic social teaching.

“Everyone thinks poverty is about money because you have the poverty line and when you get above the poverty line you’re not in poverty anymore,” Mathew said. “Poverty, I think, is really more about dignity. It’s about being able to fend for yourself and your family in a dignified way. When you give someone a handout, when you give someone the aid that has characterized what western governments have done in developing markets for the last century I don’t think that brings dignity along with it.”

In the beginning, Mathew and Shure taught the business course themselves, but now the classes are largely taught by Rutgers students.

“It’s not something you need an MBA to know, but it’s the kind of stuff that most of our clients haven’t been exposed to,” Shure said. “When we look for someone to teach these classes we’re looking for someone who is good at conveying information, who is personable, who is confident, and who can set our clients in the right direction. Business expertise is good, but the material we teach you can learn it even if you’re an undergrad in college.”

They initially offered the eight-week course for free but now charge $100 to $250 depending on income.

“Charging a fee for the course was one of the best things we ever did,” Mathew said. “It reduces the amount of people who go through it for sure, but it means that the people who do go through it are the most committed.”

Mathew estimates that about half their clients are already in business with the other half in the start-up phase. A quarter of the start-ups have launched their businesses, a quarter of the entrepreneurs are still planning and half have realized that this is not the right thing for them to do now.

“It’s a hard thing to realize your business idea is not viable, but we would rather you find that out than invest all your time and money,” Mathew said.

The troubled economy has contributed to demand for the Intersect Fund’s services.

“Over the last six months people have started showing up for our classes who have been laid off from $70,000- or $80,000-a-year jobs and just cannot find work,” Mathew said. “A lot of them, I think, are maybe misguided — ‘OK, I can’t find a job I’m going to start a business’ — that’s not how it works.”

The Intersect Fund is more interested in working with people who have been dreaming about starting their own businesses for years, people who are passionate about their skills, people who say their friends have always told them they should do this.

“Those are the kind of people who are really going to succeed,” Mathew said.

Mathew and Shure came up with the idea for the Intersect Fund while they were undergraduates working on The Daily Targum, the student-run, independent daily newspaper at Rutgers University. During their tenure at Targum, the university underwent a controversial restructuring, and proposals were introduced to “green” the College Avenue Campus and expand the football stadium.

“It was a time of change at Rutgers and it was conducive to starting the Intersect Fund because a lot of powerful people in the administration were interested in engaging students and seeing how we could interact with the community. We were able to recruit a lot of allies at Rutgers,” Shure said.

Editing a daily newspaper that covered the city as well as the university allowed them to see two sides of New Brunswick: Downtown was thriving with new restaurants and hotels, but in many neighborhoods around the city low-income residents were struggling to make ends meet. Mathew and Shure thought a lot about what they could do to make a difference.

After spending the summer of 2007 doing investment banking on Wall Street, which he planned to return to after graduation, Mathew got a call from a high school friend who was head of online organizing for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. He wanted him to join the campaign, and, seeing it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Mathew dropped out of school for a year to work in the campaign’s field operations office where he provided statistical analysis and support to canvas teams.

Back at Rutgers, Shure had started a chapter of the Roosevelt Institution, a student-run think tank where students learn how to make a difference through public policy. With the Roosevelt Institution, Shure worked on a variety of progressive issues such as voters’ rights, prescription drug prices and foreclosures.

Their experiences working with college students and young people in politics and public policy showed them that they could make a difference. They began brainstorming about how to improve life for the city’s low-income residents and discovered that many residents have small business ventures on the side as a way to help generate extra income. Although many of these low-income entrepreneurs have quality business ideas and lots of motivation, they often lacked business knowledge and the seed capital to get their businesses started.

When Mathew returned to Rutgers, they decided to launch the Intersect Fund. Since November 2008, the Intersect Fund has worked with nearly 100 entrepreneurs, and its founders are proud to say they have blurred the line between a student organization and a community organization. Other than Shure and Mathew, who both graduated last May, the Intersect Fund is being run by about a dozen student volunteers who do everything from teaching business training classes to underwriting loans and consulting with clients.

Mathew and Shure credit the Targum with shaping the experience they are creating for students at the Intersect Fund. The group’s office on Bayard Street, New Brunswick, features a conference room that — like the Targum newsroom — has a bank of computers where students and entrepreneurs do the work of the organization.

“Having a big room with plenty of desks and computers for people to come and work at, having everyone here at the same time you create camaraderie and ownership for what you’re doing, getting people to collaborate,” Shure said.

Role models

Other sources of influence in their lives include family members and relatives.

“I come from a family of entrepreneurs,” said Shure. “My grandfather was a mechanic and had his own garage. My mother has a dog-training business. My aunt sells quilting materials online.”

His father, John Shure, instilled in him the idea that politics could be vehicle for social justice. After working as a political journalist covering Washington, D.C., for the Bergen Record, he became communications director for a local congressman, Rep. Jim Florio, when he decided to run for governor. He later started a non-profit think tank to advance progressive policies in New Jersey.

“Striking out like that on his own, that was a big inspiration for me,” Joe Shure said. “It told me I didn’t necessarily have to go for that traditional nine-to-five career. Instead you can do your own thing that’s going to have some social value and also be rewarding.”

Mathew said he has been inspired by the unpublished writings of his grand uncle, Verghese Kurien, who started a dairy cooperative called Anand Milk Union Limited, now known as Amul, in India during the mid-1950s.

With only one processing facility in each province that was too far to walk to without spoiling the milk, dairy farmers in rural northern India struggled to make a living as a large network of middlemen kept most of the profit for themselves. Kurien set up a cooperative network of 15 to 20 processing facilities in each province. The arrangement allowed them to sell their milk at a fair price and actually own a share of this company that marketed the milk products. Today, Amul sells US $1.5 billion of milk products a year, and India is the largest producer of dairy products in the world.

“Hearing this story, which I think I only fully appreciated after I started the Intersect Fund, was so inspirational to me about the power of entrepreneurship and market-based solutions that change people’s lives,” Mathew said.

In October, Mathew received the Rich Cunningham New Leader for Justice Award at the annual Harvest of Hope Dinner. The award honors the memory of Cunningham, founder of New Labor, a membership-based organization of low-wage immigrants in New Jersey. Cunningham died in September after a long battle with cancer.

Finn, who presented the award, described Mathew as “full of enthusiasm and scary smart.”

“He’s not about telling people what they need, he’s more about helping people get what they want,” Finn said. “The Intersect Fund has become a much needed resource for dozens of local residents struggling to get their businesses off the ground or make them work.”

Accepting the award, Mathew recalled an incident that gave him a new perspective on his work. The Intersect Fund’s office — which was located in the same building as New Labor — had been broken into and robbed. When Mathew told a friend about it, the friend asked if one of the fund’s entrepreneurs might have been responsible.

“That kind of shocked me,” Mathew said, “but when I thought about it, it made me realize something really important. When we first founded the Intersect Fund we believed all that was needed for people to realize their dreams of owning a small business was just the tools, resources and capital to do so.

“We found what was actually needed was hope,” he said. “There are entrepreneurs who come to us everyday who are being told by people in their lives that they don’t have what it takes to start a small business, that this is just a waste of time, a hobby.

“So it’s really much more than writing a business plan or getting a loan. It’s really all about that hope.”

Next week: Unity Square and the remaking of a neighborhood