All across Michigan, small businesses serve as the foundation of our communities. Case in point: in 2024, 96.2% of private businesses in Michigan were considered small businesses. To ensure the vitality of these integral drivers of our local economies, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) has made a concerted effort to develop tools and programs that support small businesses.
One of those initiatives is Match on Main, an MEDC-funded reimbursement grant program that supports new or expanding place-based businesses with up to $25,000. Since its inception in 2019, the program has delivered tremendous impact, contributing $4.5 million in funding, with 91% of awarded small businesses still operating today, 13% higher than the state average.
For Southwest Michigan, where idyllic downtowns are plentiful, Match on Main helps create additional momentum for the region as a great place to live and work. But the program doesn’t just support what you may think of as traditional small businesses. Impactful community organizations like The Children’s Museum of Branch County are beneficiaries, too.
The Children’s Museum offers events, classes, and interactive exhibits from theater to science, and originally opened in downtown Coldwater in 2014. After losing its lease and failing to find space downtown, the museum relocated to a strip mall north of downtown in 2017. At the beginning of 2020, the Children’s Museum team, led by executive director Shana Grife, began searching for ways to move back downtown.
“Always wanting to move back downtown,” said Grife, “we looked at a building that had been donated to the City of Coldwater. The Downtown Development Authority (DDA) was hoping someone would be interested in renovating the three-floor building.”
In 2022, through the MEDC’s Public Spaces Community Places crowdfunding program, the Children’s Museum was able to raise over $150,000 toward the new building, showing the community’s overwhelming support for the museum’s return to downtown Coldwater. The MEDC contributed $50,000 in matching funds to support the revitalization of the historic building, providing the museum with more space for programming and exhibits.
The Children’s Museum reopened in downtown Coldwater in April 2023, this time in a renovated and historic building. As the museum gained momentum in the community, the MEDC awarded a $25,000 Match on Main grant to the City of Coldwater DDA on the museum’s behalf. The museum used the grant to fund a vertical climbing wall exhibit and a two-story mural on the side of the once-vacant building, the largest mural in Coldwater.
For Grife, who moved to Coldwater to raise a family, the museum makes the town a better place to do just that.
“We love being in Downtown Coldwater! We have a sense of community that we did not have at our former location. We more than doubled our visitors from 2022 to 2023 and brought families downtown that would not have been there if the museum weren’t. We know there are so many benefits for children being exposed to new environments, new people, new experiences. Quite simply, the Children’s Museum of Branch County makes Coldwater a better community to live in and raise a family.”
Match on Main supports a variety of businesses that make our downtowns more attractive places to work and live, from museums to cafes. This past July, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced Michigan Strategic Fund (MSF) support for 63 small businesses through Match on Main, awarding $1.49 million in grants. Region 8, which represents Southwest Michigan, had 10 businesses – including the Children’s Museum – receive a combined $227,689:
- Economy Garage, LLC
(City of Bronson) - Children’s Museum of Branch County, Inc.
(City of Coldwater DDA) - Matchacita LLC
(City of Kalamazoo) - Locri, LLC – Front Street Pizza Pub
(City of Niles DDA) - Jerome Hardin – Rooney’s Soul Food Wagon
(Comstock Center DDA) - Nature’s County Cupboard
(DDA of the City of South Haven) - Bogar Theatre LLC
(Marshall Area Economic Development Alliance) - Layered Clothing, LLC
(Sturgis DDA) - Flyover Art
(Village of Marcellus DDA) - Applied Arts, LLC
(Village of Stevensville)
For Matchacita, a cafe in downtown Kalamazoo, Match on Main will help support new equipment and outdoor seating, bringing even more vibrancy to the downtown. “We want our neighbors to be able to grow as business owners,” Matchacita owner Vargas Root told WMUK.
“And so, this kind of gives that step up, and it gives a little bit of incentive to be a really good part of the community.”
Another program helping small business owners succeed and enriching our communities is the MEDC’s Small Business Support Hubs. After receiving approval from the MSF in June 2023, 27 economic development organizations were selected to receive funding from a one-time appropriation using the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). The program is anticipated to support 20,000 Michigan businesses over three years.
Each Small Business Support Hub provides a central source for entrepreneurs to discover local, state, and federal resources. They each disseminate support in a variety of ways, from one-on-one coaching sessions to mentor matching to pitch competitions.
Can-Do Kalamazoo is one of Southwest Michigan’s Small Business Support Hubs. Since 2007, it’s been helping Kalamazoo-area entrepreneurs, first focused on small food-industry businesses, then expanding to support all entrepreneurs at every stage.
The hub stays true to its roots with a kitchen incubator, a three-year program for developing food businesses, and ServSafe classes that can lead to the certification required to operate in licensed kitchens. Can-Do also offers 90-day camps to launch almost any type of business and workshops to help entrepreneurs take actionable next steps.
Battle Creek Food Reimagined (BCFR) is another Small Business Support Hub in Southwest Michigan. True to its Cereal City location, BCFR serves food entrepreneurs, providing access to a high-caliber network of food consultants, research and development, and entrepreneurship support programs.
With support from Small Business Support Hubs funding, SmartZone participation, and direct funding, BCFR has planned programming in collaboration with its partners to offer a startup incubator, a cohort-based accelerator for early and growth-stage, a food finance accelerator, an investor’s network, networking events, and a centralized accelerator kitchen, demo kitchen, and food manufacturing space. Its capabilities and location made it an attractive choice for a Small Business Support Hub, providing a legacy food industry ecosystem right outside its doors.
Chasing a dream and starting a small business or growing a community organization is no small task. But with resources like Match on Main, Small Business Support Hubs, and backing from our wonderful communities across Michigan, success may be closer than you imagine.
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