About Ascend Long Island

Welcome to Ascend Long Island – a partnership of Hofstra University’s National Center for Suburban Studies, Center for Entrepreneurship and the Scott Skodnek Business Development Center and BOC Capital, a Community Development Finance Institution. This pilot program will serve as the suburban model for the national Ascend 2020 initiative, led by the University of Washington’s Consulting and Business Development Center and funded by JP Morgan Chase. The goal of Ascend Long Island is to provide vital resources in the areas of procurement, access to capital and access to markets to small business owners within a cluster of underserved communities within Nassau County known as “The Corridor” – Hempstead Village, Freeport Village, Roosevelt, and Uniondale.

Ascend Long Island will create an ecosystem of support for diverse business owners with community partners and anchor businesses that will assist them in building capacity for their companies through training in the “3 M’s” — Management, Money (access to financing), and Markets (access to contracts).

With the help of our Community Navigators, who served as ambassadors in the planning phase of Ascend Long Island, we were able to identify diverse businesses and capture their demographic and socioeconomic information to shape the recruitment, training, mentoring and contracting components of the program. We are excited to provide this opportunity to business owners in these communities and to help them join the supply chains of major private and public sector organizations participating in Ascend Long Island.

Check back often to our page. We look forward to introducing the Ascend Long Island team, partners, upcoming events and many more details.