Black entrepreneurs are unsung heroes, often making miracles happen with little to no resources. A fellow founder launched a national holiday to raise awareness of funding disparity and to give Black business owners their flowers.
Dr. Rashae Barnes, Founder of Barnes Media Group, recently announced the establishment of National Black Funding Day (September 30th) per a news release.
“We need to educate the masses on the disparities in funding across the board and provide resources to help underserved communities secure funding for their businesses,” Barnes said in a statement. “We also need to celebrate the strides made thus far for black founders across the country.”
She continued per the news release: “This holiday aims to recognize and honor the accomplishments of black entrepreneurs in the funding industry throughout the United States while highlighting the disparities in venture capital, grants, and educational resources for underserved communities, particularly black and minority-owned businesses. The day will also serve as a call to action for large corporations and businesses to make donations to black founders and their organizations across the board.”
As previously reported by ESSENCE Barnes is deeply committed to narrowing the funding gap for Black-owned businesses, who, at present receive less than 2% of VC funding. Her new firm Evals Equity was founded this year after she recognized a huge disparity in capital and resources for Black women-owned businesses, despite the group being the largest growing sector of entrepreneurs in the country.
“Since it’s a fund-to-fund, it doesn’t make sense for me to seek investors because I’m trying to fund other people’s businesses,” Barnes said. “We want to structure Evals Equity as a 501(c)3 so that we can focus on donors and not investors. That way, people are able to donate, then make it a tax write-off. We have a lot of different funds under Evals Equity. We have the Impact Entrepreneurship Fund, designed for young entrepreneurs, we have the Invest Women Fund, which is a fund specifically created for women of color, and then we have Evals Impact Day, which is a day where we’ll designate to raise capital each year.”