{"id":216376,"date":"2026-04-02T18:25:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T18:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/216376\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T18:25:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T18:25:09","slug":"a-tampa-organization-launches-a-1-million-campaign-to-support-local-businesses-web-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/216376\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tampa organization launches a $1 million campaign to support local businesses Web Post"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1179\" height=\"1181\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/IMG_3330.jpeg\" class=\"attachment-256439 size-256439 wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" large=\"\" decoding=\"async\"  \/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTampa Bay Black Chamber of Commerce event flyer<\/p>\n<p>TAMPA\u2013 The Tampa Bay Black Chamber of Commerce is launching a one-million-dollar campaign to support local minority and family-owned businesses.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The chamber found that business owners are the second-highest demographic for suicide in the United States. Because of this, they are naming it a public health emergency. As part of their campaign, the chamber is launching a \u201cNo Business Left Behind\u201d initiative that will serve five hundred entrepreneurs in the Tampa Bay area. Their goal is to raise upwards of $1 million for these entrepreneurs.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Kimmisha Michels, the vice president of the Chamber\u2019s board, says the program will refresh the way people are taught to design a business.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow we were taught to build a business is outdated,\u201d said Michels. \u201cIt is built on old systems. And with all this technology coming in. It\u2019s not taken into consideration on how we should build businesses today in this environment. And so, it can cause a lot of frustration for business owners, so we wanted to build programs that actually address those issues.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Launch<\/p>\n<p>The chamber is kicking off their campaign on Saturday, April 4,\u00a0 where they will introduce their D.R.I.V.E program. D.R.I.V.E incorporates five different programs that are meant to decrease business failure, mental health crisis, financial desperation and isolation. All while increasing resilience, revenue stability, innovation and community wealth-building.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>They are partnering with the Florida Medical Clinic to provide free health screenings at the launch event. Along with a raffle to raise funds, with prizes such as gas cards, oil changes, car washes, dinners and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe goal is to raise the million dollars so that we can service those vulnerable businesses by giving them the support that they need without it being tied to, oh well, you financially don\u2019t qualify,\u201d said Michels. \u201cSo the money actually goes into the programming, providing stipends for businesses, but not only that, but micro grants, we wanna be able to give and we also wanna do direct micro lending.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/tbbcci.org\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">event<\/a> takes place at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/maps\/place\/801+E+Bearss+Ave,+Tampa,+FL+33613\/@28.0872141,-82.4546775,17z\/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x88c2c760c0e20785:0xf1fdf8e052eb02d7!8m2!3d28.0872094!4d-82.4521026!16s%2Fg%2F11b8v783wk?entry=ttu&amp;g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDMzMC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Genesis of Tampa<\/a> from 11:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tampa Bay Black Chamber of Commerce event flyer TAMPA\u2013 The Tampa Bay Black Chamber of Commerce is launching&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[20448,135,137,136,98582],"class_list":{"0":"post-216376","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa","8":"tag-local-business","9":"tag-tampa","10":"tag-tampa-headlines","11":"tag-tampa-news","12":"tag-the-tampa-bay-black-chamber-of-commerce"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}