When it comes to helping small businesses, HarborOne Bank doesn’t just talk the talk. They also walk the walk.

Through HarborOne U, the bank has offered free classes for small business for five years – helping more than 7,000 over the years – but with their new program, “Success for Small Business,” the bank hopes to step it up a notch. Businesses that complete the six “core” courses will be rewarded with a $5,000 business line of credit, which will increase to $10,000 without reapplying if after a year the business proves to be fiscally responsible.

The curricula for these classes, modeled off of the FDIC’s Money Smart financial education program for small businesses, focus largely on book keeping. The aim is to teach small businesses to do their book keeping correctly so that if they decide to grow their business and approach a bank for a loan, they will have completed the steps necessary to obtain one.

“What it really comes down to is, it’s heavily focused on managing your cash flow, knowing how to keep records,” said Maureen Wilkinson, HarborOne’s vice president of community education and CRA officer. “One of the things with small business owners is that they are an expert at whatever service or product they’re producing or marketing but they don’t necessarily have information or knowledge about how to maintain appropriate bank records and/or records for tax purposes for filing their income tax, [or] what type of business structure makes sense for them.”

The classes will be offered at locations in both Mansfield and Brockton on rotation year-round. This program “doesn’t have an end time,” Wilkinson said; instead the bank is “continuously rescheduling” to offer the same classes at least four times a year so that business owners can go to ones at convenient times for them and learn at their own pace, on their own schedule.

The loans will be made to businesses both potentially not earning revenues and to those just starting out. HarborOne, knowing that not all business ventures succeed, remains untroubled, offering enough money to help but not so much that the bank would be significantly impacted by a loss.

“We need to make it meaningful enough for them to have enough funds to be able to purchase a new piece of equipment, but at the same time we need to make sure that we look at risk for the bank, because this person is not yet established in their business and we’re lending the money based on an the idea that they can make it work,” Wilkinson said. “Likely some of these loans … we’re not going to get paid back for, but these people are never going to know and never going to get a chance unless somebody gives them … some seed money to get started.”

Wilkinson said that HarborOne understands the importance of small businesses in the communities it serves, recognizing that the businesses they help are “really small in most cases, like what we would call micro businesses, really, the moms and pops that make our towns and cities really thrive for many families and communities.”