The Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project recently moved from the Ford School of Public Policy to the Ross School of Business. The program now includes a summer internship program, year-round accounting services and a community tech worker program. The project connects University of Michigan students with small business owners in Detroit to give students hands-on experience and provide various services including financial consulting and graphic design. DNEP also joined the Business+Impact initiative, a unit at the Business School dedicated to building a just and sustainable future through business. The ultimate goal of the program is to work to close the race-wealth gap.
Since its launch in 2016, DNEP has established partnerships with more than 600 businesses and sponsored projects with Detroit-based businesses such as Fair Food Network and Michigan Women Forward.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Christie Baer, managing director of DNEP, said DNEP was founded by faculty at the Public Policy School, Stamps School of Art & Design and the Business School to boost the capacity of Detroit businesses by connecting them to U-M students.
“If you look at businesses owned by entrepreneurs of Color, they are less likely to have the capital they need to hire people,” Baer said. “Therefore, they often end up with lower revenue and growth.”
Baer said the program was recently moved from the Public Policy School due to DNEP’s expansion. Further, Baer said joining the B+I initiative could make DNEP even stronger as demand for Business School-based projects has grown due to the entrepreneurship resources concentrated in the Business School.
“Ford had expertise in community engagement and cultural humility, so we were able to bring that lens to Ross when the program moved,” Baer said. “We also joined B+I because we are like-minded in our approach to relationships in Detroit, which we base on reciprocity and mutual respect.”
In an interview with The Daily, Jerry Davis, the founding associate dean for B+I, said the initiative was created in 2018 to use business as a force for positive social impact.
“Businesses needed ironwork to get ready for capital, and there is a lot of student talent at the University of Michigan,” Davis said. “We wanted to create a conduit for students to provide services to businesses in Detroit.”
While DNEP is now housed in the Business School, it also works with the School of Information, the Art & Design School, the Public Policy School, the Law School and the College of Engineering. Baer noted that business owners are recruited and screened before half are placed with students in the Business School classes. The other half of the businesses are placed with the Community Enterprise Clinic in the Law School, two classes within the College of Engineering and a class in the Art & Design School. Businesses are placed with student teams from engaged learning or capstone classes, which any student can sign up for without an application.
“We match student-supervised teams with these businesses to provide wrap-around support for the business,” Baer said. “Students also gain valuable consulting and foundational skills because they are working with real clients and have the chance to apply their data analysis skills, or whatever specific skills they are learning, to the situation.”
U-M alum Sarah Pisarczyk is a former participant in the program. In an interview with The Daily, Pisarczyk emphasized the importance of communication while working on DNEP as part of an interdisciplinary team.
“One of the best, biggest things I learned from the opportunity was how to communicate in an interdisciplinary setting,” Pisarcyzk said. “Figuring out how to communicate effectively in a way that was accessible for everyone was something that we spent a lot of time on and I think is applicable in any kind of work setting.”
Pisarczyk also explained that she was attracted to the program because it offered the opportunity to hone her art skills and connect with Detroit.
“I was interested in knowing and learning more about the city through what I was focused on in school, which was graphic and industrial design,” Pisarczyk said. “So it felt like an opportunity to get to know the city of Detroit and the people in Detroit a little bit better.”
Daily Staff Reporters Violet Boyd and Sachi Gosal can be reached at viboyd@umich.edu and sgosal@umich.edu.