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helped a café open a new location, brand itself more clearly, and resolve conflicts with its contractor. A custom cabinetmaker got assistance to improve its manufacturing process to cut costs and increase output, while arranging for its Spanish-speaking staff to learn English, further boosting worker productivity. A plumbing business was reorganized so that more calls could be answered, increasing revenues and profits. In 2006, my foundation and UEI launched a partnership with Inc. magazine to provide peer mentors to nine emerging entrepreneurs, some of whom are alumni of the consulting program. The businesses include a microbrewery, a boutique hat shop, an ad agency, and Harlem’s first bowling alley in decades.

All this may sound simple, but most small-business owners work long hours for modest incomes. They don’t have the time or money to examine their operations or get the kind of regular advice the consultants and Inc. mentors offer. Big companies pay major consulting firms large fees to review their operations and boost their CEO’s effectiveness in this way.

This is hard work with no guarantees of success. A client survey of twelve businesses showed that UEI had an enormously positive impact on three, a moderately positive impact on four, and no impact on five, either because our team couldn’t help or the business owner decided not to follow through on the program. Is it worth the effort? It’s a great learning experience for the business school students, and other UEI volunteers who have worked on successful projects feel they’ve done something important. The Inc. mentors seem to be having a great time. They’re an impressive group, including Jay Goltz, who built the largest picture framing business in the United States, and Pete Slosberg, who built Pete’s Brewing Company into one of Inc. magazine’s “Top 100 Companies” for three straight years.

I’d like to expand the UEI throughout New York and see similar programs set up in other cities, but doing so would require some investment capital. It’s unrealistic to expect many companies to give the huge amounts of time and resources Booz Allen has devoted to UEI. But with enough money to fund a small staff to recruit and coordinate volunteers and a willing business school partner, almost any city can produce the volunteers to replicate UEI. Groups of successful entrepreneurs can mentor fellow entrepreneurs in their community. Small businesses are vital to the fabric of low-income neighborhoods. With just a little of the help large corporations pay handsomely for every year, many more would survive, prosper, keep employees working, hire more people, and strengthen their communities.

ONE EXAMPLE OF MODEL GIVING that has been particularly successful in New York involves churches establishing their own corporations to promote economic development and affordable housing in their communities. The Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral, pastored by Revs. Floyd and Elaine Flake, is an African Methodist Episcopal “mega-church” in Jamaica, Queens, with twenty thousand members. Its Preservation and Development Corporation supports commercial development, homeownership, repair and renovation, and foreclosure avoidance. When I first visited the church in 1992, at its previous location, I noticed that it was surrounded by successful small businesses. Most of them had received financing from the church’s development arm.

The Abyssinian Baptist Church, a Harlem landmark pastored by Rev. Calvin Butts, also has a development corporation devoted to increasing affordable housing, economic development, and family support. In New York City about 30 percent of the people own their own homes. In central Harlem, the ownership rate is only 13.8 percent. The Abyssinian Development Corporation has created more than one thousand units of affordable housing in eighty-two buildings, most of which have gone to low-income families, the homeless, and senior citizens. In addition, ADC has given more than one hundred moderate-income families the chance to own their own homes and will develop three hundred more