Spotlight on NEON: Accountability to Entrepreneurs and Community

By nurturing entrepreneurship in North Minneapolis, NEON’s work leads to community-centered change.

A community-based organization founded in 2006, NEON accelerates entrepreneurship in Minneapolis’s Northside, a historically under-resourced Black community. The majority (90 percent) of NEON’s clients are BIPOC business owners. Meanwhile, 84 percent of its staff members are BIPOC, which allows community members to see themselves represented by the people serving them.

NEON amplifies the strengths of the Northside community to create long-term change.

The 13 neighborhoods of the Northside, home to more than 66,000 residents, experience some of the Twin Cities’ greatest racial disparities. The Northside is also where Prince and the Minneapolis Sound—a fusion of funk, pop, and new wave music—emerged in the late 1970s and 1980s.

NEON’s programs are designed to help the vibrant and diverse communities of North Minneapolis reverse long-term disinvestment and harmful, discriminatory policies and practices. Its goal is to make change by building generational wealth and economic vitality with programs designed to help entrepreneurs succeed.

Its training program, business incubators, and other resources are tailored to the Northside’s culture, while keeping each individual’s specific strengths and needs in mind. NEON offers training assistance in a range of areas, including human resources, technology, marketing, and accounting.

NEON is a trusted business advisor—but also a partner and a safety net.

NEON’s model, an ecosystem of support that embraces one-to-one services, has proven deeply sustainable. According to McLean, 95 percent of the businesses launched by NEON clients remain in operation after five years. That remarkable statistic speaks to the success of NEON’s innovative model, and to the determination of the Northside community members it serves.

“A couple years ago, we set up the NEON food truck at a festival, giving a NEON client considering selling juices a chance to get a feel for the day-to-day experience of the food business. He showed up without a juicer. So, one of our business advisors brought a juicer from home to get him through that event,” McLean shares.

That kind of hands-on improvisation and support yields results.

“Fast-forward to today: the gentleman owns his own brick-and-mortar location and his own food truck. We’re in the trenches with our clients—side by side. We’re not just in our office talking about hypotheticals and advising people on a big, glossy business plan,” says McLean. “Once a NEON client, always a NEON client.”

Being accountable for the long term is a must for creating fair economies.

“Long-term commitment matters,” notes McLean, who means that in a dual sense. NEON’s long-term commitment to its clients makes a profound difference in their success from launch through growth and expansion.

Similarly, multiyear commitments from funders—like  Northwest Area Foundation, which counts NEON among its changemaking grantee partners—help NEON look ahead to strengthen and expand its services with confidence.

Despite an overall decline in philanthropic giving in the past two years, NEON has still raised around $24 million toward a commercial kitchen initiative. This helps entrepreneurs interested in starting in the food industry turn ideas into thriving businesses that help grow the local economy. It’s a resilience and a determination that both demonstrates and grows the commitment.

“We take community accountability literally. We’re at just about any and every community event in the Northside,” McLean says. “We have to be visible for people to access NEON’s services to broaden their horizons and build generational wealth. We show up.”