Piper Jaffray Partners with Neighborhood Development Center to Support Midtown Phillips

Piper Jaffray has announced a new partnership with the Neighborhood Development Center, Inc. to support the Midtown Phillips neighborhood in Minneapolis, through the company's new "A Place to Call Home" initiative. Piper Jaffray has committed a total cash award of $500,000 and employee volunteer time to the effort over a three-year period, and kicked off the partnership with an initial grant of $175,000.

The company formed the "A Place to Call Home" initiative to make a significant impact in a selected neighborhood by providing financial and volunteer resources to its partner organization in order to help accomplish objectives that would not otherwise be possible or as easily attained. After months of learning and reviewing options, a steering committee of Piper Jaffray employees selected NDC as its partner in August. NDC is a community-based nonprofit organization that works in the low-income communities of St. Paul, Minneapolis, surrounding suburbs and Greater Minnesota.

NDC's accomplishments include working in partnership with Project for Pride in Living and Whittier CDC in the Midtown Phillips neighborhood to create the Mercado Central - a thriving Latino marketplace for small business owners, most of whom are recent immigrants. Mercado businesses collectively employ hundreds of individuals and generate more than $4.5 million in sales per year. This economic activity has had a significant positive effect on the local community and has led NDC to plan a strategic expansion of its work in the neighborhood.

Piper Jaffray will work with NDC to support this expanded scope of activity in Midtown Phillips. Specifically, the partnership will support renovation of the old Antiques Minnesota building across Lake Street from the Mercado Central for use by "second-stage" entrepreneurs to expand their businesses. This project will also include an entrepreneur training center and computer learning facility.

"We are very excited to initiate this partnership with NDC," said Tom Schnettler, head of Equities and Investment Banking at Piper Jaffray & Co. and management committee chair of the partnership. "The success of NDC's work in the Midtown Phillips neighborhood to date is very impressive. We will use our financial investment and business expertise to assist NDC's efforts to help local entrepreneurs expand their businesses, grow their management skills and increase employment, all of which will have a positive impact throughout the community."

"We are thrilled to have been selected as the partner for Piper Jaffray's 'A Place to Call Home' initiative," said Mihailo Temali, executive director of NDC. "But as useful as the funding from Piper Jaffray will be to our project, the other levels of this relationship hold even more potential to move NDC's mission ahead. Piper Jaffray is willing to work with us on everything from technology to financial planning and from strategic thinking to rolling up their sleeves and painting walls and planting flowers. A firm of Piper Jaffray's size, with an initiative this generous, will provide us with unique and invaluable resources for many years to come."

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