The Role of Philanthropy In Black Business Finance

designraAlternative Finance, Community Capital, Crowd Investing

Women Meeting About the JOBS Act

Introduction According to the 2018 Annual Business Survey the most recent data available Black-owned businesses accounted for only 2.2 percent of the almost 6 million businesses that operate in the United States. That number is well below the 13 percent of the population represented by Black people in the United States. Another unique feature of Black business ownership is the … Read More

Crowdfunding Is The Answer to The Small Business Marketing and Funding Dilemma

Bill HustonAlternative Finance, Community Capital, Crowd Investing, Crowdfunding

Small Business

Introduction To thrive in the modern business world it’s important to understand how to market your small independent business and this is going to be even harder in the post COVID-19 crisis small business environment. A recent survey shows establishing customer relationships through marketing and promotion is the second largest concern among independent business owners after securing access to capital. … Read More

Investment Crowdfunding and Black Founders

designraAlternative Finance, Community Capital, Crowd Investing, Real Estate Crowdfunding

Black Business Women

Introduction In my last post, I laid out the dismal economic situation the Black community in the United States faces on a daily basis. There is an immense racial wealth gap that continues to widen driven by unrelenting policies that are steeped in systemic bias and racism. The current data demonstrate that a lack of access to capital in multiple … Read More

Investment Crowdfunding is Vital to Closing the Racial Wealth Gap

designraAlternative Finance, Community Capital, Crowd Investing, Investment Clubs

Black-owned business

Introduction  The Small Business Administration has decreased its loans given to Black-owned businesses by 84% since peaking before the Great Recession, according to research by the Cleveland Business Journal. Across the country, cleveland.com’s sister company, The Business Journals, analyzed lending and demographic data and found small businesses in majority-Black census tracts have less access to bank loans than locations in … Read More

Buy The Block Building Black Wealth One Project at a Time

designraAlternative Finance, Community Capital, Crowd Investing, Real Estate Crowdfunding

Introduction I was on the CrowdWise website and came across the top 10 Investment Crowdfunding portals by amount raised in 2020 and number 10 on the list was one of the only Black woman-owned portals Buy The Block. This statistic jumped out at me for another reason. It was the only Regulation Crowdfunding portal that was not venture funded. Black … Read More

Investment Crowdfunding an Opportunity for Local Small Businesses

designraAlternative Finance, Community Capital, Crowd Investing

Open Small Business

Introduction  Investment Crowdfunding provides the best opportunity to transform our local communities in the shortest amount of time. Investment crowdfunding, just like any other regular equity investment, allows entrepreneurs to sell shares of their business to private shareholders, shares that can potentially be sold later at a much higher price per share. That’s how you attract real investment capital, and … Read More

4 Reasons Real Estate Crowdfunding is a Must For Your Portfolio

designraAlternative Finance, Community Capital, Crowd Investing, Real Estate Crowdfunding

Online Real Estate Investing

The Traditional Real Estate Investor Path Real estate has been the number one route to building wealth in the United States over the last two hundred years. According to the Collegeinvestor.com, about 90 percent of the world’s millionaires have been created by investing in real estate in the previous two centuries. For the average investor, real estate offers the best … Read More

How to Build and Use Twitter Lists To Focus Your Research

designraInbound Marketing, Social Media

Twitter

Introduction  I recently had a social media consulting session with a top-notch, but extremely busy, startup entrepreneur with a goal of increasing their ability to do focused industry research. As we went through the discovery phase of the session we were able to determine that Twitter is a much-underutilized tool in their social media strategy. They used Twitter for the … Read More