About GoBe

The Inspiration
The inspiration for GoBe sprang from a thoughtful conversation between two friends. Huddled in a cozy enclave in downtown Traverse City, Michigan in the middle of one of Mother Nature’s most extreme snowstorms, the idea of making the world a better place by combining microlending and meaningful tourism percolated to the surface.

Our Mission
The mission of GoBe is three-fold:

1. To provide affordable loans to economically and politically marginalized entrepreneurs/groups of entrepreneurs with limited or no access to credit.

2. To build a bridge between GoBe lenders and entrepreneurs by offering meaningful travel opportunities that provide lenders the opportunity to visit GoBe’s entrepreneurial partners.

3. To create communities of “GoBe-ers” who will help guide the evolution of GoBe and our partner entrepreneurs by engaging in our online GoBe village.

Our desire is to build an organization that is ethical, fiscally stable and one that is socially responsible, generating measurable ‘value’ along the entire value chain. Unlike organizations that focus on increasing the short-term financial ‘return on investment’ GoBe is fundamentally committed to a triple bottom line perspective in which we give equal weight to the social, environmental and financial impact – for our customers, for our entrepreneurs, and for our tourism partners. We value transparency and collaboration and our business model will be created (and continue to evolve) with these values leading our decision-making.