The Story of the BBRC, Part 2: Thirty Years and Still Counting
By Bob Dickerson
Executive Director, Birmingham Business Resource Center (BBRC)
The most recent five-year period has been defined by disruption, acceleration, and redefinition. The COVID-19 pandemic did more than disrupt small businesses; it fundamentally altered how they operate, how they access capital, and how they engage with customers and suppliers. Businesses that had survived for decades were forced to rethink their models overnight. At the same time, new entrepreneurs emerged in response to shifting labor markets, technological change, and economic uncertainty.
For BBRC, this period required immediate adaptation.
Technical assistance expanded beyond traditional business planning and financial coaching into areas such as digital transformation, e-commerce readiness, crisis management, and post-pandemic stabilization strategies. The organization found itself working not only with early-stage entrepreneurs, but also with long-established businesses seeking to restructure operations in real time.
Capital Access in a Changing Landscape
Capital access programs also evolved. Federal relief programs introduced during and after the pandemic created both opportunity and complexity. Navigating those programs required not only technical knowledge, but trusted relationships and interpretive capacity—helping small businesses understand what was available, what was applicable, and what could realistically be accessed.
At the same time, BBRC deepened its focus on supplier diversity and procurement access. The reality of modern economic development is that loans alone are insufficient. Sustainable business growth increasingly depends on access to contracts, supply chains, and institutional purchasing systems. BBRC’s role expanded to helping firms prepare for those opportunities, ensuring that they were not only financially viable, but contract-ready.
Leadership Behind the Numbers
Throughout this period, leadership in lending and capital access has been particularly critical. Tamika McNeal, as Director of Lending, has played a central role in strengthening BBRC’s lending operations, supporting underwriting discipline, and ensuring that borrowers are not only approved but positioned for long-term success. Her work reflects the increasingly complex balance between access and risk management that defines community development lending today, where the goal is not simply to deploy capital, but to deploy it responsibly and effectively in ways that sustain both businesses and programs. Kimberly McCall has developed as Chief Operating Officer of the development company, adding assurance that it operates efficiently and effectively.
Stronger Together: Institutional Partnerships
This period also reinforced the importance of institutional partnerships. Financial institutions continue to rely on BBRC as both a referral partner and a technical intermediary. Community development financial institutions, federal agencies such as the Small Business Administration and the Minority Business Development Agency, and regional partners all played increasingly important roles in sustaining the ecosystem.
What emerged clearly during this period is that BBRC’s relevance is not tied to any single program or funding stream. It is tied to its ability to operate across systems that are often disconnected from one another. That integrative function has become more valuable, not less, in a fragmented economic environment.
Thirty Years of the Same Core Mission
Despite external volatility, the organization has continued to maintain its core mission: helping businesses build capacity, access capital, and reach customers. Those three pillars, established at the outset, remain unchanged because they remain necessary.
Over thirty years, the definition of small business support has evolved significantly. What once could be accomplished through discrete interventions now requires sustained engagement. Businesses today need integrated support systems that combine financing, coaching, procurement access, financial literacy, and market connectivity. BBRC has remained relevant because it has adapted its model to meet that reality without abandoning its core philosophy.
The Constant Through It All: People
And yet, for all the evolution in programs, partnerships, and external conditions, the most important constant has remained people.
Organizations do not endure for thirty years because of structure alone. They endure because of trust—trust built over time between staff, partners, institutions, and the communities they serve. BBRC has been sustained by individuals who understood that mission work is not episodic, but continuous.
As I reflect on the past three decades, I am reminded that the BBRC was never designed to be static. It was designed to be responsive. It was never intended to be the largest organization in the ecosystem, but rather one of the most connected, adaptive, and trusted.
Established, But Not Finished
The past five years have tested that design more than any period since our founding. And yet, the organization has not only endured, it has continued to function as a bridge—between capital and community, between policy and practice, between aspiration and execution.
At thirty years, the BBRC is no longer an emerging institution. It is an established one. But establishment is not the same as completion.
The work remains unfinished, as it has always been. Disparities in access to capital, contracts, and opportunity continue to define too many small business outcomes. The need for advocacy, technical assistance, and structured access remains as urgent today as it was in 1996.
What has changed is capacity. What has expanded is reach. What has been proven is that a small organization, grounded in relationships and guided by a clear mission, can have sustained impact over time.
And so, as we mark this thirtieth year, I do not view the BBRC as a finished story. I view it as a continuing responsibility.
Thirty years in, the question is no longer whether the BBRC has made a difference. The evidence of that is clear.
The question now is how we continue to deepen that difference in a world that is still changing.
And that, as always, is where the next chapter begins.
