Dallas Nonprofit Offers Financial Coaching and Advice

Like most small business owners, baker Stephanie Leichtle-Chalken, is getting creative.

Her business, Kuluntu Bakery, is run out of her Dallas home. Before the coronavirus pandemic, she focused on delivering baked goods to customers and in-person breadmaking classes.

To remain contact-free, she’s now using a basket to lower bread to waiting customers from her second-story home and has moved her bread-making classes online.

“We’re just trying to adapt and be nimble,” said owner of Kuluntu Bakery, Stephanie Leichtle-Chalken. “We’re also providing a staple – bread. A good loaf of bread and people seem to really want that right now.”

Before the crisis, Leichtle-Chalken was working with financial coaches from WiNGS Dallas to grow and support her business and that guidance is needed now more than ever.

“This whole thing happened and immediately they were responding to it by providing all these resources for our business,” Leichtle-Chalken said. “Just getting on the phone with my business mentor at WiNGS and just talking through what’s going on and having her as a sounding board to give me advice during this time has been really amazing."

“What we’re really hoping to do is help people recover and build resiliency,” said WiNGS CEO Kate Rose Marquez.

For decades the non-profit WiNGS has provided services for women focused on gaining financial stability, career coaching, starting a business or parenting support. Now, due to COVID-19, they’re pivoting to provide their financial and career coaching services to everyone.

“WiNGS has really looked at what is going on in our community and said this is a time when our services need to be here for everybody,” Marquez said. “So while we are an organization that for 112 years that has focused on women and served women we think it’s important that anyone that calls us, that visits our website, anyone that needs help, we are here to help them.”

According to WiNGS, their coaches and advisors can offer one-on-one support and help people navigate filing for unemployment benefits, prevent eviction and review financials to plan for the short-term and the long-term.

For more on the services provided by WiNGS: https://wingsdallas.org/covid19/