How to Get Started with Trauma-Informed Business Support: Practical Tips & Steps
- Gloria Ware
- Dec 17, 2025
- 5 min read
If you found this blog post before this one check that one out first and come back for next steps.
As referenced in the previous blog post, I had the opportunity as grantmaking intermediary to see the impact that incorporating trauma-informed practice can have on outcomes.
Here are actionable steps and tips to build or embed trauma-informed business support within your ecosystem.
1. Understand the core principles
Before operationalising, get clarity on what “trauma-informed” means in a business context. Some of the key principles:
Realising and recognising trauma’s impact on business decision making and business owner health.
Creating welcoming and safe spaces (physical, psychological, relational) for entrepreneurs.
Ensuring trustworthiness, transparency.
Empowering choice, collaboration, voice.
Considering cultural, historical and gender issues.
Prioritising strengths and resilience–not just deficits. For example, the Fairfax County definition outlines these steps in the context of organisations.
2. Map your entrepreneurial ecosystem & assess the need
Identify the community of entrepreneurs you serve (or aim to serve) and consider whether trauma or adverse experience may be a barrier (e.g., entrepreneurs from formerly incarcerated backgrounds; survivors of violence; immigrants with refugee trauma; entrepreneurs who grew up in poverty, etc.).
Conduct a needs-assessment: where are there drop-offs in program enrollments, impact survey metrics; where is trust low, why are entrepreneurs reluctant to engage? Consider your organization’s readiness to assess and respond to business owners impacted by financial and other trauma - especially in the current environment - as a lens for why.
Assess your current business-support processes: application, intake, mentoring, networking, peer groups. Identify where trauma re-traumatisation could occur (rigid application forms, judging tone, one-size-fits-all mentoring, ignoring wellness, ignoring the emotional dimension of entrepreneurship).
3. Redesign support processes with trauma-informed design
Intake & onboarding: create an environment where entrepreneurs feel safe and known. For example: include privacy, choose language that avoids stigma, allow for storytelling if the person wants, provide clear expectations, allow choice of mentor.
Coaching/mentoring: train mentors/support staff on trauma-informed approaches (greeting, llistening, recognising signs of distress, boundaries, secondary trauma for the coach).
Peer-group dynamics: create peer networks where entrepreneurs can share not just wins but challenges, emotional stress, failure without shame.
Physical/virtual space design: is your meeting space welcoming, culturally responsive, accessible, psychologically safe? (Lighting, seating, check-in, breakout rooms, debrief time).
Monitoring & evaluation: build in wellness check-ins, feedback loops that include “how safe did you feel,” “did this feel respectful,” rather than only business KPI metrics.
Staff wellbeing: Recognise that those supporting entrepreneurs may also have past and/or current traumatic experiences in addition to getting trauma/stress from working with community members and clients. Provide support, supervision, training, self-care.
4. Build partnerships & integrate services
Collaborate with mental-health / trauma-specialist organisations: You don’t need to become a therapist but be able to refer, co-design.
Link to resources for wellness, peer support, financial counselling, legal support – trauma is often interconnected with structural issues (housing, debt, discrimination).
Engage funders who understand trauma-informed approaches and may provide flexible funding for longer durations (trauma-informed work often takes longer, so short-term “6-month pilot” funding is often insufficient). Corra Foundation notes that short-term funding is at odds with trauma-informed delivery.
5. Secure funding & sustain it
Incorporating trauma-informed practices could help your organization stand out in a sea of grant applications, attract the attention of “invite-only” funders and improve trust and longer-term outcomes for the entrepreneurs that you serve.
Leverage multiple streams: grants that support wellness, workforce, entrepreneurship, social enterprise, inclusion.
Articulate the logic: For example, “By integrating trauma-informed mentoring in our accelerator program, we expect reduced founder drop-out, increased capital readiness, improved resilience and business performance.”
Build pilot data: Track metrics such as retention in the program, founder wellbeing/self-efficacy, business outcomes. This feeds your case to funders.
Advocate for longer term funding: As above, trauma-informed work benefits from stable, predictable funding.
Funders love collaborative models. Collaborate with trauma practitioners and like-minded organizations to offer wrap-around services for your small business owners.
Consider revenue-generating models (where appropriate): fee-for-service mentoring, corporate sponsorships, social enterprise models can augment grant funding.
6. Monitor, reflect, iterate
Evaluate your motivations. What is your track record with the community of small business owners that you serve? Be sure to incorporate their insights, experiences and recommendations into the evaluation of any trauma-informed practices that you decide to adopt.
Collect qualitative and quantitative data on how trauma-informed supports are working: e.g., participant feedback (“did you feel safe? Was your mentor sensitive to your lived experience?”), business outcomes, retention, network engagement.
Provide professional development for staff/mentors: ongoing training on trauma, cultural competence, coaching, signs of re-traumatisation.
Establish policies and procedures: Confidentiality, boundaries, crisis referral procedures, staff wellness protocols.
Engage entrepreneurs in co-design: their lived experience matters. Let them inform how the program runs, what supports matter, how safe space is defined.
Overcoming Common Barriers
Here are some barriers you’ll likely face and some tips to overcome them.
Barrier: “Entrepreneurs don’t want counseling / trauma talk—they want business strategy only.”
Tip: Frame the trauma-informed support as part of “founder resilience & readiness” rather than therapy. Use language of “you bring whole self to business,” “we support mindset, motivation, wellness, network” and integrate trauma-informed work subtly (e.g., through mindful check-ins, peer forum).
Barrier: “We don’t have capacity/staff to deliver trauma-informed support.”
Tip: Start small. Train key mentors on trauma-informed principles; integrate a few wellness check-ins; set one peer-group circle with sharing and reflection. Build up as you go. Partner with trauma specialists for training/referral rather than trying to build everything in-house at once.
Barrier: “Funders don’t value trauma-informed work in a business support context—they expect strict business metrics.”
Tip: Build the case: demonstrate how trauma impacts business behaviour (risk taking, networks, capital access, founder wellbeing). Use pilot data or case studies; ask funders for flexible funding streams; show how trauma-informed support is an equity tool and risks mitigation for investments.
Barrier: “Measuring trauma-informed support outcomes is difficult.”
Tip: Use a mixed methodology: quantitative business metrics (revenue, jobs created, funding raised) + qualitative wellness/experience metrics (sense of safety, support, resilience, satisfaction). Use validated check-ins (e.g., self-efficacy scales, trust/engagement measures) and build storytelling.
Barrier: “Our ecosystem is still dominated by traditional acceleration thinking—fast growth, scale, competition—not safe space, trauma, reflection.”
Tip: Educate your ecosystem. Share thought leadership (for example: GMA Foundations’ piece on trauma-informed grant-making) GMA Foundations. Host workshops/roundtables about trauma-informed entrepreneurship. Position your organisation/GTB Advisors as a thought-leader in this niche. Leverage your network and epistemic credibility (given your work with diverse equity-oriented clients) to build buy-in.
Start by reviewing your current service offerings and ask: how might we embed trauma-informed practices? (e.g., in intake forms, mentoring protocols, peer support).
If you need additional support, reach out to GTB Advisors to learn more about our experience with this topic and get connected to service providers in our network that offer specialized trauma training.
Additional reads and resources:
A Little Book About Trauma-Informed Workplaces, Crista Renner
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