WEPOWER

WEPOWER’s Community Wealth Building Initiative operates the Elevate/Elevar (E/E) Accelerator and the Community Benefits Coalition, two different sides of the same “economic development coin,” working in concert to uplift economic justice within the St. Louis region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. The E/E Accelerator, as a Village Capital Community, is part of an international network that supports ready-to-scale companies. Black and Latinx entrepreneurs are recruited in cohorts and provided bottom-up support, with access to capital, curriculum, connections, coaching and co-working over a six-month period, directly expanding the pipeline of Black and Brown-owned small businesses in the region. The Coalition, on the other hand, develops the top-down infrastructure that creates more favorable conditions for the businesses to exist. The Community Benefits Coalition, powered by community residents inclusive of entrepreneurs from the broader St. Louis Metro Area, organizes its members to negotiate Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs), which are legally binding contracts that secure neighborhood-transforming commitments from private developers. CBAs are used to create ordinances pertaining to living wage, workforce development, local hiring, affordable housing, and more. 

Human-centered design is core to the Initiative, which was conceived as a result of in-depth community surveying in which Black and Latinx residents across East St. Louis and North St. Louis City shared their desire for more quality jobs, more businesses that are accessible to residents, and more opportunities for entrepreneurial ventures. WEPOWER continues to engage impacted community members at every level of the Initiative, inviting participants to inform, co-design, and evolve the programmatic components according to community needs.

Before 2020, St. Louis boasted the highest share of Black-owned firms (34%) among the 100 largest American cities. This statistic was overshadowed by the dismal reality that the city ranks near the bottom in revenue and employment levels for BIPOC and women-owned businesses. Nationwide, statistics show that the pandemic has caused stark decreases in the number of Black and Latinx-owned businesses compared to white-owned businesses, dooming the St. Louis region to face similar trends. 

Contributing factors to the region’s business sector racial wealth gap include LACK of: financial resources to help entrepreneurs transition from launch to scale-up; mentorship and networking opportunities; sustainable, living wage, private-sector jobs without high entry barriers; capital to support companies without significant, racially disparate barriers to access (e.g.,collateral and high credit score requirements); and community input in commercial community development planning. These issues cause severe disinvestment and population decline that perpetuate cycles of poverty in North St. Louis City and East St. Louis, where there is a collective total of 104,000+ residents, of whom 94.7% on average are Black and over 94% live in census tracts with a poverty rate of at least 25%. 

St. Louis’ 2020 Equitable Economic Development Strategic Framework recognized that improving opportunities for Black and Latinx St. Louis-area residents is crucial to stabilizing the region’s population and economy. In alignment with the framework’s priorities, WEPOWER’s E/E Accelerator resolves resource and capital needs for BIPOC entrepreneurs, and the Community Benefits Coalition addresses neighborhood-level economic development through sustainable policy solutions.

WEPOWER’s Community Wealth Building Initiative is well-aligned with every dimension of the Truist Foundation’s Solve Challenge. Nationally, BIPOC and women-owned businesses based in historically divested communities have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and of this group, Black and Latinx-owned businesses have been among the hardest hit. Even before the pandemic, this demographic was systemically left out of substantive economic development planning and community investment, and St. Louis’ economic ecosystem is plagued by the same trends. For these reasons, WEPOWER’s Community Wealth Building Initiative specifically targets Black and Latinx business owners and Black and Latinx communities within some of the most resource-promising neighborhoods in the St. Louis Metropolitan region. 

While the Community Wealth Building  Initiative is multifaceted and comprehensive in its approach to addressing the challenge of increasing the number of small businesses owned by BIPOC and women, it is particularly well-aligned to the Challenge dimensions of advocating for and shaping related policy, and fostering growth to scale businesses through technical assistance. The Initiative's Community Benefits Coalition, activated by neighborhood resident leaders, was expressly designed to create a pragmatic path toward negotiating legally binding ordinances to make economic development opportunities accessible and sustainable. The Initiative’s Elevate/Elevar (E/E) Accelerator provides Black and Latinx entrepreneurs with technical supports that have been historically withheld. Through the E/E Accelerator, entrepreneurs are provided with resources to aid them in focusing on systems and operations, customer acquisition and retention, and access to capital based on the proven Village Capital model.

WEPOWER’s Community Wealth Building Initiative unapologetically targets Black and Latinx entrepreneurs and community members who reside in historically disinvested neighborhoods in North St. Louis City, MO and in East St. Louis, IL. The Elevate/Elevar (E/E) Accelerator focuses on entrepreneurs with annual revenues of $50,000 to $500,000, providing them with the education, network, tools, and capital needed to scale and increase their revenue. As E/E grows over time, increased entrepreneurship and access to living-wage jobs in disinvested neighborhoods will spark reinvestment, resulting in the overall growth of community wealth. Since launching in 2020, the accelerator has supported a cohort of 20 St. Louis-based Black and Latinx entrepreneurs (60% women) with growing their knowledge of business best practices and increasing their access to crucial resources to help them scale their companies. As a result of E/E, the first cohort of entrepreneurs saw a 300% average increase in monthly revenue and 60% hired their first team member. Additionally, all cohort members received $10,000 seed capital grants, and some accessed zero-interest Kiva loans. 

While E/E grows community wealth from the business pipeline perspective, the Community Benefits Coalition targets everyday Black and Latinx neighborhood residents and business owners impacted by systemic disinvestment who are interested in attracting more resources to their communities through Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs) and municipal-level ordinances to hold developers accountable to community-enriching practices. To date 47 community members have been engaged in monthly coalition meetings and neighborhood surveying in preparation for the official CBA campaign kickoff in summer 2022.

Community Wealth Building Initiative participants are engaged in co-creating strategies from the start, beginning with deep-listening sessions in which targeted populations openly share their experiences and vision for their community or business’s future. This information is then used to inform and customize the E/E Accelerator cohort and Coalition experiences.

WEPOWER’s Community Wealth Building Initiative is based in Missouri.  Because the solution involves the coalescence of technical resources and regional policy to impact economic ecosystems, currently, there are no plans to expand beyond the St. Louis Metro Bi-State Area. It is possible and likely, however, that WEPOWER’s model will be replicable in other states.

WEPOWER’s mission is to activate community power to re-design education, economic, health, and justice systems to be just and equitable for all. To activate Black and Latinx community members and entrepreneurs toward achieving economic justice, WEPOWER employs four core strategies:

1. Build authentic relationships between everyday people in historically divested neighborhoods

2. Activate a movement of new system designers, organizers, and public leaders

3. Accelerate community-owned wealth generation

4. Tell human-centered stories that shift beliefs and behaviors towards equity, justice, and freedom

Through its mission and four-pronged strategy, WEPOWER stands to launch new Black and Latinx-owned businesses, and to support and scale existing businesses based in the St. Louis Metro Area. Bolstering St. Louis’ economic ecosystem in these ways helps to close racial wealth gaps and ensures a stronger and more vibrant region for all.

WEPOWER recognizes that we live in a society with poorly designed education, economic, health, and justice systems that harm communities of color and limit our collective potential to thrive. History and present-day realities demonstrate that communities of color, specifically Black and Latinx communities: are isolated from decision-making spaces; and are overlooked and underestimated despite possessing a wealth of capacities. 

With regard to St. Louis’ economic system, racial wealth disparities are evidenced within the City’s Financial Empowerment Scorecard, which shows that: Black residents are nearly five times as likely as White residents to experience unemployment; Black adult residents are more than twice as likely as White adults to live in poverty; and White employed residents are 36% more likely  than Black employed residents to own their business. 

To upend these entrenched issues, WEPOWER launched the Community Wealth Building Initiative. Initiative inputs include capital resources, business relationships, entrepreneurship and advocacy curricula, and cohorts of Black/Latinx entrepreneurs. Activities include engaging entrepreneurs in a comprehensive six-month accelerator, providing access to capital, and training residents in Community Benefits Coalition work. Short-term outcomes include increasing the number of viable Black and Latinx-owned businesses in divested St. Louis-area neighborhoods and increasing the number of empowered residents who are prepared to advocate on behalf of their communities. Longer-term outcomes include substantially increasing the number of living-wage jobs accessed by Black and Latinx residents, and sparking larger-scale economic development through strategic investments and through Community Benefits Agreements. 

WEPOWER’s strategies are rooted in The Laws of Power and in systems change research (Kania, Kramer, and Senge) which identifies policies; practices; resource flows; relationships & connections; power dynamics; and mental models as the six conditions of systems change. The Initiative also draws upon Village Capital’s peer-selection model to promote disruptive innovations in entrepreneurship.  

Beyond published research, WEPOWER looks to its community to add meaningful context and provide direction for the Initiative. Because data from community surveys, interviews, and listening sessions inform the design and application of all strategies, WEPOWER is confident that the Community Wealth Building Initiative will be an effective and sustainable solution to transforming St. Louis’ economic ecosystem.

WEPOWER’s Elevate/Elevar Accelerator currently serves 20 Black and Latinx-owned small businesses, 12 of which have been able to make their first hire due to increased capacity enabled by accelerator participation, resulting in 32 individuals being served. Within one year, it is anticipated that 52 individuals will be supported. Within five years, at least 192 individuals leading and working in participating small businesses will be impacted.

WEPOWER’s focus community is (1) Black and Latinx people living in historically high poverty communities in St. Louis, and particularly those who themselves are living below the poverty line, who are ready to lead change and (2) Black and Latinx entrepreneurs of for-profit early-stage high growth/potential companies that can create living wage jobs and who are committed to building and sharing economic power with historically Black and Latinx high poverty communities.

WEPOWER board members and staff, who are reflective of the communities served, continuously seek the community members’ feedback and input to inform organizational strategy. Impacted local community members are WEPOWER’s primary stakeholders and partners. Partnerships also exist with a variety of investors and corporations. Some key partners include: Kiva (zero-interest microloans accessible to E/E entrepreneurs); Village Capital and Investment, LLC (investment readiness curriculum and 1-on-1 business coaching services for E/E); and Wells Fargo Foundation (funding).

WEPOWER is based in St. Louis, MO and intentionally works with Black and Latinx entrepreneurs across the St. Louis region to focus on place-based, grassroots solution development and implementation. The Community Wealth Building Initiative was created in response to observed and expressed needs within some of the region’s most disinvested communities. 

Community wealth building is an approach to creating collective wellbeing by building locally owned and controlled wealth and power. At the core, community wealth building is about shifting our economy

• From one that pulls wealth away from communities and concentrates it in the hands of a small group of individuals, and is racially unjust and socially inequitable, is environmentally unsustainable

• To one that builds and keeps wealth in local communities of ordinary people, especially communities that have historically been stripped of wealth, is racially just and socially equitable, and is environmentally sustainable -- (i.e. meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of those in the future to meet their needs).

Remediating barriers facing Black and Latinx entrepreneurs and investing in their success is an incredible opportunity for the St. Louis region to create significant economic development and shared prosperity. WEPOWER is committed and well-positioned to support the success of Black and Latinx entrepreneurs within our innovation ecosystem because our services directly relate to needs identified by the City, and we have a strong base in the communities that we serve, particularly North St. Louis City.  WEPOWER’s founder and CEO was born and raised in North St. Louis City, and the organization's adjacent work around education and community organizing almost exclusively engages our key demographic of Black and Latinx residents of St. Louis. Our regional leadership in this space is evidenced by the fact that the City of St. Louis named WEPOWER as a desired partner in, among several other things, improving the capital stack and lending outcomes for Minority/Women-owned Business Enterprises (MWBE) firms and providing educational training for entrepreneurs of color. 

WEPOWER’s Elevate/Elevar (E/E) Accelerator, a primary component of the Community Wealth Building Initiative, prioritizes the local community by focusing on St. Louis-based entrepreneurs only. E/E also engages St. Louis residents by giving them the opportunity to help decide which entrepreneurs can join the cohort through a community voting process. Over 800 St. Louis residents were involved in the selection of the inaugural cohort. The St. Louis community also participates in the celebration of program completion with our annual Community Pitch Day. During this event, residents have the opportunity to network with and buy from E/E businesses.

In addition to these collaborative community activities, WEPOWER is working to deepen our roots in the region’s majority Black and Latinx, historically high poverty communities by building an actively engaged base of WEPOWER members who live and work in the neighborhoods of focus. The Community Benefits Coalition, another component of the Community Wealth Building Initiative, is currently made up of 47 community members from St. Louis and East St. Louis, IL, and is one such base specifically focused on neighborhood-level economic development through utilization of Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs). Coalition members are engaged monthly in economic advocacy training and problem-solving sessions, where they share their ideas, lived experiences, and expertise as they develop strategies to negotiate CBAs with the goal of winning impactful ordinances that will strengthen and bring generational wealth-building opportunities to their communities.  

All of WEPOWER’s work is informed and driven by the needs, desires, and dreams of impacted community members seeking to uplift the spaces in which they live, learn, and work.

Building trust within the communities in which WEPOWER seeks partnership is central to our mission and work. One of the core strategies we employ to do so is to build authentic relationships between everyday people, and we do this in several ways: WEPOWER facilitates community listening tours and coordinates countless calls and coffee dates with neighbors and entrepreneurs; we provide physical spaces for community connections; and we partner with healing practitioners to offer workshops that address racialized trauma. Specifically, the Community Wealth Building Initiative encourages investment in self-care for entrepreneurs, many of whom have been impacted by trauma. The E/E Accelerator provides a wellness stipend for entrepreneurs to talk with a therapist or wellness coach, or to engage in a wellness practice to ensure their emotional and mental health needs are met as they work toward career and financial success. This intentionality builds trusting relationships beyond traditional business investments.

Within the next year, WEPOWER’s Elevate/Elevar (E/E) Accelerator seeks to achieve the following outcomes for at least 20 Black and Latinx small business owners: (1) Increase access to capital, as measured by businesses accessing capital and the total dollar amount accessed; (2) Increase business sales, as measured by change in self-reported annual revenue; (3) Increase profits, as measured by annual growth in self-reported net income; and (4) Create pathways to living wage jobs, as measured by the number of jobs created by each business paying a living wage or with a defined, accessible path to a living wage.

Within five to ten years, the Community Wealth Building Initiative seeks to: (1) Generate family wealth, as measured by self-reported individual and family (net) wealth of business owners and workers; (2) Increase worker and community ownership, as measured by the number of workers who own a share of the businesses where they work (and share in the profits, governance); (3) Generate support for community-led efforts for (economic, social, and environmental) justice, as measured by the number of businesses providing financial support for such work and the amount of money provided. 

To achieve these goals, WEPOWER will grow relationships with regional and national partners to develop a more coordinated, equitable, and effective ecosystem for supporting Black and Latinx entrepreneurs and their small businesses and startups in St. Louis, and to share learning and resources nationally with others working to build community wealth in Black and Latinx communities.

In addition to the community members and entrepreneurs who inspire and drive the work, WEPOWER’s Community Wealth Building Initiative is led by a powerful team of four dynamic individuals who represent the diversity of the St. Louis communities served. WEPOWER’s President and CEO, Charli Cooksey, is the Initiative’s team lead and has the relevant perspective of a Black woman from and still living in North St. Louis City, one of the core areas of focus. Charli’s dichotomous experience, observing extreme wealth in St. Louis’ elite enclaves, and returning home to a hard-working, middle class household and to neighbors living in poverty, have led her to a life of service and justice, as a Teach for America alum, founder and former executive director of an education nonprofit, former leader of a racial equity startup, Ferguson protestor, former elected official, and, now, the CEO and founder of WEPOWER. 

Surrounding Charli are three individuals who also have relevant life journeys that help shape the Initiative’s innovation. Jonathan (Yoni) Blumberg, Vice-President of Community Wealth Building; Keisha Maybry Haymore, Director of Entrepreneurship; and Edgar Payano, Entrepreneur Development & Outreach Lead. All but one of the team members have direct lived experience as an entrepreneur of color, and they collectively possess experience and academic acumen in education, international affairs, business administration, entrepreneurship, and community organizing. As a BIPOC-led organization and team, WEPOWER focuses all programs on capacity building among Black and Latinx communities in St. Louis, helping communities of color realize their potential and power.

When WEPOWER’s leadership team initially learned about the Truist Foundation Inspire Awards, our interest was immediately piqued, not by the possibility of funding, but by the promise of community connections and access to expertise to help grow our organizational capacity. A central strategy in WEPOWER’s mission to activate the community is to build authentic relationships. In our Community Wealth Building Initiative, specifically, a significant amount of time and energy are invested in developing trusting relationships with entrepreneurs and residents so they can identify and harness their power, and thereby leverage that power towards transforming the economic ecosystem to be just and equitable for all. Just as WEPOWER seeks to develop deep and meaningful relationships with community members, we recognize the importance of developing relationships of the same caliber with our funding and institutional partners.  A partnership with Truist Foundation and MIT Solve would help catapult WEPOWER to even greater significance and impact in the region by helping our leaders access new sets of expertise, developing relationships with thought-leaders who are also sincerely committed to advancing economic justice among BIPOC communities. While WEPOWER’s leaders and staff have a wealth of lived experience in the business entrepreneurship space, we all identify as lifelong learners, and are excited about the possibility of embarking on such a pivotal learning journey as a part of the Truist Foundation and MIT Solve network.

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WEPOWER seeks partnerships that will help to usher in relevant and meaningful networking and learning opportunities, not only for its leaders and staff, but also for the small businesses served by the Community Wealth Building Initiative.  In addition to accessing more capital resources to help Black and Latinx entrepreneurs launch and scale their businesses, WEPOWER seeks to ensure that it is able to offer the most impactful supports and services to its Elevate/Elevar Accelerator cohort members. WEPOWER stands to learn from other organizations and individuals in the community wealth-building space to further innovate its practices. As an example, WEPOWER has begun to explore a shared-service model among its entrepreneurs to maximize business services used in common, but has lagged with developing a plan to pilot in part due to lack of ability to brainstorm implementation with others who have expertise with this particular strategy. WEPOWER looks forward to growing its network of trusted partners to brainstorm the pros and cons of various scalable  solutions to improve St. Louis’ economic ecosystem.

Beyond partnering with mission-aligned institutions that can grow WEPOWER’s brain trust, we are interested in connecting with banks and community development financial institutions (CDFIs) that can assist with providing lines of credit or in-kind services to help the Black and Latinx entrepreneurs in our Elevate/Elevar Accelerator with scaling their businesses. We are also interested in connecting with peer organizations that serve entrepreneurs for the purposes of exchanging and learning from best practices. These sorts of partnerships will advance the Community Wealth Building Initiative by growing WEPOWER’s business network and ability to connect community members with human and capital resources, even beyond what have been traditionally encountered in our region. Although the Community Wealth Building Initiative is place-based and focused on the St. Louis Metro Area, we welcome learning from experts on a national and international scale.