(from
left) BECMA CEO Nicole Obi, Lillian DeWitt of MIT, Adler Bernadin of
Northeastern and Rob Williams of SDO look on as Jerry Epps of Babson
speaks. (Not pictured: Segun Idowu.)
Entrepreneurs of color focus on equity
Following the 2015 Boston Federal Reserve report, “The Color of Wealth,” which identified major racial wealth gaps in Boston, several Black businesses owners in Massachusetts joined together to create the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts.
The organization, which is often called BECMA, works in policy and advocacy as well as running programs to help Black businesses owners and entrepreneurs.
BECMA now supports members in 51 industries statewide, according to its the 2022 impact report released in April.
Almost 10 years after the Federal Reserve report was released, BECMA continues to work to close the racial wealth gap across Massachusetts. President and CEO Nicole Obi called the work BECMA does “an investment,” citing a report from the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation that estimated closing the racial wealth gap could grow the Massachusetts economy by $25 billion.
BECMA members told the Banner services provided by the organization have allowed them to better sustain and grow their businesses.
Shironda White, co-founder and CEO of Cupcake Therapy, said that sessions at BECMA’s Mass Black Expo — an annual three-day event offering resources and
purchasing opportunities to Black-owned businesses, entrepreneurs and
professionals — have provided important information that has allowed her
to grow her business.
“Being
able to make those connections, being able to get what we need as a
business in terms of information on things like becoming a certified
minority-owned business, a woman-owned business, about funding options
for our business, a lot of different things that they do to address
entrepreneurship in the Black community, those sessions have been
phenomenal,” White said.
For
her own business, she said, key sessions have covered becoming
certified as a minority- and woman-owned business, a status that opens
more contracting options with the city of Boston and Massachusetts state
government.
“Just
hearing them break it down on what the steps are, who you need to talk
to, giving out contact information, walking through what the application
looks like, it just made it so much easier,” White said. “[Before the
session,] I really just kept thinking, ‘I’ll do this later. I don’t have
time for this right now. It’s going to be too much to figure out.’”
Obi
said that supporting Blackowned businesses has an outsized impact, as
BECMA often sees Black employers hiring Black and brown employees.
“Supporting
one business and getting them from a sole proprietor to an actual
employer firm does a lot to help to scale the economy and all that goes
with that employment,” Obi said. “We also know most business owners are
often very involved in supporting other elements of the community as
well. By supporting a business, we really do feel that as we help them
to grow, they’re actually fueling the growth of the economy in sort of a
‘one plus one equals three’ type of way.”
Chanda
Smart, CEO of Onyx- Group, a development company that partners with
BECMA to help its members with procurement opportunities, said BECMA’s
support is also important because it helps the businesses become
self-sufficient.
“It’s
empowering times two, because they’re being nurtured, they’re being
taught how to fish, which is, in my view, a different mechanism. They’re
empowering them to stand alone,” Smart said.
BECMA’s
work to close the wealth gap comes during efforts to better understand
that same gap. Almost 10 years after the original “Color of Wealth” was
published, the Boston Fed is now revisiting its report to provide more
detail on the gaps it found.
Instead
of looking broadly at racial groups, the updated report will drill down
and look at subgroups of Black, white and Latino populations.
Beth
Mattingly, an assistant vice president at the Boston Fed who is leading
the updated study, said that understanding which specific groups are
most impacted can help develop policies that will be most effective in
reducing the wealth gap.
“What I’m hoping is, having more data, having a more
nuanced understanding, will help us see not only that these gaps exist,
but where they’re most acute, who was furthest from the median, which
groups, if we look at the entire wealth distribution, are concentrated
lower in that distribution,” Mattingly said. “Then, when we model
different policy solutions and practice solutions … if we think about
how we’re trying to move the needle, we can see how different groups
would be impacted.”
Obi,
who is on the panel associated with the updated Boston Fed study, said a
lot of care is being taken to consider those subgroups as well as
populations outside Boston city limits. She cited an April report from
the Boston Foundation identifying diversity within Boston’s Black
population and also diversity within Black communities in Greater Boston
cities and towns.
Looking
at the next few years, Obi said she’s excited about the impact of the
so-called “Silver Tsunami” — the aging and retiring of Americans — and
its impact on business ownership.
Data
released in September by the MassInc Polling Group in partnership with
the Coalition for an Equitable Economy — a group that includes Obi and
is focused on ensuring equity in business — found that white business
owners said they were more likely to be planning to sell their business
in the near future.
According
to the survey, white business owners were about 2.5 times more likely
than Black business owners to express plans to sell their company. Obi
said she sees that trend as an opportunity for a transfer of ownership
and of wealth, as long as Black entrepreneurs can be positioned to buy
some of those businesses.
“Ten
years from now, that wave is likely to be over,” Obi said. “This is a
moment in time and there’s some urgency, I think, for those businesses
that are able, to help them through that process.”