Small business toolkit: 7 resources for Black-owned businesses

Only 4.3% of America’s 22.2 million business owners are Black, according to a February report by the Brookings Institute. And Black-owned businesses launch with about “a third less capital than their White peers and have difficulties raising private investments from mainstream investment systems,” reported Brookings. While 7% of White business owners get a loan in their first year of business, only 1% of Black business owners do so.

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Black-owned businesses have also been hit the hardest. According to a recent analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, “Black firms have been almost twice as likely to shutter as firms overall.” And just 20% of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans went to areas that had the highest concentration of Black-owned businesses, the Fed found.