YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Raising Young Royalty Child Development Center recently moved to a new location on Woodland Avenue near downtown.
Started about two years ago by Crystal Swiggett, a 25-year veteran of the child-care field, Raising Young Royalty caters to parents and guardians who need help during nontraditional hours. It is open 24 hours daily, Monday through Saturday.
“Most of the ladies I have who needed childcare, they work in the health-care field, so a lot of them have 12-hour shifts,” Swiggett says. Other clients include factory workers and restaurant employees.
Swiggett determined she needed to move the business out of her house. Through a fellow business operator, she became acquainted with Valley Partners in Liberty, which offers education and technical assistance programs.
“The business had a great start, and she was ready to move into a larger space to take in more kids,” Teresa Miller, executive director of Valley Partners, says.
Swiggett graduated in the first cohort of Valley Partners’ accounting and legal grant program and worked with its small business technical assistance advisers on a business plan and projections, Miller says. She also applied for financing to fund her expansion, and was awarded $100,000 from two of the loan programs that Valley Partners administers.
Open in its new location just a few weeks as of mid-April, Raising Young Royalty has eight employees and 17 enrolled students, she says. By summer, she anticipates having another four on staff and would like to have at least 50 students.
Valley Economic Development Corp. – originally called Mahoning Valley Economic Development Corp. – was established in 1978 in the aftermath of Black Monday. It has been providing financial and technical assistance to established businesses and entrepreneurs for nearly four decades.
“We’re here to partner with other organizations and work with them to help people in their small business dreams,” Miller says.
A year after its founding, the organization applied to the U.S. Economic Development Administration for a grant used to establish the Mahoning Valley Industrial Loan Fund.
Today it administers an array of loan programs that serve various constituencies. They include the Ohio’s Regional “166” loan program; three SBA loan programs targeted to assist businesses in the service, commercial, retail and distribution sectors; and revolving loan funds, including ones specifically for businesses based in Mahoning and Trumbull counties.
WHO IS GETTING HELP
One of its revolving loan funds was created using money Valley Partners received from processing Payroll Protection Program loans, which were used as matching funds for another EDA award, Miller says.
In some cases, the funds specifically are for borrowers who have been denied credit or can’t secure funds from a conventional source.
“It’s very difficult for small businesses to get financing in today’s world because of regulations and different things. They might have had a little bump on their credit score,” Mario Nero Sr., director of lending, says. “We kind of work outside the box, where if someone had a blip on their credit score and they can explain it and it’s justified, we help those people.”
Startup companies “are a big group that comes to us” but many existing clients return for assistance as well, he says.
As of late April, Valley Partners had a loan portfolio of 525 loans totaling just under $66 million, Miller reports. The delinquency rate currently is 0.424%.
Valley Partners officials are pleased overall with the success rate of its loans, Nero says. Over the past few years, less than “a handful” have turned sour, he affirms.
Valley Partners can go below the traditional debt ratios employed by conventional lenders if the situation warrants it and the prospective borrower has good projections that support it, he says. All proposals are evaluated by a loan committee.
“We’ve been fortunate,” he says. “A majority of the money, when lent out, is still out there and revolving, and these businesses are still succeeding.”
While focused in the early days on manufacturing and filling gaps in financing, around the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, Valley Partners became a Community Development Financial Institution, which led to the expansion of its mission to include education.
The Business Resource Center specializes in providing technical assistance, Matthew Longmire, business resource manager, says. It helps businesses develop business plans and financial projections to ensure that they have the additional support and documentation they need to apply for a loan. The center also contains an Ohio Minority Business Assistance Center, established in 2023.
“We understand that not everyone who comes to us needs a loan. They just need some resources and some educational tools,” Longmire says. “We want to make sure that our clients are well equipped with the educational piece with their business. It’s one thing to get a loan, but do you know how to manage it properly?”
The center conducts lunch and learn seminars regularly to ensure clients are equipped with the knowledge they need to run their businesses. Entrepreneurs are instructed how to manage cash flow, budget property and learn what they need to do to market their businesses.
“We want to make sure our clients are well equipped so when they’re out in their business, they’re set up for success,” Longmire says.
GRANT PROGRAM
Shortfalls in what clients had in terms of documentation needed to apply for loans led to the creation of the business legal and accounting grant program, which recently graduated its fifth cohort, he reports. Graduates of the program receive a grant that they can use to retain an accountant, an attorney or both.
Swiggett worked for six months on her business plan with Tanay Hill, a business resource adviser with Valley Partners staff, who went over it “with a fine-tooth comb,” she recalls. The process was challenging.
“It was difficult to do. It was the most intimidating thing I’ve done so far, but they hold your hand while you do it, and they’re strict with you,” she recalls. “And they say, ‘We can’t want it more than you want it’ and that’s just your motivation right there. As long as you’re motivated and you ask the questions and you show up, they help you.”
P&S Baking Inc. in Youngstown, which manufactures a variety of stuffed baked goods, is among the other companies that Valley Partners has assisted over the years. In 2021, the organization did a $1.08 million SBA loan with the company though Chemical Bank to purchase and renovate a 43,000-square-foot building at 2716 Intertech Drive.
Valley Partners also lent money to P&S the following year to purchase equipment to help accommodate growing sales: $110,000 from the GrowBiz revolving loan fund and $50,000 from Mahoning County’s RLF.
Sean McKinney, P&S Bakery’s president, lauds Valley Partners for combining its economic development expertise with its specialized lending solutions to grow the region’s economy. The agency’s entire staff, including Miller and Nero, have committed years to his company’s success.
“We are very appreciative for Valley Partners’ commitment to PSB but also to the Mahoning Valley as a whole,” he says.
Swiggett and McKinney are among many.
“There’s multiple small entrepreneurs throughout the counties that we’ve assisted,” Nero says.
For Miller, measures of success include Valley Partners’ clients having “great, presentable financials,” so they are able to go to a bank to get funding because of the help they received.
“And then, of course, they created jobs here in the Valley. This would all be things I would consider a success story,” she says.
Pictured at top: Mario Nero Sr., Teresa Miller and Matthew Longmire of Valley Partners stand inside the office of the agency that helps people realize their small business aspirations. Valley Partners is on Belmont Avenue in Liberty.