REGIONAL- Behind every Iron Range small business is a local entrepreneur willing to risk their own time and investment to create a new venture. Because small businesses dominate the regional economy, the area’s rural entrepreneurs create jobs and provide services and products that would otherwise be difficult to find locally.
However, many aspiring entrepreneurs on the Range often struggle to start businesses because they lack the resources their urban counterparts can access. That’s where the Entrepreneur Fund can help.
Founded in Virginia in 1989, the Entrepreneur Fund is a nonprofit lender and business advisory organization whose original mission was to help small businesses prosper and diversify on the Iron Range and to grow the region’s entrepreneurial culture. The fund’s two-pronged approach to fostering business, providing both no-cost business advice and business financing, has proved its viability for more than three decades.
Advice
“Our goal is to help business owners start, stabilize, and expand their businesses,” said Emily Roose, whose last name is pronounced “rose.” Roose is the Entrepreneur Fund’s business advisor based in Ely. “I talk with between twenty to twenty-five people every week, helping with both start-ups and established businesses … All our advising is free.”
Roose explained she covers “from the Quad Cities [Virginia, Mt. Iron, Eveleth, and Gilbert] up to the Ely area and everything in between.”
She provides all aspects of the fund’s business consulting services, from business incubation to helping businesses survive tough times. She’s a good fit for the position given her background as a CPA working in business finance. Before she moved to Ely, Roose worked for Deloitte, one of the nation’s “Big Four” accounting firms.
Roose moved to Ely in 2021 and took a position as a finance team leader at Ely-Bloomenson Community Hospital. She began working for the Entrepreneur Fund in June of this year. Since taking her new position, Roose has already expanded the fund’s outreach in the Ely area, collaborating with Boundary Waters Connect on a 2025 series of business and nonprofit outreach meetings for community leaders, with its first session on Jan. 14 (see the Ely-for-Ely Conference article in this issue of the Timberjay for more details).
The name Emily Roose may look familiar to Ely-area readers. Roose has served on the Ely Planning and Zoning Commission since early 2022. She has been the commission’s chairperson since last winter and was elected to the Ely City Council earlier this month.
Financing
“Along with our business training and advice, we also provide financing,” Roose told the Timberjay. The Entrepreneur Fund is a nonprofit lender as well as a federally designated Community Development Financial Institution, or CDFI.
CDFIs are private financial institutions vetted by the U.S. Department of the Treasury that deliver responsible and affordable lending to underserved people and communities, like the small towns of the Iron Range.
“We can help local business owners get access to the financial support they need for their businesses,” Roose explained. “We use a variety of funding, including grants and loans from the Small Business Administration and our own loan fund,” said Roose.
The Entrepreneur Fund
The fund was founded to help small business entrepreneurs on the Iron Range. Over the last three decades, the fund has expanded both its staff and its reach.
“We have over 40 employees,” Roose remarked, “with offices in Eveleth, Duluth, Superior, and Little Falls.” As for the Ely office, Roose works out of the Ely Folk School.
While the fund originally started up in Virginia, today the organization’s reach includes 29 counties in northeast and north-central Minnesota and northern Wisconsin. “The expansion into Wisconsin is new,” Roose explained, “just over the last two years.” The fund’s services also extend to the 12 tribal nations within its service area.
To find out more about what the Entrepreneur Fund can do for a proposed or existing business, visit its website at efund.org, email info@efund.org, or call 218-623-5747.