Community-Driven Economic Empowerment (C-DEE)
The Need
Significant wealth gaps mean that entrepreneurs who are people of color often lack the resources of white entrepreneurs, and liquidity restraints can make it more challenging to continue the business. Top-down solutions like the Payment Protection Plan (PPP), NH Main Street Program, and others have failed these communities.
If people of color owned and operated businesses in the same proportion as White people, the potential is astounding. An August 2020, the Boston Federal Reserve Bank (in a draft report) estimates that people of color could add up to 32,000 companies, which would include 260,000 jobs, and add $8.4 million in worker’s income in New England alone.
A Solution
Community-Driven Economic Empowerment. As a result of a pilot program of the Manchester Branch of the NAACP, the Business Alliance of People of Color (BA PoC) in NH and the NH Community Loan Fund (NHCLF) have come together to support people of color coming together as a community to create a more resilient local economy where more black and brown businesses thrive. The effort focuses on three pillars: community building, capacity building for businesses, and access to capital. This establishes the framework for the partnership and allows the actual implementation to be defined by what is discovered through the process.
The Work
As depicted in the figure above, the work will be to:
- marshall flexible program resources that can be customized to support community-driven solutions identified through the pilot;
- perform community outreach to identify local community needs and local community resources;
- engage the community and businesses to address the identified needs so that more black and brown-led businesses unleash their potential and the community thrives.