When a First Program Falls Short, New Mexico Builds a Better One

Business strategy engagements delivered per contract cycle.

Weeks. Average diagnosis-to-handoff timeframe

New Mexico Economic Development Department — JEDI Office

Statewide, New Mexico

Small businesses needing capital but lacking the financial documentation and lender-readiness to pursue financing.

Capital Readiness — Bilingual cohort program with individualized financial consulting.

After recognizing that traditional workshops alone were not preparing businesses for financing, the New Mexico Economic Development Department partnered with Revby to redesign its approach. Together, they created Capital Connect—a bilingual, cohort-based program that combined targeted consulting with capital readiness support, helping small businesses build the financial foundation needed to pursue funding responsibly.

“The question was not how to scale what they had built. It was how to rebuild it around a more targeted goal.”

New Mexico Economic Development Department's JEDI OfficeRole

Where It Started

Learning From What Didn't Work

The New Mexico Economic Development Department’s Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Office had already tried. Their first attempt at capital access programming delivered twelve workshops on accounting, finance, and business law to small business owners across the state. The content was useful. The format was reasonable. But when the JEDI Office looked honestly at what the program had produced, the conclusion was difficult to avoid: workshops alone were not moving businesses closer to financing. Owners were leaving better informed but not necessarily more ready.

That kind of institutional honesty is rare. Rather than defending the first model, EDD used it as a starting point. The question they brought to Revby was not how to scale what they had built — it was how to rebuild it around a more targeted goal.

The Transformation

Designing Capital Connect

The collaboration that followed produced Capital Connect. Revby worked alongside EDD to reimagine the program from the ground up — shaping its name, its visual identity, its structure, and its delivery model. The result was a departure from the workshop format in almost every way. Rather than broad financial education for any interested business, Capital Connect introduced a competitive application process focused specifically on businesses with demonstrated capital needs. Participants were selected. The program had a defined cohort structure, a bilingual delivery model built for Spanish-speaking entrepreneurs from the start, and a reporting framework aligned with U.S. Treasury and SSBCI compliance requirements.

The target audience shifted as well. Capital Connect was designed specifically for socially and economically disadvantaged individuals and very small businesses — the populations SSBCI was created to serve, and the ones most likely to be underserved by conventional capital access pathways.

The first cohort ran during FY 2025–2026. More than 80 businesses applied for 20 available places. Each participant received individualized consulting that included bookkeeping setup and cleanup, financial statement review, cash-flow analysis, multiyear projections, use-of-funds planning, and lender-facing business narratives — all calibrated to where each business was actually starting from, not where a generic curriculum assumed they would be.

What Capital Connect measured was not just how many businesses crossed a finish line. It measured progress across the full spectrum of capital readiness. Some participants advanced to lender conversations with clearer projections and defined funding requests. At least one secured $90,000 in capital. Others reached equally meaningful milestones: producing credible financial records for the first time, defining a realistic financing need, or determining that taking on debt now would put the business at risk — and choosing to wait. That last outcome matters as much as the first. A program that helps owners avoid the wrong financing is doing exactly what responsible capital readiness support should do.

80+

Businesses applied for just 20 available places.

$90K

In capital secured by at least one participating business.

Looking Ahead

A Better Model for Capital Readiness

New Mexico now has something it did not have after the first program: a model it can defend, replicate, and build on. The JEDI Office moved from broad workshop delivery to a targeted, bilingual, compliance-aligned capital readiness program — one that was designed collaboratively, tested with a real cohort, and produces documented outcomes at both the program and participant level. That is the infrastructure that makes the next iteration stronger than the last.

Program outcomes

More than 80 businesses applied for 20 available places, reflecting demand that significantly exceeded initial program capacity.
20 businesses served through a bilingual cohort model combining group workshops and individualized consulting.
Participating businesses represented 143 employees among those reporting workforce data; 81% had five or fewer employees.
69% women-owned or women-led; 55% minority-owned; 86% women- and/or minority-owned; majority Spanish-speaking.
At least one participant secured $90,000 in capital following the program.
Participants across the cohort progressed along a capital readiness spectrum — from strengthening financial records to advancing lender conversations to determining the right time to pursue financing.
New Mexico EDD gained a replicable, bilingual, SSBCI-aligned capital readiness model built from institutional learning and collaborative program design.