April Jones Boyle & the Build Institute

By Mary Meldrum

THE LAST PERFORMANCE FOR THE LOCAL ALL-MOM ROCK BAND, the Mydols, was about seven or eight years ago at the Motor City Casino, when they opened for the B52s. The band dissolved, and since then, no moss has grown under the feet of one of the former lead singers, April Jones Boyle. In fact, Boyle was just igniting her rocket fuel and getting started.

A staggeringly prolific entrepreneur and a fireball of creativity, Boyle has disrupted, engaged, impacted, finessed and handcrafted a life and a career that is a textbook demonstration of how to be a force-multiplier on Planet Earth. It is difficult to know where to begin describing her spirit and her ascent.

I’ll try. Currently, April Jones Boyle is the founder and Executive Director of Build Institute (an organization that she conceived and grew out of the D:hive, where she was also a founding member). I almost need bullet points for the rest of the list. She was the co-creator of several ventures, including the Hootenanny Kids concert series; she is a co-owner in Gold Cash Gold restaurant; she is on the board of Kiva Detroit and also the advisory board for Ponyride. And that is not all.

She is the co-creator of Komodo Kitchen, an Indonesian pop-up supper club that in 2011 was one of the first pop-ups on the scene in the Detroit area, and hosted by the Pinwheel Bakery in Ferndale.

“My partner, Gina Onyx, is from Indonesia. We wanted to create a unique experience for diners,” Boyle says.

Concentrating solely on Build Institute now, Boyle fuels a network of grassroots programs to assist people in turning their project or business ideas into a reality. “Build Institute is focused on access and equity.”
And they have hit some amazing milestones. I give up. I’m using bullet points:

● Six years of small business activation and support, with participants from over 100 zip codes, and 70 per cent women and 60 per cent people of color.
● Ten years of “Open City” forums, with thousands of attendees.
● 1,400 program graduates, with over 350 businesses and 500 jobs created or retained.
● Winner of the Bank of America Neighborhood Builder Award.
● $175,450 in funding to 30 entrepreneurs through Kiva Detroit.

“I think entrepreneurship is an art,” Boyle says. “You have to be open to opportunity, and try new things.”

AS A RESULT OF HER LACKLUSTER EXPERIENCE with an accelerator years ago, Boyle ended up becoming a founding member of D:hive in Detroit, and launched an eight-week business planning course for entrepreneurs. It was focused on small businesses that were aspiring to be brick-and-mortar – lifestyle, ma-and-pa, micro and social enterprise, passion businesses – all the stuff that didn’t neatly fit into the common tech and scale business sector.

“If you look at the demographics at the time [of D:hive], the economics of it was focused on technology and scale companies, and the demographics of that sector was mostly white male. And when you looked at the demographics of the city of Detroit, those two things did not match up,” Boyle explains. “I saw an opportunity, and a gap that showed we were leaving a bunch of talent on the table.”

April knew that if Detroit was going to make a full and sustainable recovery, and be a vibrant, inclusive, diverse city, then everyone needed to have an opportunity to build wealth, a business, a life and contribute in some way. Her passion was to make this vision of Detroit a reality.

“We launched private training classes because we saw a gap in needed education, resources and support for entrepreneurs who were women and people of color. The program grew exponentially, and I became the Director of Small Business Initiatives inside of D:hive,” Boyle says.

BUILD INSTITUTE EVENTUALLY SPUN OFF of D:hive, and continued under the Downtown Detroit Partnership. Recently, Build Institute left the DDP and became a 501.c.3 nonprofit organization.

Build Institute is now partnering with the City of Ferndale to provide a series of classes and activities to support aspiring and experienced entrepreneurs and small businesses. With the support from the City, classes are open to Ferndale residents or anyone looking to open a business in Ferndale. Registration is open for “Build Basics and GROW Peer Roundtables” to be held at the Rust Belt Market.

The core business and project planning class is designed for aspiring and established entrepreneurs. Classes cover all the basics of starting a business – from licensing to financial literacy, market research to cash flow and more. Participants leave with a completed business plan and the knowledge and confidence to take your idea to the next level. For more information and to register: http://buildinstitute.org/ferndale/.

“We have graduated over 1,400 aspiring and experienced entrepreneurs from our various programs. We run the Kiva program locally – an international micro-lending platform – and we just acquired and took on the operations of Detroit Soup, which is a micro-granting dinner platform.”

Build Institute was just featured in the Stanford Social Innovation Review as an example of best practices in working with micro-enterprise. Boyle and the Build Institute continue to find more people considering entrepreneurship as a path-way out of poverty and into economic mobility and vitality.

Boyle says. “We believe that independent small business is the backbone of the community. They create jobs that will not be outsourced, they also hire local, they keep the money in the local economy, they help develop commercial corridors and neighborhoods, and more importantly, they keep the culture unique.”

Boyle believes that as big corporate and conglomerates come in, every community needs to give their local independent businesses the tools to deal with and compete with those entities.

BUILD INSTITUTE WILL BE MOVING THEIR HEADQUARTERS to the corner of Michigan and Trumbull, the old Tiger Stadium site. They are currently in lease negotiations with the property developers.

“We will be creating inclusive innovation, shared work space, pop-up retail and workshops, as well as classroom and event space for our community,” Boyle shares.
Having recently graduated the first Build Institute class in Ferndale, Boyle remains super-motivated for social justice, economic justice and also creativity and autonomy. Stand back – April Jones Boyle looks to empower and help each individual define success for themselves on their terms. And I am rock-solid sure she is going to make that happen.