ACER
Report date
December 2021
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
a. Micro-grant redistribution – during the pandemic, having an understanding of the barriers, and structural pieces of BIPOC micro-businesses, we knew what it would take to get funds to these businesses. ACER was able to redistribute $48,500 of Bush funds to support 54 businesses with micro-grants.
b. Business Research Survey – ACER has been able to start working towards more data around BIPOC micro-businesses in the state. This first round of funding supported the ACER Business Survey. 289 businesses applied for micro-grants during the time the Bush funds were made available. In total, the survey received 158 responses from 133 unique businesses. The average age of a business was 3.6 years and the average number of employees of a business was 2.4 people.
c. Formation of the Business Resource Collective (BRC) table and participation of staff at the collective – The core activity at our organization is community engagement and advocacy for policy change. Providing businesses with technical assistance(TA) goes hand in hand with advocating for policy, and structural changes to meet BIPOC businesses where they are so they may access resources. This collective of about 20 organizations comprising of grassroots, chambers, and CDFI, came together to address definition, TA support, training, small business events, infrastructure, direct placement (job creation), and corridor redevelopment. The BRC has created a Healthy Business Investment Package in response to the state’s ARPA funds.
d. Increase in resources to support BIPOC businesses – ACER has been able to grow its capacity in accordance with the growth of the Economic Development ecosystem to provide tangible business resources to the BIPOC micro-business community in a way that addresses barriers and issues like never before.
d. Increase in resources to support BIPOC businesses – ACER has been able to grow its capacity in accordance with the growth of the Economic Development ecosystem to provide tangible business resources to the BIPOC micro-business community in a way that addresses barriers and issues like never before.
Key lessons learned
a. Business Barriers due to the definition and current standard language, that determines access to business support and capital. The blanket standard SBA definition for small businesses is a huge disadvantage to BIPOC micro-businesses when it comes to competing for resources in the market. “To qualify as a small business, a company must fall within the size standard, or the largest size a business may be to remain classified as small, within its industry. Though size standards vary by industry, they are usually measured by the number of employees or average annual receipts.” -SBA 2020. Given the above data from the ACER business survey, you can see how typically local community businesses, BIPOC businesses continue to be under-resourced in the ecosystem.
b. Business registration and structure, providing visibility to create the necessary resources to meet the needs of the businesses. Many BIPOC businesses have been able to enter the market occupying affordable space in old office buildings. Before 2020, these businesses were often left out of GIS maps, and market research analysis. Often, the owner of the commercial building was represented on the map as the entity in the space, and the business tenants were not recognized as a business in the area. While supporting businesses to complete applications for pandemic relief funds, it was more evident how many businesses were operating without being registered or needed to renew their businesses with the MN Secretary of state office.
c. The technology divide for Micro-businesses is devastating. Not having access to technology, and not being trained on the various platforms, caused the inability for the businesses to respond accordingly to access resources. ACER was able to leverage resources to get laptops out to the business community, and households, and connect them to training, and provide TA services beyond the training to support new inhouse processes for businesses.
c. The technology divide for Micro-businesses is devastating. Not having access to technology, and not being trained on the various platforms, caused the inability for the businesses to respond accordingly to access resources. ACER was able to leverage resources to get laptops out to the business community, and households, and connect them to training, and provide TA services beyond the training to support new inhouse processes for businesses.
Reflections on inclusive, collaborative or resourceful problem-solving
The collaborative idea is how we have been able to grow the capacity of the organization, it is how we have been able to create partnerships around the work and create relationships with the community to move their issues and concerns into solutions. The Brooklyn Minority Businesswomen Network, with our support, organized a “Car Action” to address evictions of businesses in their office building.
Other key elements of Community Innovation
a. How we do the work and believe in the results is through innovative authentic community engagement. All staff and external relationships understand that the organization doesn’t have a voice until the community (the experts) voice the issues in which they are most impacted, and agree to come together with our support to create the solutions. If the community has not been engaged and connected to the resources to support them in their leadership on making the necessary changes for an all-around healthier way of life, then our work has not been done.
Understanding the problem
a. This work started to be about increasing the visibility of BIPOC micro-businesses, to address the issues with the definition of small businesses, which determines the ability of these businesses to access resources. In addressing these issues, it would create a pipeline for BIPOC micro-businesses to more conventional businesses resources in the market, as well as help inform policy changes for local cities and counties to provide resources to support startup and business growth. Given the data from the survey, and the level of support we had to provide in Technical Assistance services, we got a better understanding of exactly what the language needed to look like in connecting resources, what partnerships needed to be fostered, and the necessary program changes.
If you could do it all over again...
a. The type of information we should have been collecting. It would have been great to have collected better demographic information. Race, sex, gender, disability, veteran status, and household income.