Nonprofit Leadership Excellence: Renay Dossman
Renay Dossman’s schedule is packed with back-to-back meetings and events, but you’d never know it as she moves through Midtown Global Market in Minneapolis. “How’s the family?” she calls to a waiter at Salsa a La Salsa. “Are you getting ready for school?” she asks a young boy getting a fade haircut at Midtown Barbers. “How’s business?” she inquires at the counter of Oasis Market & Deli—and sticks around to receive the report.
Outside the market, Dossman surveys planters that have been lined up to create a walkway through an empty lot at Lake and Chicago. The site just west of Midtown Global Market was once home to local businesses that burned down in 2020 during the social unrest following the murder of George Floyd. Now there’s a “Coming Soon” sign courtesy of Neighborhood Development Center (NDC), which also co-owns and operates the market. The sign talks about recovery and ensuring a strong community. This is the future home of the Ruckus, an innovation center for low-income entrepreneurs that could open as soon as 2026.
A passerby approaches Dossman as she looks around. He admires the planters. “What do you do?” he asks her. “I work for Neighborhood Development Center,” she replies modestly, and he points to the sign, making the connection. “What do you do there?” he presses on. “Well, I lead it,” says Dossman, whose broad smile and down-to-earth demeanor make everyone feel like she’s one of them, even as she sits atop an organization that manages five Twin Cities properties, works with hundreds of entrepreneurs and business owners from disadvantaged pockets of the metro, and oversees distribution of millions of dollars in loans and grants to support their ventures.
Since Dossman joined NDC in 2019 (she became president in 2021 and CEO in 2023), the organization’s operating budget has doubled; it’s now nearly $9 million. NDC has added around 20 full-time employees to run its continually expanding programs. The nonprofit moved into a new modern headquarters building in St. Paul, bringing energy and more local businesses to the corner of University and Dale. And NDC, which has become a model for community-based economic development nationwide through the Build From Within Alliance, was chosen to administer the Minnesota PROMISE Act, which is bringing more than $72 million to local businesses affected by Covid-19 and the 2020 uprisings.
“Renay is deeply committed to supporting entrepreneurs and maximizing community impact, and her leadership has elevated NDC’s work to an entirely new level,” says chef Lachelle Cunningham, founder of Chelles’ Kitchen and chair of the NDC board of directors. “She is a strategic thinker who not only envisions what’s possible but also knows how to engage and empower the right people to make it happen.”
“Renay’s wisdom and commitment are a source of energy and momentum for everyone she works with in any capacity.”
—Kate Barr, MN CDFI Coalition senior advisor
All roads lead to NDC
Dossman grew up in the notorious Chicago housing project Cabrini Green, where she says few of her neighbors had jobs, let alone businesses of their own; those that did were seen as leaders. Her mom, who rose every day at 4:30 a.m. to work at a box company, passed away when Dossman was just 13. Dossman moved to Duluth to live with her brother, 18 years her senior, who’d settled there after serving in the Air Force. Dossman graduated from Duluth’s College of St. Scholastica—the first person in her family to earn a college degree—and landed a job at Cargill as an accountant.
Four years later, she was hired by Target, where she worked for more than 20 years, climbing the corporate ranks from business analyst to design manager of the retailer’s private-label food brands. After two years in Florida working for Southeastern Grocers, Dossman returned to the Twin Cities. She helped her husband, Ben Dossman, a career entrepreneur whose Affirmation House provides housing for men, start a restaurant in Brooklyn Park called Fat Chance. They earned accolades for the sandwiches, but prioritizing affordability and job opportunities for those in need made it tough to turn a profit. The experience solidified Dossman’s desire to use her corporate experience to help others overcome disadvantages.
In 2019, she learned of an opening at NDC, a nonprofit started in 1993 by Mihailo Temali with a mission to revitalize struggling Twin Cities neighborhoods by building wealth through entrepreneurship. NDC offers training, technical assistance, and micro-financing based on character rather than credit for founders who might not qualify for traditional bank loans. Today, there are nearly 1,000 NDC-assisted businesses operating in the Twin Cities, providing more than 6,500 jobs and returning $93 million to their neighborhoods in the form of taxes, wages, and rent, according to Wilder Research.
To Dossman, it felt like a culmination of everything she’d experienced and learned throughout her life and career. A person of deep faith, she says, “I know that I’m here for a reason.”
Those around her feel it too. “Renay’s wisdom and commitment are a source of energy and momentum for everyone she works with in any capacity,” says Kate Barr, senior advisor to Minnesota’s CDFI Coalition, which represents community development financial institutions including NDC. “Her vision and commitment are magnetic.”
Always moving forward
Dossman was just months into her new role when the pandemic hit. She saw the crisis coming and was quick to mobilize NDC resources for small-business owners, including those who were not native speakers and couldn’t read the instructions on the Paycheck Protection Program loans. NDC stepped up its lending and its services.
When Midtown Global Market had to close, NDC helped vendors set up websites and delivery services. Five years later, business is still not back to pre-pandemic levels, but the market is evolving, and Dossman is quick to credit her team for “innovating like crazy and always being open to try new things.”
They created a “beauty node” at the market with hair salons and a brow-shaping studio to drive repeat traffic. They launched an artist-in-residence program and brought in a sports bar and arcade. Knowing that the market serves as a magnet for a struggling stretch of East Lake, NDC spends substantially on security and cleaning. “It’s the only public bathroom around there,” Dossman points out. “We’ve got to take care of it and make everyone feel seen.”
The lower level beneath the market hadn’t been fully activated until NDC recently leased it to Hoyo!, which set up a commercial food production facility for its sambusas, sold at more than 60 grocery stores and used in school lunches by 30 Minnesota school districts serving more than 300,000 students. The Somali Museum also moved in.
Dossman takes the same approach to partnerships and programs beyond the market, like a collaboration with Metropolitan State University to create a cybersecurity clinic and help founders who want to start cyberservice companies of their own. “You have to be nimble,” Dossman says. “You also have to be clear and direct in your focus and where you’re going.”
When the state of Minnesota approached NDC about serving as the administrator of $72 million in PROMISE Act grants in 2024, Dossman didn’t have the team in place to manage such an undertaking, yet she didn’t hesitate. “I just felt such a huge responsibility to the community and to these entrepreneurs to try to do it. I knew we’d figure it out.” And they have, with $9 million distributed in the first round and more to come this fall.
Lately, for every step forward, it seems there’s a step back. Like the $5 million in federal funds for environmentally focused initiatives that were pulled back by the Environmental Protection Agency. “We have a pipeline of entrepreneurs that are doing green businesses,” Dossman says. “So now we’re thinking, how can we still get those projects done without that money?”
Keep moving forward, she tells herself
“What keeps me going is that this is a country that was built on people’s tenacity and their ability to see a bigger future in a bigger, brighter way,” Dossman says. “You’re not going to be able to squelch the ingenuity of people around here, and we’re going to continue to support them.”
She also prioritizes support for her NDC team by doing things like offering yoga classes or having a massage therapist come to headquarters. There’s an employee walking group that meets every week. “When you’re stepping up to lead, you’ve got to take care of the team’s well-being—financial, mental, and physical.”
As for her own well-being? “I start my day in prayer,” Dossman says. “That’s where I get grounded. And I just try to stay focused on what we’re here for. It’s not about me.”
Making noise
When the burned-out lot at Lake and Chicago hit the market a few years ago, Dossman knew NDC needed to buy it. “We didn’t know what we were going to do with it, but we knew we had to hold this spot,” Dossman says. “And then we started asking entrepreneurs and community partners: ‘What do you need? What’s missing in this ecosystem of community development and entrepreneurship?’ ”
Tech support and lab space were two needs that rose to the top, and plans for an innovation center started to take shape. The building will house tech experts available to assist early-stage entrepreneurs. A production area will allow beauty founders to make small-batch products. Most importantly, Dossman says, the building will be flexible, with spaces that could hold an art show, a class, or a photo shoot. The blueprints are drawn; the estimated construction cost is $27 million. NDC has raised about a third of it so far.
A volunteer marketing team from Target helped name this project the Ruckus, with the tagline “Where ideas go to make noise.”
“When everything seems uncertain, you have to make bold moves. You can’t shy away from this moment, from this time,” Dossman says. “And just because it’s hard doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.”
Dossman envisions the Ruckus drawing entrepreneurs from rural areas as well as the city, those who are established and ready to level up, and others just percolating on an idea. It’s the next frontier in NDC’s ongoing mission to remove barriers and level the playing field for unconventional business owners.
“We’re good at what we do at NDC. And we’ve done it for a really long time. We understand entrepreneurs, and we understand how to truly drive economic development,” Dossman says. “So we’ll just keep plugging away. Once we get Lake and Chicago done, we’ll look at the next corner. And the next.”
