Seeking to join the movement to help female entrepreneurs, Crowne Plaza Hotels and Resorts, which is based in Washington, D.C. and has a hotel in Secaucus, announced the exclusive hotel sponsorship for Count-Me-In for Women’s Economic Independence, a national non-profit organization that raises money to provide micro loans to female entrepreneurs.
The loan program is the innovation of Nell Merlino, creator of Take Our Daughters to Work Day, and Iris Burnett, former chief of staff at the U.S. Information Agency. The program asks people to donate as little as $5 to be used for micro loans – $500 to $10,000 – to women in need who own small businesses.
The organization is aimed at women helping women strengthen their positions in the economy.
“Women own 38 percent of all businesses in the United States, but we continue to have less access to financing than male business owners,” said Merlino. “Access to credit and capital remains the number one issue raised by self employed and entrepreneurial women in every economic circumstance.”
In offering its support to this effort, Crowne Plaza has pledged to raise $100,000 to assist the organization in its goal to create a national loan fund for women in over 75 cities across the United States. The company will promote the organization and initiate a fund-raising drive over the next six months among guests to raise monies that will be used for women’s small business loans.
“We’re proud of our association with Count-Me-In; it further supports our commitment to better serve the growing number of female business travelers, many of whom are small business owners themselves,” said Robert Mayer, Crowne Plaza’s vice president of marketing.
Roger S. Davis, general manager of the Secaucus Crowne Plaza, said donation envelopes will be left in the rooms and in the public areas for people wishing to make a donation. “We will send the donations to the national office each month,” said Davis. “They will assess the needs of women seeking to open a business and their qualifications for the loans.”
According to statistics issued by Count-Me-In, women own 9.1 million companies in the U.S, employ about 27 million people and more than 33 percent of the 3.25 million minority-owned firms are owned by women.
Because many women have spent time raising families, they often do not have the financial record that makes them attractive to more conventional loan-making institutions. Moreover, their credit cards, mortgages and loan payments may be in their husbands’ names.
“There is wide recognition among women and people of color being left out of or excluded from networks and opportunities to get credit, capital and equity to finance their businesses,” said Merlino. “This is an innovative way to collect and distribute funding and [we are developing] a new approach to credit scoring that is more equitable to women of all races.”
Unlike traditional lending institutions that might judge borrowers by how long they have been in business, Count- Me-In will ask how long they been practicing their trade.
“If a woman has been making cakes for 10 years but just formalized her business six months ago, she’d probably be rejected by traditional systems,” Merlino says. “But we want to give her a chance. This new program aims to look further into the population to find viable ‘nontraditional’ borrowers that could open the door to millions of small-business owners.”
The program’s first loan must be $5,000 or less. Each time a load is repaid in full, the person becomes eligible to borrow again. The interest rate on a CMI loan is 2 percent to 4 percent over the prime rate “The sponsorship provided by Crowne Plaza Hotels and Resorts allows us unprecedented access to potential contributors in over 75 communities across the country. This grassroots approach to fundraising will greatly benefit women with sound business ideas but limited financial resources,” said Merlino.
Guests at Crowne Plaza Hotels and Resorts across North America can drop their contributions into specially marked collection boxes located in hotel lobbies or log onto www.count-me-in.org.
Chamber conference to be held at Crowne Plaza
The Hudson County Chamber of Commerce along with the Hudson County Economic Development Corporation will showcase the county in a conference held on Thursday, Dec. 7, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Secaucus.
The event will also feature the Fourth Annual Metro-NJ Real Estate Conference and Excellence Awards Luncheon.
The event will feature floor exhibits that will be open to the public at 9 a.m.
The conference includes three panel discussions in the morning that cover subjects such as “Making Sense of Today’s Changing Markets,” “Keeping Up with Rapidly Developing Technologies” and “Finding the Funding You Need in a Fluctuating Market.”
The Excellence Award Luncheon, which is only open to sponsors, exhibitors and conference participants, will include opening remarks by Hudson County Executive Robert Janiszewski, and award presentations.