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Greater Cleveland Partnership to Expand Minority Business Assistance with Federal Grant

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With a recently awarded $2 million grant, the Greater Cleveland Partnership plans on creating a center that will further assist minority business owners.

The Greater Cleveland Partnership has received a $2 million grant to create a Minority Business Development Assistance Center in the Cleveland area.

In 2019, just 2% of the money corporations spent on suppliers went to minority-owned firms.

The new center through the Partnership hopes to grow that number throughout the state.

Marco Grgurevic, the director of Minority Business Growth, says the grant will help expand the programming GCP provides, connecting businesses with state resources and assistance they need.

“We just feel that this grant enables us to add more boots on the ground and essentially be able to help businesses in a more impactful way,” Grgurevic said.

The assistance center will focus on minority-owned businesses with yearly revenues of $500,000 or more.

Grgurevic says the center will continue to support the existing relationships the GCP has but welcomes new businesses to explore what the center has to offer.

Rachel Gross is a senior journalism major in the Kent State School of Media and Journalism and will be graduating Fall 2021. She is the current general manager of the student-run TV station on Kent State’s campus, TV2, and has covered major political events for the station such as the Presidential Debate in Cleveland. With her minor being in political science, she hopes to work in the political news field after graduation.