Members of Vermont’s Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, or BIPOC, business community participated in a series of forums and listening sessions from April to October. Several common challenges have been identified that they say are obstructing their business growth and development.
The Vermont Professionals of Color Networkco-executive director Weiwei Wang said they worked with the Vermont Small Business Development Center on the project to identify challenges BIPOC entrepreneurs face setting up and running a business in the state.
“The Vermont Small Business Development Center was selected as one of 51 grantees nationwide to be part of the Small Business Administration’s Community Navigator pilot program. This program was designed to reduce barriers that all small businesses, especially those owned by disadvantaged groups like BIPOC business owners, veterans, women and those from rural communities, often face when they are trying to access critical support. There’s not a lot of data that has been collected in Vermont to date. There have been smaller efforts. And we wanted to take this opportunity to really figure out what was needed so that it can inform the work that we did next in terms of offering services and offering support to small businesses.”
The surveys of Vermont BIPOC business owners identified several common challenges: access to capital, knowledge of business basics; economic development resources; infrastructure, including broadband access and systemic inequities. Network co-executive director Tino Rutanhira notes that while the issues are not necessarily unique to the BIPOC community.
“A lot of BIPOC organizations and BIPOC folk do not have either the generational wealth to be able to, for example, access to capital or maybe have the ability to have the credit or some pot of money that’s stashed away from an inheritance. People of color have not traditionally been participants in the business economy and entrepreneurship. And so we don’t have that historical knowledge of how to start a business, how to run a business. Maybe perhaps you’re a woman, a BIPOC person, maybe perhaps you’re an immigrant. And so how do you prove that your product or your idea is better when you’ve got all those things stacked against you.”
Rutanhira notes that Vermont is the second-whitest and the third-least populated state. Its population growth rate ranks 49th leading to an aging population and workforce challenges. In the midst of that, he says the Vermont Professionals of Color Network data found that the state’s Black population grew by just under 44 percent and Hispanics by 68.4 percent.
“If we have a population that is growing in a state that is not growing then we ought to support that population group or that demographic group so that as that group starts to get more say in civic engagement or they start to rise in prominence in terms of their businesses or they rise in terms of career success, those people are empowered to also be part of the solution for the state and to be positive contributors to the economy.”
Kris Brown is a voiceover artist living in Jeffersonville, a small community on the north side of Mount Mansfield. He says the Vermont Professionals of Color Network is identifying problems and creating avenues for change.
“We’re always going to be the minority in Vermont. But there are plenty of opportunities in Vermont for people. In general, we do have a lot of opportunities. But when it comes down to it, it’s harder for me to walk in to a business and get funded than it would be for a fourth generation Vermonter. But we have a lot to offer. It’s a lot of great companies out there. And that’s the thing that a place that’s so, pardon my honesty so white, it could use diversity.”
The Vermont Professionals of Color Network is following up on the listening sessions by working with business and economic development organizations to determine steps that can be taken to make policies and processes more welcoming to BIPOC businesses. They also plan to create a tool for BIPOC businesses addressing the challenges outlined in the focus groups.
