Starting a new firm or growing an established business requires capital, but Black and Hispanic businesses are reported to have higher barriers to capital access. The challenges are well documented and many solutions have been proposed, but to achieve change, we need to move ideas into action. The federal government actually has a lot of programs that can help. Between the Small Business Administration’s (SBA’s) Community Advantage Loan Program, Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund), Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA), and the Department of Agriculture’s Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization(OSDBU), there is potential to mobilize resources that drive job creation and economic growth, especially in minority communities throughout the country. We need to leverage these resources, as well as develop and execute new solutions.
Resource Category: Access to Capital
Small Business Owners Struggle For Credit
The California Reinvestment Coalition released Small Business Owners Struggle to Access Affordable Credit, a new report focused on the challenges small business owners and entrepreneurs face when trying to get a loan to start, maintain, or grow their businesses.
2016 Startup Firms Credit Survey
This report is the second in a series of reports based on the 2016 Small Business Credit Survey (SBCS), a national collaboration of the Community Development Offices of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks. As a followup to the Report on Employer Firms issued in April 2017, the Report on Startup Firms provides an in-depth look at the financing and credit experiences of startups with employees—which we define as small businesses that were five years old or younger in 2016 and had full- or part-time employees.
Challenges of African-American Entrepreneurs
The report, entitled “Stuck From The Start: The Financial Challenges of Low- and Moderate-Income African-American Entrepreneurs in the South,” reflects interviews with 30 African-American business owners in eastern North Carolina, southwestern Georgia and the Jackson and Delta regions of Mississippi. The project was launched to better understand why Black-owned businesses struggle to succeed relative to their White peers.
Crowdfunding for Women Entrepreneurs
This research was commissioned by The National Women Business Council (NWBC) and prepared by A2F Consulting LLC to explore the distinct relationship between crowdfunding and women entrepreneurship and develop a deeper understanding of crowdfunding as a capital source. The research aims to: i) identify and document available demographic and other descriptive quantitative information on crowdfunding, including equity crowdfunding; ii) identify gender differences in crowdfunding in terms of industry, goals, investors, platforms used, and success; iii) document existing policies that may support or hinder women’s participation in crowdfunding campaigns; iv) provide additional information and guidance to women entrepreneurs seeking to raise capital through crowdfunding; and v) provide policy recommendations for supporting women entrepreneurs.
2016 Employer Firms Credit Survey
The 2016 SBCS, which was fielded in Q3 and Q4 2016, yielded 10,303 responses from employer firms in 50 states and the District of Columbia. The report findings provide an in-depth look at small business performance and debt at the end of 2016.
Business Ownership And The Racial Wealth Gap
African Americans & Latinos/as face high barriers to starting and growing businesses, including lower levels of financial assets. What steps can we take to address this?
2015 Nonemployer Firms Credit Survey
Small nonemployer businesses—those with no employees other than the firms’ owners—make up nearly 80% of all U.S. firms in number. Yet, little is known about the performance or the financing needs and decisions of these 23 million businesses. The few sources that provide insight into small business credit conditions do not distinguish the experiences of nonemployers from small employer firms, which may differ significantly.
2015 Employer Firms Credit Survey
Seven Federal Reserve Banks released Small Business Credit Survey: Report on Employer Firms. The three main findings: financing success improved in 2015; businesses most satisfied with small bank lending; and online lenders are popular—but they have lowest borrower satisfaction levels.
Undercapitalization and Women Entrepreneurs
One of the Council’s key areas of research is on women’s access to capital, a continual challenge for women entrepreneurs. Two of the NWBC’s FY2013 research projects demonstrate that accessing sufficient capital is a problem even for high-growth women-owned businesses. We have learned that women-owned firms face unique challenges because there are significant differences in undercapitalization that exist between men-owned and women-owned firms. First, Robb and Coleman concluded that startup capital is a key indicator of business success. This research confirmed that women start their business with nearly half the amount of capital as men, and further that women entrepreneurs raise substantially less equity and debt throughout the business lifecycle. In a second study, conducted by PQC Consulting, Inc, we learned, that all else equal, undercapitalization negatively impacts business survival.