Interview with Yvonne Durbin about the JPMC Diverse Suppliers Grant Initiative
November 8th, 2022
Scott Sander of the BEO Show recently interviewed the director of LISC's Capital Innovation Lab, Yvonne Durbin, about the new JPMC Diverse Suppliers Grant Initiative.
"The goal of the program is to support diverse companies in accessing opportunities with large corporations. We recognize that there are some really high barriers to doing business with a Fortune 500 company; sometimes you need to upgrade your cybersecurity, insurance, or other IT systems," says Yvonne Durbin. "LISC is able to fund those types of upgrades for diverse businesses to promote those businesses' ability to go after those big opportunities and feel confident in doing so."
Check out the full interview by Meghan Stratton here.
The Diverse Supplier Grant Initiative provides growth capital and technical training to diverse suppliers to help them make business improvements to have the capacity/requirements to work with large corporations. Learn more about the program here.
Small-business grant stories always catch my attention because the announcement is only the visible part; agreements, invoices, payments, and records still need to stay organized afterward. That lesson carried over when I helped someone sort documents tied to a service agreement with recurring payments. One page in the folder lists mepco customer service contacts alongside the agreement number and latest payment record for billing, statement, account-access, or contract-record questions. Keeping those papers together makes it easier to talk about one specific account instead of reconstructing months of transactions. The support side stays administrative, while the larger decision about any agreement is handled separately.