By Kolby LaMarche

Nine Vermont entrepreneurs are preparing to pitch their handmade products at Generator Makerspace’s JumpStart Expo & Pitch Night on April 8 after spending the past several months in a free 13-week business bootcamp. 

The cohort includes practical inventions such as a specialized infant feeding chair that supports nursing, pumping and bottle-feeding postures; durable, colorful bicycle bags built for daily riding in Burlington; discreet palm-sized silent fidgets; physical blocks for learning music theory by touch, an architectural plant hanger made from upcycled leather, and more.

The program, facilitated by business coach Emily Eley with sponsorship from M&T Bank, gives participants access to makerspace tools, prototyping equipment and weekly guidance as they refine their ideas into viable businesses. 

While the JumpStart bootcamp itself is provided at no cost to selected makers, the spotlight on Eley has drawn some attention to her separate for-profit operation. 

Through Emily Eley Coaching LLC, she runs Made 4 More, a four-month private coaching program that charges $3,500. Eley markets it explicitly as anti-capitalist business consulting grounded in anti-capitalist values. 

The program targets Vermont small business owners, freelancers, creatives and cooperative members—especially those early in their ventures—who want to build “sustainable, ethical businesses rooted in care, not extraction.”

Made 4 More is structured around three tracks: “The Scientist” for offer development, product design, budgeting and financial planning; “The Storyteller” for marketing, messaging and website development; and “The Shopkeeper” for sales, pricing and customer experience. 

Participants receive eight live coaching calls, unlimited email support, ready-made templates for sales pages, budgets and marketing plans, and lifetime access to the curriculum. 

The content stresses ethical sales, marketing that avoids heavy social media or manipulative tactics, and “anti-capitalist budgeting” that prioritizes community care, long-term stability and rejection of hustle culture.

Eley describes her work as advancing a “solidarity economy through mutual aid and economic justice organizing.”

The primary way Eley sustains Made 4 More is through public funding. 

Her site provides detailed instructions, including a video guide, directing Vermont residents to apply for the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation (VSAC) Advancement Grant to cover the full $3,500 cost. Applicants are told to list Emily Eley Coaching LLC (PO Box 3328, Burlington, VT 05408; phone 802-355-8527) as the provider, select one of the three tracks as the course name, and use the planned start date as the application date. 

Eley, a VSAC-approved non-degree course provider, states that the grant can often fund 100 percent of the fee for eligible applicants, with payment sent directly to her LLC once enrollment is verified. 

Importantly, the VSAC Advancement Grant is a need-based program funded by Vermont’s general fund appropriations. It is designed to help adult Vermonters improve employability through short-term non-degree training or as an entry point to further education. 

In recent years the program has supported practical workforce credentials such as CDL licenses, childcare certifications, LNA and other healthcare roles, trades training, driver’s education and now, apparently, anti-capitalist training sessions.  

In FY24, over 800 adult students received more than $2.9 million through the Advancement Grant for such purposes. The average recipient was around 35 years old with a household income of roughly $25,000 for a family of two. 

The grant draws from the same general fund line item that funds VSAC’s broader need-based Vermont Grants for low-income students in full-time and part-time degree programs. 

VSAC’s budget groups full-time grants, part-time grants, the Advancement Grant and trades programs together. For FY25 this appropriation was enacted at $26,139,946 from the general fund base, with the governor proposing an additional $945,000 increase for FY26. 

These are state tax dollars approved annually by the Vermont Legislature. When a qualifying applicant uses the grant for Made 4 More, those public dollars flow directly to Eley’s for-profit LLC.

This mechanism has raised questions about how limited general fund resources intended in part for low-income student aid and practical job skills training are being allocated. 

The Advancement Grant qualifies Made 4 More as an eligible non-degree class under VSAC rules, even though the curriculum centers explicitly on ideological principles and critiques extractive or profit-driven business practices. 

There is no public requirement that the coaching produce specific measurable outcomes in employment, revenue generation or business success beyond the grant’s general employability criteria.

The April 8 JumpStart Expo & Pitch Night is open to the public from 5 to 8 p.m. at Generator in Burlington’s South End Arts District. Attendees can hear the nine entrepreneurs discuss their products and journeys.