The JWC Foundation (“JWCF”)

At JWCF, we take a multi-prong approach to re-building strong Black neighborhoods through entrepreneurship and economic intra-dependence. We utilize historical grounding and re-contextualization of America's Black Wall Street. We utilize this knowledge to guide and inform our work within the Black community.

Our approach includes connecting new and established black business owners with funding resources to help bridge financial gaps. We develop, nurture, and sustain relationships with individuals and institutions alike. JWCF also helps eliminate traditional barriers to black business owners' success, such as navigating local and administrative systems; and helping them build internal operations, all to ensure they have access to resources and thrive.

As another component of our work, we continue to grow our model for supporting the revitalization of the Black entrepreneurial spirit, rooted in the cooperative economics within the Black community that led to the success of Black Wall Streets. We focus on building a network for Black business owners and layer in programmatic support delivered through ongoing assessments and resource connections tailored to each business's individual needs and goals. Here is also where we introduce the critical component of continuous data collection, both at a micro level to track business growth and at a macro level to ensure the accurate depiction of Black entrepreneurship; data, which is often unavailable.

JWCF believes that a clear, unbiased, and accessible accounting of history can help lay the foundation to assist communities in addressing these issues through entrepreneurship, job creation, financial education, and building generational wealth.

Black-owned businesses' absence in the entrepreneurial ecosystem is driven by multiple factors: lack of social networks to connect them to resources and a high focus on the tech industry, leaving behind the core businesses that fuel our communities. Many Black-centered programs are run by non-Black directors who lack the cultural competency to understand the nuances of being a Black business owner. By understanding and building upon the historical success of Black Wall Streets, rooted in cooperative economics to drive wealth creation, we are leveraging a successful model to bridge the racial wealth gap.

From a historical perspective, JWCF is dedicated to excavating the true origin story of lesser-known Black Wall Streets across the country. Our work is driven by pinpointing the overlapping, sociopolitical and community-specific dynamics that contributed to the rise and eventual collapse of these booming communities. We use these models and historical lessons to inform our strategic approach to address  poverty and lack of property ownership that persist today in Black communities throughout the US. 

JWCF is taking on the challenge of ensuring Black-owned businesses are not just surviving but thriving. Unlike many who had to shut down amidst the pandemic, the JWCF launched in full force due to our front row seats to the impact of historical disinvestment and the economic wealth gap within our community. From this moment, we were able to directly affect the launching, building, and scaling of black-owned businesses and ensure that they would overcome these challenges and thrive despite them.

The JWCF provides a hub for Black business owners by providing connections, networking opportunities, and a sense of community for those owners. JWCF is rooted in a culture of continuous learning, which allows its members to gain the skills and competencies necessary to develop and sustain a successful business. In conjunction with building relationships, the JWCF connects Black business owners to technical assistance, financial education, and programmatic resources to help them learn and grow their businesses. JWCF's access to resources comes from its three types of partnerships:

1. Strategic Partnerships: These partnerships create relationships with larger organizations and companies that provide financial support (distributed as grants to JWCF members) and technical assistance to members. 
2. Community Partnerships: These are relationships with nonprofits and city and state organizations that offer programs to support entrepreneurs at all stages. 
3. Service Partners: These are Black-owned businesses that offer services to small businesses. These services include but are limited to legal services, accounting, HR, branding, insurance, marketing, business strategy, and executive coaching, to name a few. 

JWCF currently serves local black entrepreneurs and business owners within the Richmond, Virginia region. These individuals range from small business owners to innovators within the community. We recognize that Black business owners need support to launch, grow, sustain and scale their businesses. Currently, there is a lot of focus on tech-based companies, leaving several other segments, primarily considered “main street” businesses, to fend for themselves. Our target members are serious about their business but need support and direction. Whether it’s understanding how to run operations for a business, ensuring proper paperwork is in place, or knowing how to procure funding for their business, we can help support them in their growth.

Our model allows us to support businesses in overcoming barriers by connecting them to the resources to help them succeed. Before developing our hub, many black-owned businesses had no centralized location to provide essential services. Within our hub, business owners receive technical assistance, financial education, and programmatic resources to help them learn and grow their businesses.

We work to ensure that the individuals we serve have wrap-around services and can have a one-stop shop for support and resources while building and investing in their community.

Virginia

Yes. The Jackson Ward Collective Foundation is a black women-led non-profit that partners with community, government, and corporate entities to provide technical, programmatic, and financial support to Black-owned businesses. This work strives to launch, build, and grow successful businesses rooted in cooperative economics and the development of generational wealth. We focus on building a network for Black business owners and layering in programmatic support delivered through ongoing assessments and resource connections tailored to each business’s individual needs and goals.

Our theory of change at the Jackson Ward  Collective Foundation ("JWCF") is dedicated to addressing the systemic erasure of Black histories – specifically those connected to neighborhoods where socio-political practices were implemented to dismantle thriving communities that were once models for self-sufficiency and economic cooperation. 

It is well documented that Black people are severely underrepresented in the entrepreneurial ecosystems. This absence has been driven by multiple factors, including a lack of social networks to connect them to resources and a high focus on the tech industry, leaving behind the core businesses that fuel our communities. However, by understanding and building upon the historical success of Black Wall Streets, rooted in cooperative economics to drive wealth creation, we are leveraging a successful model to bridge the racial wealth gap. 

The JWCF provides a hub for Black business owners by providing connections, networking opportunities, and community. JWCF is rooted in a culture of continuous learning, which allows its members to gain the skills and competencies necessary to develop and sustain a successful business. In conjunction with building relationships, the JWCF connects Black business owners to technical assistance, financial education, and programmatic resources to help them learn and grow their businesses. JWCF's access to resources comes from its three types of partnerships: Strategic, Community, and Service Partners. These partnerships help connect Black businesses with the resources required to build and sustain their business in ways that have not previously existed. 

In conjunction with this work,  we introduce the critical component of continuous data collection, both at a micro level to track business growth and at a macro level to ensure the accurate depiction of Black entrepreneurship; data, which is often unavailable. 

In the short term, we work to ensure every Black business owner we work with feels as though they have a one-stop-shop for wrap-around services. In the long-term, we are re-building the historically rich communities of Black Wall Street through resource allocation and cooperative economics to overcome the impact of generations of racial wealth gaps and inequitable practices upon the Black community.

We currently serve 75 active small business members. We anticipate serving 120 small businesses over the next year, and 400 small businesses over 5 years.

We serve Black business owners in the Richmond, Virginia region. Like other areas, our entrepreneurial ecosystem focuses heavily on the high growth technology sector. However, in Virginia, 20% of small businesses are in professional services, higher than many states. Small businesses in hospitality, professional, personal and retail services are the backbone of our communities, but often are left out of the consideration set when we look at resources for the entrepreneurial ecosystem, leaving businesses under-resourced and without proper business foundations. 

We use the experiences of our members, the voice of the community and our social capital within the corporate and entrepreneurial ecosystem to help close some of those gaps and provide the resources necessary. Key stakeholders include city officials, local chambers and several roundtables that convene to address the needs of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. We also see foundations and corporate funders as a critical part of our stakeholder space.

JWCF utilizes three types of partnerships to support the community and key stakeholders that help provide place-based solutions to our work. The first is Strategic Partnerships; these partnerships create relationships with larger organizations and companies that provide financial and technical assistance to JWCF members. This support often comes in the form of grants that we award to our members. The second types of partnership are Community Partnerships; these are relationships with nonprofits and city and state organizations that offer programs to support entrepreneurs at all stages. This partnership is beneficial because black-owned businesses often face many barriers when navigating these administrative systems. The final partnerships are Service Partners; these are Black-owned businesses that offer services to small businesses. These services come in the form of legal, accounting, HR, branding, insurance, real estate, marketing, social media management, business strategy, or executive coaching. We develop these partnerships to meet the needs of our members. As a part of our model, we limit our Service Partners to other Black-owned businesses to help promote fellow black businesses and enable money circulation within the Black community.

Our authenticity is one of the key ways we build trust. We are not the first organization in Richmond in recent years to focus on Black entrepreneurs, but we are the only that is Black led, which yields a level of cultural competency that we bring wherever we go. Part of the way we work with our members is by being transparent and never code switching, which creates space for members of our collective to be their full selves without judgment. It also opens the door for deeper discussions about plans and goals than what is shared when the person seeking to help you does not look like you and doesn’t understand your whole experience as a Black entrepreneur.

Overall our short and long-term goal is to have a flourishing self-sustaining collective of black-owned businesses that can foster growth and prosperity for the black community to heal and repair from historical harms. 

In the initial phases, we hope to build a set of flagship businesses that serve as a template of diverse business models for future black entrepreneurs and investors in the community in the upcoming year. With these flagship businesses, they will not only be providing local jobs to the community but an interdependent economic system. In conjunction with this, we want to generate baseline data sets reflecting the current state of black entrepreneurship in Virginia to establish our early impact as well as provide metrics to track their success and scale. 

Throughout this process and into the next five years, we want to scale our reach to provide more support to back businesses. JWCF serves as a hub that supports the entire life cycle of black-owned businesses, including access to training, capital, and real estate for new and existing black entrepreneurs. Our long-term goal is to increase our membership and our internal capacity to support those members so that we can positively impact the black business community as a whole. 

Rasheeda Creighton, is an experienced attorney, corporate leader and intrapreneur turned entrepreneur. Rasheeda has 15+ years of experience in contracting and relationship management. At JWCF, Rasheeda focuses on operations and partnership development, to ensure JWCF programs have the support and structure needed to serve the Black entrepreneur community. Additionally, Rasheeda serves on several boards focused on youth, economic development and leadership. 

Melody Short is a co-founder The Richmond Night Market. Melody is a marketing executive focused on business development and brand development for Black owned businesses. Melody is the former Director of Marketing and Business Development for Akwaaba Bed & Breakfast Inns. A graduate of Morgan State University, Melody brings over 20 years of experience working with small businesses to the team to drive its programming and support of Black business owners.  In addition to her work, Melody serves on several business-focused boards in the Richmond area. 

Finally, Kelli Lemon is founder of Richmond’s only Black woman-owned coffee shop, The Urban Hang Suite, co-founder of Richmond Black Restaurant Experience and self-proclaimed Virginia’s Biggest Cheerleader. An expert in media, culture and community, Kelli brings her expertise as a brick and mortar business owner to JWCF to cultivate culture and community experiences. Kelli is also the director of the Virginia Video Network and serves on several boards focusing on community, culture, hospitality and tourism.

Combined, these three Black women leaders bring decades of expertise, knowledge, and passion to the JWCF and ensure black businesses are supported and given the resources to thrive. 

We are applying for this grant to help us further ground our business model for the collective, increase our branding and marketing strategy, and ensure that we are looking clearly at the Monitoring and Evaluation to quantify impact not just to our region, but to the business owners we serve. Being able to participate in the 5 month support program will significantly accelerate our work and impact, and it comes at a time when we have been refining our work, the community we serve and are poised for acceleration.

Much of the work we’ve done has been based on our expertise and partner organizations we’ve built relationships with in the Richmond area. However, when growing an organization and a program, it is important to have perspectives outside of your region, to help see things that may be blind spots for you and to bring in ideas and concepts that we may not have yet been exposed to. We need to continue to hone and test our model to ensure that it does offer a level of scalability beyond this region. That also requires an elevation of our branding and marketing strategy, which needs refreshing. Lastly, there is a known gap in data on Black owned businesses, and while we’ve been able to begin the process of building a system, in conjunction with some key partners in the area, that allows us to collect more robust data on member businesses, we need guidance and assistance in how to synthesize that data to tell a more comprehensive story and really elevate the impact of Black owned businesses in the Richmond region, but beyond that by using the data collection as a model for other areas to leverage.

We would like to partner with organizations that are focused on small business growth for underrepresented, and particularly Black, communities. More specifically, funding is a gap in this region - leveraging non-traditional funding and challenging traditional funding sources to rethink their funding models. While we have tremendous resources in most  B2B services, securing funding that is low to no cost to business owners when they are first starting out, without forcing them to jump through unnecessary hoops, has been a challenge. We’d love to partner with organizations that are critically re-examining this, and are looking for a program like ours that can provide the assurance that a business is on the right path and a solid investment.