Community First Fund

The Women’s Business Center at Community First Fund provides training, customized business counseling, loan capital, and advocacy support to small business enterprises. The goal of the Center is to develop more knowledgeable, better prepared business owners through these services and outside resources.

The Center focuses on the unique needs of existing business owners by providing one-on-one counseling sessions to discuss specific business issues and offering intensive classroom training on how to establish a new business and how to manage the business as it grows.

Additional training topics include financial literacy, computer literacy, and e-commerce. By counseling and training entrepreneurs in the proper use of computer technology and small business software, they will have a level of knowledge that enables them to access information that can impact sales, marketing, and operations.

The Women’s Business Center at Community First Fund also offers special topics seminars, covering a variety of business issues such as gaining access to capital, marketing, networking,  and certification as a Women’s Business Enterprise (WBE).

The Women’s Business Center offers loan capital through its Women’s Business Loan Fund and through programs offered by Community First Fund. This loan capital may be used to help start up a new business or strengthen or expand an existing business.  

Additional funding to assist small minority- and women-owned contractors, who do not have access to lines of credit or other small business loans from traditional sources, is available from the newly created The Pennsylvania Business Opportunity Fund (BOF).  Loans from the BOF will be administered by Community First Fund which partnered with the Department of General Services and the Department of Community and Economic Development to create the program.

For more information, please contact Joan Brodhead (Director) or Miriam Soto (Director of Training).