August is Black Business Month

August is Black Business Month, a celebration of Black business that began nearly 20 years ago. It’s an opportunity to reflect on everyday actions we can take to make an intentional effort to ensure Black businesses thrive.

Last week, a co-founder of one of Atlanta’s leading co-working spaces and social clubs, Ryan Wilson of The Gathering Spot, wrote in Atlanta Magazine that our city needs wealthy Atlantans to spend their money differently – that it’s the most important thing we can do to help Black people. Centuries of slavery, decades of Jim Crow and decades more of voter suppression and economic exclusion have left Black communities economically depressed, resulting in racial disparities in education, health, housing and more.

While it is important to continue having honest conversations on race, Ryan writes, we also need to “apply that same sort of intention to the way [we] direct resources.”

Here Ryan is talking about spending money with Black-owned businesses in our community.

The Community Foundation, and many of our partners, joined the Business is Black initiative, organized by the Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative. Among U.S. cities, Atlanta ranks first in income inequality and nearly last in upward mobility. The average White-owned business in Atlanta is valued at almost 11 times the average value of a Black-owned business. Ninety-six percent of Black-owned businesses have no paid employees.

Creating an equitable society means changing the statistics and changing the narrative. And that starts – in part – with every dollar we spend. This August, where have we spent our money?  

To learn more, check out www.BusinessIsBlack.org.

For a list of Black-owned businesses, please check out Community Foundation grant recipient and investment partner Access to Capital for Entrepreneur’s clients and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s list of more than 300 Black-owned restaurants in metro Atlanta.

Pictured: Hodgepodge Coffeehouse, a Black-owned business and community gathering spot in East Atlanta.