KEVIN ABOUREZK/Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Saturday, September 24, 2005 7:00 pm
To tell the story of Community Development Resources, you must start in Rhonda Mulgrue’s swimming pool.
It is there at 37th and Randolph streets that the swimming teacher sees her lifelong passion fulfilled each day in the smiling, soggy faces of the children she coaches.
And it could not have happened, she said, without the help of CDR, a Lincoln nonprofit lending agency that loaned her the down payment for her home three years ago. Without her home’s indoor swimming pool, she said, she could not stay in business year-round.
“They have been so supportive,” she said of CDR. “This is my dream come true.”
When Frank Chambers tells others the story of Community Development Resources, he starts from the beginning.
Chambers — a volunteer community ambassador for CDR — starts with a company called the Self Employment Loan Fund and its executive director, Rick Wallace.
Chambers, a retired Gallup employee, recently recited the scripted spiel he uses to spread CDR’s message to community groups in Lincoln:
“I learned that Rick was a very successful minority businessman who had previously owned and operated a highway construction business. Rick had sold that business and was now on a mission to help others in starting their own enterprises.”
In 2003, SELF became Community Development Resources.
But its mission to help aspiring entrepreneurs get started did not change, nor did its leadership.
“Our mission was to make a big impact with small amounts of money,” said Wallace, now executive director of CDR.
That impact translates to 195 loans worth more than $1 million awarded to local business people since 1995. Of those loans, 60 percent have gone to new businesses.
Those loans have helped create at least 400 jobs in the Lincoln area.
That money has helped start local hair salons, clinics, seafood stores and martial arts dojos. It has buoyed families with two incomes struggling stay afloat. It has given others a reason to love their jobs again, Wallace said.
The agency targets for lending low-income people and minorities, as well as those living and investing in economically distressed areas of Lincoln. However, anyone with an enterprising spirit and a business plan can apply.
“I don’t care about their race, creed or color — the only color in business is green,” Wallace said.
In fact, Wallace demands just one thing: a will to succeed.
He puts it like this: A fool with a million bucks will go broke in no time. A hungry person with good work habits and a plan will find success inevitable.
It’s important to be critical of those wanting loans, he said. It’s important for CDR — which needs to get its loan money back to reinvest elsewhere — and it’s important for the business people, who are putting everything at stake.
Homes, social relationships and even families can all be wiped out by a business gone awry, he said.
“We have to be scrutinizing, challenging,” Wallace said.
The result of that scrutiny, he said, is well worth the challenge.
“There are so many people out here with potential to succeed,” he said. “That’s the reward for me.”
To tell the story of Community Development Resources, you must start in Joe Frey’s prosthetics patient room.
It’s there that Frey, who lost his own leg in a work-related accident at a grain elevator six years ago, gives others the chance to live free of their impediments.
In 2003, Frey turned his own adversity into a business plan by founding Triumph Prosthetics and Orthotics with financial help from CDR. The company provides artificial limbs, as well as body bracing for those with injuries such as sprained ankles and knees.
But unlike other such companies, Frey said, it also provides an understanding ear to its clients.
“We empathize with the patient, not just sympathize,” the 28-year-old said.
The company has grown quickly in its two years of existence, becoming too large for its Ridge Line
Road location, Frey said. Triumph recently moved into new, bigger digs at 2801 Pine Lake Road, Suite G.
The company also has clinics in Albion, Hastings and Belleville, Kan., and Frey recently won the Distinguished Leadership Award from Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital.
“It’s triumph over adversity, and that’s what we’re doing,” he said.
Recently, CDR asked Frey to be a guest speaker at a business training course it offers its clients.
“That was great,” he said. “They’ve been a really positive organization.”
Reach Kevin Abourezk at 473-7225 or kabourezk@journalstar.com.