AAFCOP Members
African American Leadership
Forum
Aurora St. Anthony
Neighborhood Development
Corporation
Build Wealth Minnesota
Camphor Fiscally Fit Center
Metropolitan Economic
Development Association
Model Cities of St. Paul
Northside Economic
Opportunities Network
Twin Cities
African American
Financial Capabilities
A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE (AAFCOP) “BLACK PAPER”
Funding for the Twin Cities African
American Financial Capabilities
Community of Practice from the
Northwest Area Foundation
©2016 Twin Cities African American Financial Capabilities Community of Practice
(AAFCOP) is a collaboration among the African American Leadership Forum (AALF),
Aurora St. Anthony Neighborhood Development Corporation (ASANDC), Build Wealth
Minnesota (BWM), Camphor Fiscally Fit Center (CFFC), Metropolitan Economic
Development Association (Meda), Model Cities of St. Paul, and Northside Economic
Opportunities Network (NEON). Partial or complete reproduction of this report must be
authorized with the express written permission of the AAFCOP.
Contact:
African American Financial Capabilities Community of Practice
c/o African American Leadership Forum
222 So. 9th Street, Suite 1600
Minneapolis, MN 55402
Phone: 612-532-3694
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.aalftc.org
The Twin Cities African American Financial Capabilities Community of Practice
believes that educational achievement, employment, entrepreneurship, and economic
self-sufficiency among all residents are key aspects of stable communities.
Prepared by Karen Gray
Nora Hall, Ph.D., GrayHall LLP
GrayHall is a management consulting firm specializing in research,
evaluation, planning and communications. Founded in 1987, GrayHall
works with a range of partners, including corporations, educational
programs, foundations, government, higher education, school districts,
individual schools and nonprofits. The principals have extensive
organizational experience and have helped groups of many sizes critically
assess program, project and organizational outcomes.
Contact:
GrayHall LLP
1213 Summit Avenue
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Phone: (651) 222-8333
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Table of Contents
Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
The Challenge Before Us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Demographic Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
The Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Progress Builds Hope: Conclusions and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
TABLES
Table 1: Cities Where African Americans Are Doing Best Economically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Table 2: Minnesota Population, 2014-2015. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Table 3: Twin Cities Neighborhoods Where African Americans Live . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Table 4: Selected Indicators by Race and Ethnicity in Twin Cities Metro, 2014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Table 5: Percentage of Homeless Adults and Youth in Minnesota by Race /Ethnicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Table 6: African American Owned Firms in Minnesota, 2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Table 7: Examples of Community Capacity Activities Aimed at
Advancing African American Wealth Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Table 8: Examples of Homeownership Activities Aimed at
Advancing African American Wealth Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Table 9: Examples of Business Development Activities Aimed at
Advancing African American Wealth Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Table 10: Examples of Employment Activities Aimed at Advancing
African American Wealth Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Table 11: Examples of Health and Wellness Activities Aimed at
Advancing African American Wealth Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Table 12: Examples of Banking and Financial Services Activities
Aimed at Advancing African American Wealth Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Table 13: Examples of Environmental Programming and Services
Aimed at Advancing African American Wealth Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Table 14: Examples of Community Development Activities Aimed
at Advancing African American Wealth Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Table 15: Examples of Anti-Predatory Behavior Activities Aimed at
Advancing African American Wealth Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Table 16: Examples of Savings Activities Aimed at Advancing
African American Wealth Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
FIGURES
Figure 1: Map of Metropolitan Council’s Service Area & Racially
Concentrated Areas of Poverty, 2007-2011. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Figure 2: Minnesota Racial Disparities in Poverty Persisting in 2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Figure 3: Most Minnesotans of Color Do Not Share in Economic Success . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Figure 4: Minnesotans of Color Have Higher 2012 Poverty Rates Than U.S. Median . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Figure 5: Asset and Liquid Asset Poverty in Minneapolis and St. Paul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Figure 6: Unbanked and Underbanked in Minneapolis and St. Paul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Figure 7: Minnesota Public High School Four-Year Graduation Rate by
Race/Ethnicity, School Year 2013-2014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Figure 8: Fifteen Largest Ancestries, United States, 2000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Figure 9: Summary of Barriers That Programs/Services Are Addressing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Figure 10: Collaborative Economic Development Platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
TWIN CITIES
African American Financial Capabilities Community
of Practice
Black Paper Executive Summary
Background
This black paper identifies new tools
that have emerged to advance African
American economic growth. Chief among
these are multi-faceted collaborations
involving two or more nonprofit or
for-profit organizations, often including
anchor institutions (nonprofit or for-profit
organizations with a large stake and
presence in a community). The paper
was commissioned by the Twin Cities
African American Financial Capabilities
Community of Practice (AAFCOP), which
comprises six African American led
organizations: Aurora St. Anthony
Neighborhood Development Corporation,
Build Wealth Minnesota, Camphor
Fiscally Fit Center, Metropolitan Economic
Development Association, Model
Cities of St. Paul, and Northside Economic
Opportunities Network. The African
American Leadership Forum serves as
convener. AAFCOP’s work is funded
by the Northwest Area Foundation.
The paper is based on an analysis of
selected literature related to economic
development in African American
communities and is part of a larger effort
to dissect, examine, and strengthen the
Twin Cities AAFCOP’s newly-emerging
economic development model. It
describes some of the new collaborations
that have been initiated throughout the
United States, their components, and
the value they provide participants. The
profiled examples come from urban
settings, small neighborhoods, and
large metropolitan regions. They include
successful collaborations in banking,
savings accounts development and use,
and anti-predatory behavior –by financial
institutions and in business development,
community capacity development,
employment, environmental justice,
health and wellness, and homeownership.
The Challenge
Although the entire population of
Minnesota has grown in recent years,
between 2010 and 2015 the state added
four times as many people of color as
members of the White population. The
second-fastest growing racial group was
the Black population, which grew by
16%, adding 45,000 people. Minnesota
has some of the nation’s worst racial
disparities in poverty, homeownership,
employment, educational attainment,
health, loan application approval rates,
and incarceration—gaps that have
widened over the past five decades
and that, if not properly addressed, will
constitute an economic crisis for the state.
Solutions
Newly emerging economic development
models built around multi-faceted
collaboration show tremendous potential
in remedying this situation by enabling
multiple groups of stakeholders to cocreate unique programs and services
of value that none of them could do
alone. Such models exist in many states,
including California, Ohio, Minnesota,
Wisconsin, Washington, Georgia, and
New York. Many of these successful
projects
• Are place-based
• Set targets (e.g., 2,000 African
American men placed in jobs)
• Integrate cooperative models (involving
community members in some form of
ownership, thus building on a tradition
of cooperative ownership in African
American culture)
• Have rigorous metrics and evaluation
systems
• Are multi-dimensional (e.g., focusing
on jobs, homeownership, business
development)
These new approaches to individual,
family, business, and community
economic development can therefore
best be described as multi-faceted
collaboration platforms. There is evidence
that such collaborations build wealth
in African American communities.
Communities with anchor institutions such
as higher education and hospitals have
seen great progress in increasing wealth
creation through a variety of strategies,
including creating local jobs, leveraging
capital, offering low-interest loans to
nonprofits, and purchasing local goods
and services.
The Twin Cities African American
Financial Capabilities Community of
Practice believes that educational
achievement, employment,
entrepreneurship, and economic selfsufficiency among all residents are
key aspects of stable communities. As
a result of its work over the past year,
AAFCOP will develop an expanded
multi-faceted collaboration platform in the
Twin Cities to advance African American
wealth in the areas of financial literacy,
homeownership, business development,
banking, and community development.
MINNESOTA AFRICAN AMERICAN NUMBERS AT A GLANCE
$38,300
35%
62%
25%
40%
19%
MEDIAN EARNINGS
(FULLTIME,
YEAR ROUND
WORKERS)
ADULT MALE
PRISON
POPULATION
HIGH SCHOOL
FOUR YEAR
GRADUATION
RATE
HOMEOWNERSHIP
LIVING IN POVERTY
UNEMPLOYMENT
RATE
SOURCES: Minnesota Budget Project/Minnesota Council of Nonprofits (2012), National Center for Education Statistics Common Core Data
(2013-2014), Metropolitan Council (2014), Sentencing Project, Uneven Justice: State Rates of Incarceration by Race and Ethnicity (2007)
4
THE PRIMARY OBJECTIVES
OF THIS PAPER WERE TO:
•Provide a viewpoint on African
American economic and
community development.
•Provide a context for a
proposed AAFCOP project.
•Discover whether similar
projects have already been
done and how to advance that
work.
•Determine where the proposed
AAFCOP project fits into the
existing body of knowledge.
•Enable the AAFCOP to learn
from previous work.
•Help broaden thinking on
African American wealth
creation.
Introduction
A new form of African American economic development has
arrived. It is riding on a tide of new tools and resources that
will help individuals, families, neighborhoods, and communities
move closer to economic security and, through an architecture
of organizational collaboration, provide them with the means
to be more connected to resources and purposeful about the
economic decisions that impact their lives.
A growing number of neighborhoods,
cities, and states are embracing these
economic tools, resources, and initiatives
to target African American and other
communities with high levels of poverty.
The tools typically address the 5 stages of
growth for individuals, families, and small
businesses identified by Churchill and
Lewis: (1) existence, (2) survival, (3) success,
(4) takeoff, and (5) resource maturity.1
Over the past decade, many businesses,
governmental agencies, and other nongovernmental organizations have found
effective and innovative ways to help
individuals, families, neighborhoods, and
communities progress through these
various stages of growth, especially moving
beyond maintaining basic economic health
and just focusing on maintaining basic
success rather than moving to successgrowth which results in greater economic
opportunities. New technologies have
aided these processes, changing the
5
landscape of personal interactions and
creating more varied modes of connecting
and collaborating.
Today, an estimated 328 million active cell
phones are in use in the United States
(more than the population of 318 million);
Skype has 300 million users and Facebook
approximately 186 million active users.
The cost and convenience of connecting
and collaborating with others has been
significantly reduced. New collaboration
technologies are making possible
game-changing innovations for people,
businesses, and nonprofit organizations.
The contributions of each individual
organization add to a growing exchange
of information that can generate further
change and innovation.
Providing individuals, families, business
owners, and nonprofit organizations with
quick and regular life-changing information
can lead to formidable economic, political,
and social change. New and timetested economic development tools
and resources, service integration and
collaboration, and technology-enabled
connectedness are helping to advance
individual, family, neighborhood, and
community economic development.
The purpose of this paper is to describe
new tools, resources, collaborations,
and technology that have emerged to
advance African American economic
growth during the period 2006 through
2016. It discusses ways in which multifaceted collaboration is being used
to create innovative African American
economic development engines. It
describes some of those engines,
their components, and the value that
participants realize from them.
The Twin Cities African American
Financial Capabilities Community of
Practice (AAFCOP), which commissioned
this paper, consists of seven African
American-led organizations that provide
services that span the economic
spectrum, including financial education
and literacy, home ownership, community
development, business development,
and wealth creation. AAFCOP’s goal is
to examine best economic development
practices in U.S. African American
communities and the mechanisms,
technological and otherwise, that are
being used and how.
This paper is based on an analysis of
selected literature related to economic
development in African American
communities. This literature review was
conducted to identify and describe
existing research and promising practices
related to African American wealth
creation, including financial education
and literacy, homeownership, community
development, and asset and business
development. Its purpose was to identify
and articulate the findings of the literature
on African American wealth creation with
a goal of determining best practices.
This paper is intended to shed light on
a broad array of economic development
tools and practices that have improved
various communities around the country.
A major objective is to share information
about the potential impacts on
communities of using two or more tools
and practices together.
This work is part of a larger initiative to
examine the AAFCOP’s newly proposed
economic development model to
understand how that model can be
applied in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis
and Saint Paul to significantly advance
economic development among African
Americans in these cities. The AAFCOP
has designed and piloted a multi-faceted
collaboration platform to advance African
American wealth in the areas of financial
literacy, homeownership, business
development, banking, and community
development and plans to pilot an
expanded version of the model.
In its pilot stage, this economic
development model has shown
tremendous potential. This model is
based on three main premises. First, it
is based on an economic development
platform in the form of a product, service,
or technology that delivers value to
two or more groups of stakeholders.
Second, the platform enables multiple
groups of stakeholders to co-create
unique programs or services of value to
consumers that they could not produce
on their own. This process of co-creation
yields innovative solutions to economic
development problems, more effective
and efficient ways of executing economic
development initiatives, and more
business possibilities for stakeholders.
Third, the value of the platform increases
as the network of stakeholders increases
based on collaborative work.
Statistical Analysis and
Data Organization
The research for this paper collected data
from a wide range of sources spanning
several years. It found no single source
that regularly gathers and disaggregates
all of the information referenced in this
report. As researchers and communities
have come to recognize the broad
range of factors that influence economic
success, including demographic, social,
economic, and health matters, the kinds
of data needed to measure this success
has expanded. Most sources referred
to in this paper did not disaggregate
data according to the distinction made
in January 2016 by the Minnesota State
Demographic Center between AfricanAmericans, defined as “U.S.-born only
6
THE DATA PRESENTED IN
THIS PAPER ARE INTENDED
TO DO THE FOLLOWING:
1. Establish a list of indicators to be
tracked more purposely by those
involved in African American
wealth creation.
2. Identify each indicator, data
source, and frequency of
collection.
3. Develop a broad framework for
a narrative about the Twin Cities
African American community and
economic development.
4, Create another framework for
collecting, tracking, and reviewing
African American economic
progress indicators.
and their children, with no identification
with recent black immigrant groups,” and
Minnesotans of Ethiopian, Liberian, or
Somali origins, as defined by “ancestry or
birthplace, including U.S.-born children.”
Unless otherwise noted, this paper, like
most of the sources referred to, does not
distinguish between these two groups
when referring to African Americans or
Blacks, which is meant to include both.
The data presented in this paper come
from many sources, including not only
federal statistical bureaus and other
research organizations that collect and
issue statistics as their principal activity,
but also governmental administrative and
regulatory agencies, private research
organizations, and private organizations
such as philanthropic institutions.
Consequently, the data collected vary
considerably as to definitions of terms,
the number and frequency of time
periods for which data are available,
and tabulation methods that were
used. Some are based on complete
enumerations or censuses, while others
are based on samples. Some information
has been extracted from records kept
for administrative or regulatory purposes
(e.g., school records, financial accounts).
The Challenge Before Us
Fifty years after the March on Washington, one of the largest political rallies for jobs and
other human rights in U.S. history, economic disparities related to race or ethnicity persist
across the country.
Although Minnesota has been widely
viewed as a state offering equal
opportunity and progressive politics, it
now holds the ignominious distinction
of having some of the worst racial
disparities in the nation—gaps that have
widened over the past five decades and,
if not adequately addressed, will lead to
an economic crisis in the state.
According to 24/7 Wall Street, an internet
financial news and opinion company,
Minnesota is the second worst state for
Black Americans. In a 2016 article, “Worst
States for Black Americans,” Minnesota
was reported to disproportionately
incarcerate Black Americans, while
having the second lowest incarceration
rate among Whites in the country. It
noted that Minnesota’s Black families
generally earn less than Whites and
on average less than half of White
households, its Black homeownership
rate was the eighth lowest in the country,
and its Black unemployment rate was the
twenty-first highest in the country.2
Multiple sources have reported the
economic disparities that communities
of color in the Twin Cities metropolitan
area face in areas of poverty,
homeownership, employment, and
education level. Awareness of these
disparities was originally fueled
by a 2010 report, “Uneven Pain—
Unemployment by Metropolitan Area
and Race,” by Algernon Austin. In 2016,
the Metropolitan Council (the regional
policy-making body, planning agency,
and provider of essential services for
the Twin Cities metropolitan region) and
other agencies also argued that race and
ethnicity are linked to economic success
and opportunity in the state.”3 Even when
accounting for demographic differences,
their research found, White and African
American residents in the region do
not have the same opportunities for
success. Comparing factors such as
age, immigrant status, English skills, and
educational attainment, their report found
significant disparities between White
residents and African American/Black
residents.4 Similarly, a recent study by the
Minnesota Department of Employment
7
and Economic Development (DEED)
found that African Americans earn less
money than Whites even after earning a
college degree or other post-secondary
credential.5 Together, these reports
indicate that people of color comprise
nearly a quarter of the state’s population
of 5 million and project that by 2040
communities of color will comprise 40
percent of the population of the Twin
Cities.
Disparities are especially prominent
among African Americans and American
Indians, who experience some of the
greatest inequalities in the nation. For
African Americans/Backs in the Twin
Cities, figures show, the
• Poverty rate is higher than that of other
racial/ethnic groups except American
Indians.
• Incarceration rate is 25 African
Americans to 1 White inmate, the
highest in the country.
• Graduation rate is half that of White
high school students in the state.
• Health disparity rate between Whites
and African Americans/Blacks is one of
the greatest gaps in the state.
• Unemployment gap is the highest in
the nation.
• The homeownership gap is the highest
in the country.
• Loan application rejection rate is
disproportionately higher than that of
White applicants.
All of the above factors are interrelated
and have a direct correlation with the
economic health of the Twin Cities
African American/Black community, as
discussed below.
Poverty Rate
Defining poverty as a family income of
below $44,826 annually for a family of
four, a 2015 Metropolitan Council report
found that at least 40% of residents in its
service region lived in poverty and that
the poverty level has increased since
2000, especially in the region’s suburbs.6
According to the report, 2010-2014
data show that “13% of the region’s total
population lived in Concentrated Areas of
Poverty (CAP), almost double the share in
2000 (7%).” The area’s residents of color,
it notes, “continue to be overrepresented
in the region’s CAPs. Eighty of the 112
CAPs are majority people of color.” In
2000, one in four (27%) people of color
lived in an Area of Concentrated Poverty,
compared to just one in 40 White, nonLatino residents; in 2010, the percentage
of African American residents living in
such areas was 30%, or 79,482 people,
in the Twin Cities region.7 In the map of
counties in the Metropolitan Council’s
service area below, CAPs are identified
in purple. The Met Council report also
acknowledges that the state’s workforce
will be largely constituted by workers
of color in the future and that all of the
region’s residents need to participate in
economic opportunities and contribute to
the state’s prosperity.
In a 2013 report about the impact of
the Great Recession on Minnesota
residents, the Minnesota Budget Project,
an initiative of the Minnesota Council of
Nonprofits, found that African-American
and American Indian Minnesotans were
more likely than other Minnesotans to live
in poverty, to have jobs that did not offer
livable wages and benefits, and to face
greater challenges than other groups
in finding economic security. According
to their figures, the percentage of
African American Minnesotans living in
poverty was nearly five times higher than
that among Whites, and their median
income was only half that of White
Minnesotans (around $30,000). In 2012,
the unemployment rate among AfricanAmerican Minnesotans was 17.7%, more
than three times higher than the rate of
5.2% percent among White Minnesotans.8
The 2016 racial disparities data from
the Minnesota State Demographer’s
Office, as shown in Tables 1-3 on the
next page, underscore the discrepancies
in how African Americans are faring in
Minnesota’s economy. In 2015, more
than half (58%) of African Americans
had incomes below the national median
income of $55,775. The median income
among African American Minnesotans
was $17,475 less than the national
median and their poverty rate was 10%
higher than that of African-Americans
nationally. With few exceptions, poverty
rates among communities of color are
higher and incomes are lower than the
U. S. median.
Further illustrating African American/
Black economic disparities in the Twin
Cities, research conducted by The
Corporation for Enterprise Development
or CFED (a Washington, DC-based
organization that works at the local,
state and federal levels to create
economic opportunity that alleviates
poverty) identified asset poverty, liquid
asset poverty, and being unbanked or
underbanked as contributing to the
limited economic success of African
Americans in Minneapolis and St. Paul
(see Figures 5-6). Asset poverty, an
Figure 1: Map of Metropolitan
Council’s Service Area &
Racially Concentrated Areas
of Poverty, 2007-2011
SOURCE: U.S. CENSUS BUREAU, DECENNIAL CENSUS, 2000; U.S. CENSUS BUREAU, AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY
5-YEAR ESTIMATES, 2005- 2009 AND 2010-2014.
8
economic and social condition that is
more persistent and prevalent than
income poverty, is defined in their report
as a household’s inability to access
wealth resources that are sufficient to
provide for basic needs for a period of
three months. Liquid asset poverty is
measured by not having enough liquid
savings to cover basic expenses for three
months in the case of a sudden job loss,
a medical emergency, or another crisis
creating a loss of stable income. Being
unbanked refers to not being served
by a bank or similar financial institution
and underbanked to lacking the full use
of banking facilities or not adequately
underwritten by financing institutions.
There are numerous cities in America
where African Americans are doing
better than in Minneapolis and St.
Paul. Table 1 displays the top 10 cities
identified by Forbes magazine as places
where African Americans fared well in
2015, based on median income and
homeownership rates.
Incarceration Rate
In 2016, the Minneapolis Star Tribune
reported that Black people made
up about 37% of Minnesota’s prison
population, while representing just 6% of
the state’s population according to 2013
U.S. Census figures.9 This number had
increased from 3% in 1980, when Blacks
comprised 1% of the state’s population.
In 1999, African Americans constituted
3.5% of Minnesota’s population, but 35%
of the adult male prison population.”
The Council on Crime and Justice (CCJ)
and the Institute on Race and Poverty
(IRP) have concluded that Minnesota
has the greatest state-level disparity
in imprisonment rates among African
Americans and Whites in the United
States. The Black-to-White imprisonment
ratio is the twelfth highest in the nation.
The CCJ has reported that the 2016
ratio of African Americans to Whites in
Minnesota prisons is about 26 to 1, and
that African American males account for
more than three-fourths of the arrests for
narcotic drug laws in Minneapolis (77.1%),
whereas White males represented only
13.8% of such arrests.10
Figure 2: Minnesota Racial Disparities in Poverty Persisting in 2015
HOUSEHOLDS
PERCENTAGE WITH INCOME BELOW $35,000 ANNUALLY
All Minnesotans
African American
Asian Indian
Chinese
Hmong
Korean
Mexican
Ojibwe
Somali
Vietnamese
White
28%
58%
15%
26%
33%
32%
45%
58%
75%
26%
26%
MINNESOTA STATE DEMOGRAPHIC CENTER
Figure 3: Most Minnesotans of Color Do Not Share in Economic Success
HOUSEHOLDS
MEDIAN 2014 INCOME: FULL-TIME, YEAR-ROUND WORKERS
All Minnesotans
African American
Asian Indian
Chinese
Filipino
Hmong
Korean
Mexican
Ojibwe
Vietnamese
$48,000
$38,300
$80,400
$62,500
$35,300
$32,800
$45,900
$28,900
$35,800
$40,300
MINNESOTA STATE DEMOGRAPHIC CENTER
Figure 4: Minnesotans of Color Have Higher 2012 Poverty Rates Than U.S. Median
POPULATION
2012 MEDIAN INCOME
All Races and
Ethnicities
11%
Black/African
American
38%
American Indian
32%
MINNESOTA
16%
UNITED STATES
28%
29%
Hispanic/Latino
26%
25%
Asian
16%
13%
White
(non-Hispanic)
8%
11%
MINNESOTA BUDGET PROJECT/MINNESOTA COUNCIL OF NONPROFITS
9
POPULATION
The CCJ’s findings appear supported
by data released by the American Civil
Liberties Union in 2014, which showed
racial disparities in the Minneapolis Police
Department’s arrest rates for marijuana
possession, disorderly conduct, vagrancy,
and juvenile curfew violations or loitering
(low-level non-violent offenses). Data on
White and African American arrest rates
between 2004 and 2012 show that on
average, African Americans were:
• 12 times more likely to be arrested for
marijuana possession.
• 9 times more likely to be arrested for
disorderly conduct.
• 8 times more likely to be arrested for
vagrancy.
• 16 times more likely to be arrested for
juvenile curfew violations or loitering.
The ACLU report called for police reform
in arrest rates and pointed out the
economic and educational challenges
associated with incarceration: “An
arrest—even without a conviction—makes
it harder for anyone to get a job and rent
an apartment, and it can significantly limit
educational opportunities.”11
2012 MEDIAN INCOME
Figure 5: Asset and Liquid Asset Poverty
in Minneapolis and St. Paul
31% 34% 63% 64%
Asset Poverty
21%
21% 40% 40%
Extreme Asset Poverty
POPULATION
42% 46% 79% 79%
Liquid Asset Poverty
2012 MEDIAN INCOME
Figure 6: Unbanked and Underbanked in
Minneapolis and St. Paul*
ALL MINNEAPOLIS
ALL ST. PAUL
MINNEAPOLIS AFRICAN
AMERICANS*
ST. PAUL AFRICAN
AMERICANS*
Graduation Rate
Over the past decade, Minnesota has
also fallen behind other states in on-time
graduation among students of color and
been criticized for racial disparities that
begin in elementary school and continue
through students’ college and university
experiences. In 2015, according to a
Minnesota Public Radio online article,
Minnesota “has the worst or secondworst graduation rate among reporting
states in all four non-White student
categories. No other state is in the
bottom five in all four groups, and only
Oregon comes close with three races in
the bottom five.”12
In 2016, the Minneapolis Star Tribune
reported that although Minnesota had
made progress toward its statewide
graduation goal of 90 percent, as
can be seen in Figure 7, the data also
showed that Minneapolis Public Schools’
graduation rate for African American
students, while improved, was still one of
the lowest in the Twin Cities metropolitan
area, “higher only than Brooklyn Center’s
48 percent.” The Minneapolis district
graduated 64 percent of its seniors in
10% 10% 32% 29%
19% 20% 33% 35%
Unbanked
Underbanked
42% 46% 79% 79%
SOURCE: CFED
Table 1: Cities Where African Americans Are Doing Best Economically*
RANKING
LOCATION
MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME
HOMEOWNERSHIP RATE
1
Atlanta GA
$41,803
46.9%
2
Raleigh NC
$42,285
46.7%
3
Washington DC-VA-MD-WV
$64,896
49.2%
4
Baltimore MD
$47,898
46.2%
5
Charlotte NC-SC
$34,522
43.9%
6
Virginia Beach-Norfolk VA
$40,677
43.8%
7
Orlando FL
$33,982
43.8%
8
Miami FL
$36,749
44.9%
9
Richmond VA
$38,899
47.8%
10
San Antonio TX
$41,681
*U.S.-born and others of African heritage
10
40.8%
SOURCE: FORBES, JANUARY 2015
2015. In St. Paul, graduation rates had
been rising for 6 years, but in 2015 rates
remained steady at about 75 percent.
Figure 7 shows the 2013-2014 high
school graduation rate by race/ethnicity
for the entire state of Minnesota.13
Nationwide, according to “The Racial
Gap in High School Graduation Rates
in the 50 States” published in the
Journal of Blacks in Higher Education,
the graduation rate among Black high
school students in 2013-14 was 72.5%,
significantly higher than the rate in
Minnesota. Although the Black-White
gap in high school graduation rates had
declined nationally from 17% to 14.8%
since 2010-2011,14 African American
students still lag behind other groups
in many states, including Minnesota.
Discussing the importance of a high
school graduation, Minnesota Compass,
a social indicators project that measures
progress in our state, concluded:
Completion of a high school education
is the minimum requirement for
employment. Very few jobs exist for
people who do not graduate from high
school.… Lack of a high school diploma
puts an individual at greater risk for
poor health, lower lifetime earnings,
unemployment, welfare, and prison.15
That White students are meeting
kindergarten through grade 12 standards
in math, reading, and writing while
students of color are falling behind was
recently documented by a Minnesota
Department of Employment and
Economic Development (DEED) report
based on data from standardized state
tests. In 2005, just 35% of African
American/Black students passed the
eighth-grade Minnesota Basic Skills
Test in math, compared to 74% of White
students. Just 56% of African American/
Black students passed the reading test
that year, compared to about 90% of
White students.16
Health Disparities
In its 2014 report to the legislature, the
Minnesota Department of Health (MDH)
revealed long-standing health disparities
in the African American community,
even in areas where progress has been
made. Among these are disparities in
infant mortality rates. American Indian
Figure 7: Minnesota Public High School Four-Year Graduation Rate by Race/
Ethnicity, School Year 2013-2014
POPULATION
PERCENT OF STUDENTS
Total
81%
White (non-Hispanic)
86%
Asian
82%
Hispanic/Latino
63%
Black/African American*
60%
American Indian
51%
*U.S.-born and others of African heritage
and African American babies were still
dying at twice the rate of White babies,
a disparity that has existed for more
than 20 years, according to the report.
Available sources indicate that other
enduring health disparities include the
following:
• American Indian, Hispanic/Latino,
and African American youth have the
highest rates of obesity.
• Intimate partner violence affects 11 to
24% of high school seniors, with the
highest rates among American Indian,
African American, and Hispanic/Latino
students.
• African American and Hispanic/Latino
women in Minnesota are more likely to
be diagnosed with later-stage breast
cancer.
• African American men are more likely
than White men to die from prostate
cancer.
• African Americans adults and children
are still more likely than Whites to be
uninsured.
• People who are uninsured or
underinsured receive less medical care
than their insured counterparts.
• Stroke deaths are significantly higher
among African-American, American
Indian, and Asian populations than
among Whites.17
The MDH report also identifies social
and economic inequities such as
income, employment, education, and the
condition of neighborhood and home
environments as central contributors to
11
SOURCE: NATIONAL CENTER FOR EDUCATION
STATISTICS COMMON CORE DATA
health disparities. “If health equity is
to be advanced,” it claims, “structural
racism — the normalization of historical,
cultural, institutional and interpersonal
dynamics that routinely advantage White
people while producing cumulative and
chronic adverse outcomes for people
of color and American Indians” must be
addressed.
Using Twin Cities death records and zip
codes, a Minnesota Public Radio report
on the life expectancies of people living
in specific neighborhoods concluded
that “if you drive along I-94, go from
neighborhood to neighborhood, it can
mean a difference of six to eight years.”
Unemployment Gap
As with the other racial disparities
identified by Austin in 2010,
unemployment among African Americans
in Minnesota was one of the highest in
the nation. Many factors contribute to
this gap, including unemployment by age
and gender. In 2011, the U.S. Department
of Labor noted that the gender gap in
unemployment was at its highest since
1948.18 Reporting on the gender gap in
2014, the Center on Women and Public
Policy report on the “Status of Women
& Girls in Minnesota” indicated that
“unemployment rates for female-headed
families are nearly twice as high.” In
addition, according to the report, women
are underrepresented among those
receiving unemployment benefits.19
Despite this racial gap, unemployment
rates have been dropping statewide. The
unemployment rate among all women
in Minnesota, according to Minnesota
Department of Employment an Economic
Development (DEED), increased a tenth
of a point to 2.8 percent in 2016 but
overall continued a long downward trend
from a summer 2011 high of 6.3%. DEED
indicated that unemployment among
Minnesota teenagers in 2016 decreased
slightly from 8% in the summer to
7.8% in the fall, but remained lower
than rates during 2003 through 2015.
Among men, the DEED report states, the
unemployment rate was 4.5% in 2016.
Unemployment among Minnesota’s
African American/Black population was
7.9% in 2016, compared to 16.1% a year
earlier.20
In response to these high unemployment
rates, in 2011 the Minnesota Advisory
Committee to the U.S. Commission on
Civil Rights held a daylong community
forum that focused on unemployment
disparities in the state, the underlying
causes of the racial disparities,
and recommendations for change.
Presenters from business, government,
community-based organizations, the faith
community, and nonprofits discussed
the disparity and pointed out that
“Blacks are more than three times as
likely to be unemployed” as their White
counterparts. All participants understood
unemployment as “detrimental to the
African American community” and
“to the current and future regional
competitiveness of the State of
Minnesota as a whole.”21 Work to address
unemployment is ongoing throughout the
state.
In 2016, the Twin Cities Pioneer Press,
citing unemployment statistics collected
by the U.S. Census, reported that
Minnesota still has some of the worse
racial disparities in the nation and called
attention to the troubling finding that
the median income of most Minnesota
families of color is only about half that
of White residents.22 Given that a large
segment of the growth in the Twin
Cities region’s workforce will come from
people of color over the next decades,
Metropolitan Council officials and others
have warned that economic disparities
threaten to undermine the future
prosperity of the region and state.23
The current housing gap is also
exacerbated by an extreme shortage of
affordable rental housing in Minnesota.
In 2015, the Minnesota Housing Finance
Agency (MHFA), which works to provide
access to safe, decent, and affordable
housing for Minnesotans, found that
the state has about 236,000 renter
households with incomes at or below
80% AMI (area median income) who need
greater access to affordable housing.
The greatest need, MHFA reported, is
in housing for households with income
at or below 30% of AMI, which account
for more than half of the state’s 236,000
low-income renters.26
Housing Gaps
Lending Disparities
The rental and homeownership
markets in Minnesota also show a
significant racial gap in housing. In
2015, Minnesota Compass indicated
that, although the state has one of
the highest homeownership rates in
the country, families of color are less
likely than White households to own
homes, a gap they attributed to income
disparities, access to credit, and racism.24
In a 2012 research report funded by
Wells Fargo’s NeighborhoodLIFT Local
Initiatives grant program, Kim Skobba of
the University of Georgia found that the
homeownership rate among U.S.-born
Black Minnesotans is 26%, compared to
that of 77% among White Minnesotans.
As the report points out, identifying the
cause of gaps in both homeownership
and rental rates is complicated because
they are linked to past decades of
discriminatory local, state, and federal
actions that created dual housing policies
for Whites and Blacks and ensured
segregated neighborhoods. Although the
Housing Act of 1968 outlawed housing
discrimination and created a program to
improve homeownership opportunities
for people of color, those discriminatory
policies had already created segregated
housing patterns and left households of
color with a reduced capacity to increase
wealth.25
A groundbreaking 2015 analysis of
banking practices in the Twin Cities
by scholars at the University of
Minnesota found that discriminatory
lending practices were still being
applied by financial institutions in the
Twin-Cities metropolitan statistical
area (MSA) and that people of color
“are disproportionately more likely to
have their loan applications rejected.”
Their analysis disputed claims that
this pattern was attributable solely to
such socio-economic characteristics
as credit risk or applicants’ income that
typically affect financial institutions’
lending decisions. Instead, their
examination of the 50 largest banks
lending in the Twin Cities found that
discrimination against people of
color “is non-trivial in magnitude and
statistically significant.” The report
shows an overall racial disparity in
the lending rates of the 20 largest
lenders.27
12
Demographic Trends
According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 24.9 million citizens identified their ancestry as
African American or Black, which, as Figure 8 shows, makes them the third-largest
ancestry group in the country.
They constitute a diverse population,
including U.S.-born and foreign-born
Blacks who trace their origins to countries
across Africa, the Caribbean, South
America, and Europe.
Figure 8: Fifteen Largest Ancestries, United States, 2000
Population Distribution
Although African Americans constitute a
little less than 6% of the state’s population,
that percentage increases considerably in
the Twin Cities area, as shown in Table 2.
African Americans/Blacks live in more than
half (529, or 61%) of Minnesota’s 866 cities
with populations of 3,000 or more. State
demographers identified 337 Minnesota
cities or towns that reported no African
American residents. African American
residents are also differently distributed
within the Twin Cities metro area, as
indicated in Table 3.
According to the MN Demographer’s
Office:
• Although all racial groups have grown
i n Minnesota in recent decades,
between 2010 and 2015 the state
added four times as many people of
color as non-Hispanic White residents.
ANCESTRY
POPULATION IN MILLIONS
German (15.2%)
42.8
Irish (10.8%)
30.5
*African American
(8.8%)
24.9
English (8.7%)
24.5
American (7.2%)
20.2
Mexican (6.5%)
18.4
Italian (5.6%)
15.6
Polish (3.2%)
9
French (3.0%)
8.3
American Indian
(2.8%)
7.9
Scottish (1.7%)
4.9
Dutch (1.6%)
4.5
Norwegian (1.6%)
4.5
Scotch-Irish (1.5%)
4.3
*U.S.-born and others of African heritage
Data based on sample.
4
SOURCE: CENSUS.GOV/PROD/CEN2000/DOC/SF3.PDF
Swedish (1.4%)
13
Populations of color are distributed
unevenly across the state and more
likely to live in metro than rural areas.
• Between 2010 and 2015, the fastest
growing racial group in Minnesota
was Asian, which grew by 22%,
adding nearly 48,000 people. The
second fastest was African American
or Black, which grew by 16%, adding
45,000 people. The Latino or Hispanic
population grew by 13%, adding
32,000 people.
Table 2: Minnesota Population, 2014-2015
LOCATION
TOTAL
WHITE
*AFRICAN AMERICAN
Statewide
5,489,594
4,446,535 (81%)
317,130 (6%)
Hennepin County
1,221,703
958,759 (78%)
177,708 (14%)
Ramsey County
533,677
389,598 (73%)
74,480 (14%)
Minneapolis
412,517
263,185 (64%)
76,728 (18%)
St Paul
300,353
198,233 (66%)
42,049 (14%)
*U.S.-born and others of African heritage
MN STATE DEMOGRAPHER’S OFFICE
Table 3: Twin Cities Neighborhoods Where African Americans Live*
COMMUNITY/
NEIGHBORHOOD
AFRICAN AMERICAN/
BLACK* POPULATION
NEIGHBORHOODS INCLUDED
MINNEAPOLIS
Near North
49%
Harrison, Hawthorne, Jordan, Near-North, Sumner- Glenwood, and Willard-Hay
Phillips
38%
—
Camden
33%
Camden Industrial, Cleveland, Folwell, Humboldt Industrial Area, Lind-Bohanon, McKinley, Shingle
Creek, Victory, and Webber-Camden
Central
20%
Downtown East, Downtown West, Elliot Park, Loring Park, North Loop, and Stevens Square-Loring
Heights
Powderhorn
16%
Bancroft, Bryant, Central, Corcoran, Lyndale, Powderhorn Park, Standish, and Whittier
University
15%
Cedar Riverside, Como, East Bank, East River Road, Marcy Holmes, Mid-City Industrial, Nicollet
Island, Prospect Park, and University of Minnesota
Longfellow
14%
Cooper, Hiawatha, Howe, Longfellow and Seward
Northeast
10%
Audubon Park, Beltrami, Columbia Park, Holland, Logan Park, Marshall Terrace, Northeast Park,
Sheridan, St. Anthony East, St. Anthony West, Waite Park, and Windom Park
Nokomis
9%
Diamond Lake, Ericsson, Field, Hale, Keewaydin, Minnehaha, Morris Park, Northrop, Page, Regina,
and Wannonah
St Anthony Park
8%
—
Summit-University
34%
—
Frogtown/Thomas-Dale
30%
—
ST. PAUL
Battle Creek-Highwood
23%
—
North End
20%
—
West Side
16%
—
Greater Eastside
15%
—
Dayton’s Bluff
15%
—
Downtown
14%
—
Hamline Midway
13%
—
Highland
12%
—
Union Park
10%
—
West 7th
9%
—
Como
7%
—
Summit Hill
4%
—
Macalester-Groveland
3%
—
*U.S.-born and others of African heritage
SOURCE: WILDER RESEARCH CENTER/MINNESOTA COMPASS
14
That African Americans are the second
fastest growing population in the
state suggests that employers will be
increasingly dependent upon them to
fill the workforce and that the region will
depend on these workers to help fuel
Minnesota’s economy. These figures will
also inform city, county, and state policy
decisions and administration.
Poverty and Related
Issues
Poverty negatively affects members
of a community in multiple ways.
One is that poverty often results in
malnutrition, especially among children,
as nutritious food is costly. Poorer health
outcomes are also strongly associated
with poverty, from before birth to
death. Those who live in poverty are
more prone to accidents and disease
because of limited resources to maintain
healthy environments. Poverty also has
deleterious effects on education. Often
parents with limited incomes find it
difficult to transport children to school or
need to keep them at home to care for
family members while parents work, and
children in families with limited incomes
frequently change schools, making it
difficult for some students to complete
school work at their supposed grade
levels. Poverty makes it harder to access
post-secondary education opportunities.
Poverty and these related issues also
have serious effects on employment,
homeownership, and the economy as
a whole. As the data in Table 4 show,
African American Minnesotans are trailing
others in the state on many of these
interconnected issues. Lower levels of
education leave people unable to obtain
good-paying jobs. Unemployment,
under-employment, and low-paying
jobs seriously restrict the economies
of certain neighborhoods and the
community at large. Many people who
live in poverty are also homeless, and
U.S.-born African Americans make up
one of the largest shares of Minnesota’s
homeless population. In 2013, the
Wilder Research Center, which counts
Minnesota’s homeless population every
3 years, reported that racial disparities
are persistent in Minnesota’s homeless
Table 4: Selected Indicators by Race and Ethnicity in Twin Cities Metro, 2014
WHITE
POPULATION
*AFRICAN
AMERICAN/BLACK
Per capita income (2014 dollars)
$40,350
$16,812
Median earnings (full-time, year-round workers)
INDICATOR
$50,000
$38,300
Percentage of individuals at or above the federal
poverty level
94%
60%
Percentage of householders who own their own homes
77%
25%
High school students graduating on time
87%
62%
Percentage of civilian working-age people (ages 16-64)
who are employed
81%
64%
People ages 16-64 unemployed or not in labor force
22%
45%
Ages 16-64 in the labor force who are unemployed
6%
19%
Share of households without vehicles
6%
31%
Women with children under age 13
18%
25%
Child poverty rate
13%
45%
Children living in high-poverty areas
5%
32%
3rd graders proficient in reading
33%
68%
Incarceration rate per 100,000
212
1,937
*U.S.-born and others of African Heritage
SOURCES: METROPOLITAN COUNCIL, US CENSUS BUREAU, MNCOMPASS, AND SENTENCING PROJECT, 2007, 2014, 2015
Table 5: Percentage of Homeless Adults and Youth in Minnesota by Race/Ethnicity
HOMELESS
ADULTS
UNACCOMPANIED YOUTH
AGE 21 AND UNDER
American Indian
10%
13%
Asian American
1%
2%
RACE/ETHNICITY
African American*
38%
40%
Caucasian/White
42%
33%
Mixed Race/Other
8%
12%
Latino/Hispanic (any race)
7%
10%
*U.S.-born
SOURCE: WILDER RESEARCH CENTER
population, as displayed in Table 5,
and that homelessness in the African
American population has been “relatively
consistent since the statewide study
began” in 1991.28
Poverty and related factors also affect
the ability to purchase a home, which
is a major strategy for building wealth.
Poverty costs the economy billions of
dollars annually that would otherwise
be spent and invested and weakens the
middle class because of the increasing
numbers of individuals and families that
never reach middle class.
15
Health disparities also result from poverty
and limited income. Key findings from
the 2015 “Chartbook on Health Care
for Blacks” indicated that disparities
continue in a number of specific areas,
such as colorectal cancer and diabetes
care. Access to care continues to
be lower among Blacks than other
populations, although implementation of
the Affordable Health Care Act has led
to a noticeable improvement. Research
reported there shows that Blacks receive
a poorer quality of care, specifically on
the measures of person centeredness
and care coordination.”
Table 6: African American-Owned Firms in Minnesota, 2012
ALL FIRMS
FIRM
*African American/
Black
All Firms
FIRMS WITH PAID EMPLOYEES
FIRMS WITHOUT PAID
EMPLOYEES
TOTAL NUMBER
OF FIRMS
TOTAL SALES OF
FIRMS
NUMBER OF
FIRMS
SALES OF
FIRMS
NUMBER OF PAID
EMPLOYEES
ANNUAL PAYROLL
NUMBER OF
FIRMS
SALES OF FIRMS
19,964
$1,729,430
1,155
$1,324,500
21,261
$515,770
18,809
$404,930
489,494
$694,788,651
109,736
$677,657,170
2,422,065
$113,609,544
379,758
$17,131,480
*U.S.-born and others of African heritage
SOURCE: MINNESOTA ECONOMIC TRENDS
Economies are dependent on the
development of a strong middle class
with purchasing power. In 2016, a report
titled “The Ever Growing Gap” pointed
out the severity of the racial wealth divide
for Black households, concluding that if
the country’s economy repeats the past
30 years, “the average wealth of White
households would increase by over
$18,000 per year, while Black households
would see their wealth increase by about
$750 per year.” In past years, according
to the report, the wealth of the richest
400 people on the Forbes list grew an
average of 736%, which is 27 times the
rate of growth for the Black population.
The richest 100 people on the Forbes
list owned as much wealth as the entire
Black community nationwide; at the
current rate of wealth accumulation,
the report estimates, the wealth divide
between White and Black families would
double by 2043, the year in which the
U.S. population is expected to be majority
people of color.29 The figures on African
American per capita income, median
earnings, homeownership, employment,
and incarceration rates displayed earlier
in Table 4 make clear the challenge
these factors present for improving the
economic health of African American
families and communities.
Job Creation and
Economic Stabilization
Small businesses in Minnesota, as in
the rest of the country, spur economic
growth. Many experts consider small
businesses the backbone of the
economy because they employ so many
people. In 2010, the U.S. Census reported
27.9 million small businesses in the U.S.,
compared to 18,500 companies
employing 500 or more people. Although
many African Americans hope to start
small businesses to build wealth,
Minnesota falls in the lower third of states
on this measure.30 Table 6 presents the
economic characteristics of Minnesota’s
African American-owned businesses and
all Minnesota firms in 2012.
Between 2007 and 2012, the number
of Minnesota firms owned by people
of color grew by about 53% and their
revenue increased nearly 58%. According
to a 2015 “Minnesota Economic Trends”
report, about one in 20 (5%) people of
color in the state owned a business. In
2012, the total number of Black-owned
firms in Minnesota was just under 20,000,
with total sales of nearly $2 billion. While
these firms numbered over a thousand
and together employed more than 20
thousand workers for an annual payroll
of nearly $516 million, the vast majority
of Black-owned businesses in Minnesota
(18,809) had no paid employees.
Research suggests that a gap in
assets may prevent firms of color from
producing comparable earnings to those
of White entrepreneurs. Although an
estimated 47,565 businesses owned by
people of color in Minnesota had average
sales of $183,000, the state’s 441,929
White-owned firms had average gross
receipts of $638,000.31
More than half of all firms owned by
people of color in Minnesota were in
service industries: health care and social
assistance, professional and technical
services, transportation and warehousing,
and other services. The largest share of
such firms with paid employees was in
the accommodation and food services
sector.
16
A major challenge to Black-owned
businesses is that the average value
of such businesses is much lower
than the average value of Whiteowned businesses, which determines
the economic health and wellbeing
of a business and of course impacts
investor decisions. An average Whiteowned business is worth 8 times that
of the average Black-owned business,
according to research.32 Perhaps a more
significant impediment to the success of
entrepreneurs and businesses of color
is the limited business development
ecosystem in the state.
Although there are a large number
of organizations in the Twin Cities
designed to support the development
and sustainability of entrepreneurs
and existing businesses, there is no
existing coordinating mechanism
among them, which makes the current
system weak and inefficient. According
to the president and CEO of Meda (an
organization that provides technical
assistance, resources and loan
products to strengthen entrepreneurs
of color throughout the state), this lack
of coordination “prevents non-profit
organizations from operating as a unified
network and it undercuts organizations’
abilities to serve entrepreneurs of color
across their business development
lifecycle.”33 Rather than these support
organization’s viewing themselves
as allies and working together to
serve entrepreneurs and businesses,
the current system too often refers
entrepreneurs and business owners to
one organization after another without
receiving the support they need to
thrive or makes it impossible to identify
the organizations or services that can
address their specific needs.
The Solution: New Economic Development Models
In a 2014 report titled “Disrupting Poverty: Coming Together to Build Financial Security
for Individuals and Communities,” Jennifer Brooks, the director of state and local policy
for the Corporation for Economic Development (CFED), recognized the need for greater
coordination and cooperation among many sectors.
Arguing that “working inside our typical
boundaries will always mean we come
up short in achieving our goals,” Brooks
called for organizations to combine
expertise “to build individuals’ capabilities
while also building communities of
opportunity—places where these
individuals can have paths to financial
security.”34 Those necessary individual
capabilities were identified as learning,
earning, earning, saving, investing, and
protecting assets, and communities of
opportunity as ones that provide jobs,
good schools, affordable housing and
transportation, equitable land use, civic
engagement opportunities, healthcare,
and healthy environments. According to
the research cited in the report, a dual
and simultaneous focus on supporting
individuals and families’ financial
capabilities to build assets and creating
communities with economic opportunities
will be necessary to effectively address
complex economic disparities such as
those in African American communities.35
According to Brooks and other research
reviewed for this paper, the most
promising model for African American
community economic development is
a multi-faceted, comprehensive, placebased initiative focusing its action at
the individual and community level to
bring the full spectrum of wealth building
opportunities to specific neighborhoods
or communities. The information in this
section is based on a review of 111 such
initiatives developed in the United States
between 2006 and 2016. Many of them
have been headed by philanthropic
organizations and joined by public,
private, community development, and
social service entities. The examples
profiled come from urban settings, small
neighborhoods, and large metropolitan
regions; some focus on specific racial and
ethnic groups, while others target lowand moderate-income populations more
broadly.
These multi-faceted collaborations reflect
a common understanding of the inputs
that lead to the five stages of growth
17
identified earlier—existence, survival,
success, takeoff, and resource maturity—
and attempt to create a level playing
field of access to resources through
the participation of multiple partners.
This new model allows organizations
of different types to work together to
rapidly co-create products, services,
and solutions that no one of them could
do alone. According to this model, the
six main barriers to African American
economic development—rates of poverty,
incarceration, high school graduation,
health disparities, unemployment, loan
application rejection—can best be
addressed by (1) creating one front door
to economic development tools and
resources, thereby making it possible for
all stakeholders to have equal access
to the same relevant information in
real time to guide and shape effective
and timely decision making; and (2)
bringing together the knowledge of both
participants and collaborators to create
collective understanding, identify relevant
metrics, and develop new insights that
can be shared and enhanced.
Since most of the obstacles identified
in this paper are interrelated, the most
effective of these innovative partnerships
have leveraged resources such as local,
state, federal, and private grants and
traditional bank financing to infuse capital
into areas where poverty has persisted
for decades . Such partnerships or
collaborations can collectively engage
in high-impact strategies to design,
develop, and implement programming
and new systems to reach communities
with great need.
CFED president Andrea Levere also
supports collective action to address
poverty and related issues, arguing that
investing in communities with great
needs requires significant resources and
cross-sector collaboration. At the July
2016 launch of the Uplift America Fund
($500 million in low-cost financing that
will go to CDFI’s to address poverty),
Levere claimed that because no one
sector can address persistent poverty
successfully, “we need to bring together
public, private, and philanthropic capital
to allow each of us to do what we do
best.” For that reason, she reported,
community practitioners and charitable
foundations across the country are
showing increasing interest in “bundling”
social services to address the multiple
needs of families:
Innovative social service providers in
both the nonprofit and government
sectors have embraced the idea of
coordinating access to multiple types of
services, including financial capability
services, as a way to improve outcomes
and enhance the financial well-being of
their clients. Evidence from these service
providers shows that embedding such
financial capability strategies—helping
families access financial information;
connecting families to safe, affordable
financial products and services; building
savings and wealth and teaching them
to protect themselves in the financial
marketplace—boosts programmatic
outcomes.36
Well-known examples of such
initiatives are Market Creek Plaza in
San Diego, supported by the Jacobs
Family Foundation and the Jacobs
Center for Neighborhood Innovation;
San Francisco’s Mission Asset Fund
(MAF), supported by the Levi Strauss
Foundation;37 and Pike Place MarketFront
in Seattle, all of which serve diverse
residents, including African Americans.
The guiding principles of Market Creek,
the first of these examples, are to (1)
maximize the economic impact of every
phase of community development, from
local hiring and contracting to leasing
and ownership; (2) develop mechanisms
for residents to build wealth while
redeveloping their neighborhood; (3)
promote the circulation of money in
the neighborhood and build economic
capacity; and (4) involve residents
in business, financial, and asset
management to build their working
knowledge and expertise. Over a 6-year
period, Market Creek’s economic activity
grew from approximately $22 million in
2004 to nearly $48 million in 2010.38
The second example, the Mission Asset
Fund (MAF), is a nonprofit organization
whose goal is to create a fair financial
marketplace for hardworking families.
MAF is part of a national network of
53 nonprofit partners across 17 states,
including Minnesota, and Washington,
D.C. MAF has grown from making loans
totaling less than $1 million in 2009 to
loans totaling more than $6 million in
2015. The number of loans awarded
increased from fewer than 1,000 in
2009 to nearly 6,000 in 2015. The fund
works with three main groups of people:
those in the “Invisible” economy (the
54 million people without access to
affordable credit and 17 million people
without access to bank accounts);
individuals and families who are “Stuck”
(the one in four families who turn to
fringe financial services for their daily
needs); and individuals and families who
are “Strapped” (using payday lenders at
charges of 391% to 521%).
MAF programs help participants
overcome financial barriers with savings
and credit-building opportunities. When
bank loans are not an option and friends
and family cannot help, MAF creates
a pathway into the financial system.
This path starts with an online financial
education class. From there, participants
are provided opportunities to save
and build credit that will increase their
financial capability. MAF has developed
lending circles to help participants
improve their credit worthiness; lending
circles for citizenship to help people
pay the $680 citizenship application
18
fee; lending circles to help pay for
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
applications; and security deposit
loans at zero-percent interest to help
participants move into an apartment.39
Another example of local community
wealth building is Pike Place MarketFront
(PPMF) in Seattle, Washington. PPMF is a
$73 million project to expand Pike Place
Market, which is governed by the Pike
Place Preservation and Development
Authority (PDA), a nonprofit corporation
chartered by the City of Seattle to
increase opportunities for farm and food
retailing, support small and marginal
businesses, and provide services for
people with limited incomes. Pike Place
Market currently serves 80 farmers,
220 small businesses, and 250 artisans.
The expansion will add 47 rooftop
day stalls for farmers and artists, 40
affordable housing units for seniors, and
a neighborhood social services center
with expanded services. Financing the
expansion includes city obligation bonds,
low-income housing tax credits, PDA
bonds, parking mitigation funds, PPM
Foundation capital campaign dollars,
New Market Tax Credits, PDA equity, and
state grants.40
Intertwined Economic
Development Factors
This analysis identified 10 economic
barriers that the 111 promising
multifaceted collaborations named by
this study have been built to address,
as shown in Figure 9 and which will be
discussed below. The five most common
of these factors were community
capacity, business development,
homeownership, employment, and health
and wellness.
This section identifies central features
of these initiatives that have shown
clear promise in reversing discouraging
economic trends. Some of these
examples focus on helping specific racial
and ethnic groups and others target
low- and moderate-income populations
more broadly. Although the size of the
population served by these initiatives
vary, each effort is designed to reflect
the context of its specific community or
place. Most importantly, each represents
a collaboration that brings together
perspectives and sectors on economic
development in different ways and offers
lessons for other efforts that share their
goals.
All these identified initiatives are also
aimed at both strengthening individual
capabilities and permanently changing
the community structures and systems
that create opportunities for building
financial security. The complex work of
these initiatives is characterized by the
following activities:
• Reframing the goals of economic
development work beyond what a
single organization can accomplish
alone.
• Re-defining organizational roles to
include a different range of activities
(e.g., collaborative economic
development products/services).
• Aligning and using resources in new
ways.
• Partnering and collaborating with
others within and across sectors.
Most of the best practices for economic
development are being employed by
initiatives in many states, including
California, Georgia, Minnesota, New York,
Ohio, Washington, and Wisconsin. Many
of the successful projects:
Figure 9: Summary of Barriers That Programs/Services Are Addressing
Savings Accounts • 2%
Predatory Behavior • 4%
Community Development • 4%
Environment • 6%
Health/Wellness • 7%
Business
Development • 15%
Banking/Financial
Services • 8%
Employment • 12%
• Housing crises
• Limited earned-income opportunities
for community nonprofits
• Market-oriented strategies for
community development
• Neighborhood revitalization
• Are place-based
• Set targets (e.g., 2,000 African
American men placed in jobs)
• Integrate cooperative models
(involving community members in
some form of ownership, thus building
on cooperative ownership in African
American culture).
• Have rigorous metrics and evaluation
systems
• Are multi-dimensional (e.g., focusing
on jobs, homeownership, business
development)
Table 7 presents the barriers, desired
changes, and mitigating economic
efforts that affected greater community
prosperity and ways in which various
of these initiatives addressed them. As
shown, the community-based changes
targeted by these efforts ranged from
developing affordable housing to
increasing community investments from
banks. The mitigating economic efforts
included creating services and programs
such as Community Development
Financial Institutions (CDFIs), developing
worker-owned business cooperatives,
and building multifaceted collaborations
for greater impact.
Community Capacity
Homeownership
More than a quarter (28%) of the
programs or services offered focused
on community capacity, which included
addressing barriers such as the following:
Fifteen (14%) of the programs/services
analyzed in this paper emphasize
homeownership as a community
wealth-building strategy. The barriers
they address are disparities in
homeownership, access to mortgage
loans, and pricing and availability
of housing (Table 8). The mitigating
economic efforts that are helping
communities address homeownership
barriers are financial capability services
• Access to traditional financing
• Contracts with anchor institutions and
local governments
• Displacement from neighborhoods
undergoing gentrification and
addressing the need for rapid housing
• Too few coalitions addressing
community needs
Community Capacity • 28%
19
Homeownership • 14%
and coaching; effective modification
of mortgages to prevent foreclosures;
community organizations implementing
solutions; working to make banks more
responsive to homeownership and rental
housing needs; developing of affordable
rental housing; and working closely with
the Federal Home Loan Bank on rental
tax credits.
Business Development
Seventeen (15%) of the 111 identified
programs or services working to advance
wealth creation targeted barriers
associated with business development
(Table 9). Their strategies are aimed at
fostering a small business climate and
improving access to capital. They are also
working to improve the data available
on small business credit markets,
address limited participation in high-tech
incubators and accelerators, increase
small business lending, and lessen
small businesses’ struggles to find and
secure financing. A few of the economic
efforts that are being used to advance
these issues are providing owners’
education, human capital, and access
to financial capital; improving publicly
available small business loan data as
mandated by Dodd-Frank; improving loan
underwriting practices; and increasing
banks’ responsiveness to community
economic development needs, including
community development efforts and the
types of products and services offered.
Employment
About an eighth (13, or 12%) of the
identified programs included in this paper
were working on employment issues
(Table 10). These focused on income
inequality, unemployment, or poverty
reduction. The work they are doing to
address employment issues include asset
building, addressing tax fairness, creating
equitable criminal justice policies,
increasing college graduation rates,
creating jobs, and completing workforce
training.
Health and Wellness
Eight (7%) of the programs are
concentrating on addressing issues of
violence and health disparities to create
gateways to community wealth creation
(Table 11). Some organizations are offering
restorative practices such as treatment,
reentry, and youth support programs with
goals of shifting financial resources from
the criminal justice system to community
development initiatives addressing the
structural causes of violence. Violence
is considered a health issue because of
the many indirect effects of merely being
exposed to it. In 1992, the Centers for
Disease Control (CDC) established the
Division of Violence Prevention within the
National Center for Injury Prevention and
Control to address health and violence.
Among chronic diseases that are
associated with violence are heart failure,
asthma, stroke, and cancer. Mental health
problems such as posttraumatic stress
disorder, anxiety, and depression are also
linked to violence.
Some of the analyzed programs that
are working on violence and health are
using the Community Reinvestment
Act (CRA) to address systemic causes
of violence by galvanizing support for
social services for youth and workforce
development. The CRA is designed
to encourage commercial banks and
savings associations to help meet the
needs of borrowers in all segments of
their communities, including low- and
moderate-income neighborhoods. Other
program efforts are focused on youth and
adult entrepreneurship opportunities
and developing innovative policies and
practices that integrate housing, health,
and community development through
organizing and strategic partnerships.
Banking and Financial
Services
Another 9 (8%) of the identified programs
and services were addressing banking
issues as a way to advance community
wealth creation (Table 12). Specific
banking issues being addressed
include the lack of banks or strong bank
relationships in communities, need for
responsible banking, and providing
young people with the economic
competences needed to thrive. Among
the ways in which programs and services
are handling these issues are using the
Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) to
increase reinvestment in communities;
applying the Affirmatively Furthering Fair
Housing rule to combat discrimination,
address segregation, and foster inclusive
communities; and creating personal
investment clubs.
Environment
Five percent (6) of the identified
initiatives in this analysis addressed
environmental justice or heavy
environmental burdens borne by
communities with high concentrations
of poverty and people of color (Table
13). These communities sometimes
bear the most severe consequences
of environmental degradation and
pollution. Toxic chemicals, including
lead, chromium, arsenic, mercury,
and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs),
can contaminate the soil, water, and
air in communities and cause severe
health problems such as cancer and
reproductive disorders among residents.
The identified programs are addressing
these issues and building community
wealth by better analyzing environmental
hazards, providing green jobs training,
offering community greening programs,
and operating social enterprises.
20
Community
Development
Four percent (5) of the programs in
this study are working on community
divestment (Table 14). For the purposes
of this paper, this was considered a
separate topic from community capacity,
even though both draw on reinvestment
strategies to build wealth in communities,
because community neglect constitutes
a more egregious act. These initiatives
are building wealth in neglected
communities by leveraging capital;
offering low-interest loans to nonprofits;
purchasing locally; incubating nonprofit
enterprise development; offering
community venture capital to nonprofits,
entrepreneurs, and employee-owned
firms; and making affordable housing
loans available for homeownership.
Predatory Behavior
Five (4%) of these programs and services
are focused on reducing predatory
behaviors such as debt collection and
wealth diminishment as a wealth creation
strategy (Table 15). The mitigating
economic efforts employed are limiting
loans from predatory lenders, developing
policy solutions associated with debt
collection, and implementing New
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
rules to address the worst abuses of
payday lending.
Savings Accounts
As Table 16 indicates, two (2%) of these
programs address family incomes and
rising college costs to build wealth
in communities. The average postsecondary education debt continues to
rise and the annual incomes of many
families remain flat. This makes it difficult
for some African American families to
promote post-secondary education
in their families and to save for their
children’s post-secondary experiences.
The identified programs offered three
types of savings accounts: Children’s
Savings Accounts (CSAs), matching
college savings plans, and Individual
Development Accounts (IDAs), each of
which has slightly different qualifying
criteria.
Table 7: Examples of Community Capacity Activities Aimed at Advancing African American Wealth Creation
BARRIER
CHANGE
MITIGATING ECONOMIC EFFORT
EVIDENCE
COMMUNITY CAPACITY
Access to traditional Productively organize own resources to
CDFI (Community Development
financing
support small business development and Financial Institution)
combat poverty
Change the way community development
work is funded
U.S. Department of the Treasury, Washington
DC; Knowledge Sharing, Opportunity
Finance Network, Washington DC; Bank
of America, New York; Hope Enterprise
Corporation, Jackson Mississippi ; Build
Wealth Minnesota; Metropolitan Economic
Development Association, Minneapolis, MN
Contracts with
anchor institutions
and local
governments
Securing contracts with anchor
institutions and local governments
Higher than industry standards in wages
and benefits for employees
Worker-owned businesses or
co-ops
Democracy Collaborative, Takoma Park,
MD; Strong City Baltimore; Build Wealth
Minnesota; Metropolitan Economic
Development Association, Minneapolis, MN
Displacement from
neighborhoods
undergoing
gentrification and
rapid housing and
gentrification
Neighborhood revitalization leads to
integration and wealth-building for all
Evaluating bank lending in
changing neighborhoods
Providing favorable Community
Reinvestment Act (CRA)
consideration for integration
Enterprise Community Partners, Washington,
DC; NYU Wagner and Furman Center;
Federal Reserve Board of Governors,
Washington, DC; MANNA, Inc., Washington,
DC
Too few coalitions
addressing
community needs
Increasing investment dollars from banks
and other anchor institutions
Building coalitions that harness
group’s resources and skills
and increase the power of
underserved areas
Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group,
Pittsburgh, PA; Metropolitan St. Louis Equal
Housing and Opportunity Council, St. Louis,
MO; Poverty and Race Action Council,
Washington, DC
Housing crisis
Development of affordable housing and
neighborhood revitalization
Community land trusts, land
banks, and inclusionary zoning
Community land trusts, land
banks, anchor institutions, and
bank partnerships
My Brother’s Keeper, Baltimore, MD; City of
South Euclid, OH; Neighborhood Housing
Services of Greater Cleveland; Aurora
St. Anthony Neighborhood Development
Corporation; Model Cities of St. Paul, St. Paul,
MN
Limited earned
income
opportunities
for community
nonprofits
More earned income from programs
Developing new revenue streams
Improving community-based
economic development
National Trust for Historic Preservation,
Henderson, NC; Community Wealth Partners,
Washington, DC; Mi Casa, Inc., Washington,
DC; Neighborhood Development Center, St.
Paul, MN
Market-oriented
strategies for
community
development
Pathways to homeownership for lowand moderate- income families or on
behalf of low-and moderate-income
neighborhoods offered along with job
training and housing counseling to locals
GROWTH, an investor-community
collaborative bringing jobs and
capital to neighborhoods and
preserving affordable housing
Radian Guaranty, Philadelphia, PA; NCRC,
Washington, DC; Rock Ventures, LLC, Detroit,
MI; Cook County Land Bank Authority,
Chicago, IL; HOMECO; Build Wealth
Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN; Camphor
Fiscally Fit Center, St. Paul, MN
Maximize economic
impact
Economic activity grew from
approximately $22 million to nearly $48
million over 6 years
Local hiring and contracting
Leasing and ownership
Redeveloping neighborhood
Promote circulation of money in
neighborhood
Build economic capacity
Residents involved in business,
financial, and asset management
Market Creek Plaza, San Diego, CA
Neighborhood
Revitalization
$30 million multi-tenant office and retail
center
A hub for African American heritage and
culture
Identifying, recruiting, and retaining
businesses that serve the needs of a
diverse community
A “whole-system approach,” giving
consideration to issues beyond economic
development such as education,
transportation, safety, children and
families, and issues around health
Enforcing equal employment opportunity
laws; leverage federal legislation such as
the affordable care act to engage anchor
institutions
Proposed Anchor Institution,
Insight News, Minneapolis, MN; Five Points
Spring 2018 (Thor at Plymouth and Business District, Denver, CO
Penn Avenues, North Minneapolis)
Funding from a Housing and
Urban Development grant to the
Colorado Department of Local
Affairs and Sustainable Main
Streets Initiative
Ongoing campaigns to fund
workforce development and
strategies to foster strategic
alliances
21
Laborers International Union of North
American, Newark, NJ; NCRC, Washington,
DC; Central Baptist CDC, Wilmington, DE;
NCRC, Chicago, IL
Table 8: Examples of Homeownership Activities Aimed at Advancing African American Wealth Creation
BARRIER
CHANGE
MITIGATING ECONOMIC EFFORT
EVIDENCE
Improved financial health;
decreased foreclosures; increased
number of sustainable mortgages
Financial capability services and
coaching; effective modification
of mortgages to prevent
foreclosures
U.S. Department of Housing and
Urban Development, Office of Housing
Counseling; National Consumer Law
Center, Washington, DC; Fannie Mae,
Washington, DC; Homeownership
Preservation Office, U.S. Department of
the Treasury, Washington, DC; Ocwen
Financial; HOMECO; Build Wealth
Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
Creative approaches to
homeownership (lease to
purchase, deed-restricted housing,
manufactured housing co-ops)
Community organizations
implementing solutions
Corporation, Washington, DC; Community
Asset Preservation Corporation, New
Brunswick, NJ; Union Miles Development
Corporation, Cleveland, OH; Grounded
Solutions Network, Portland, OR; The
Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, Seattle,
WA; HOMECO, Minneapolis, MN; Aurora
St. Anthony Neighborhood Development
Corporation; Model Cities of St. Paul, St.
Paul, MN
Access to better housing
Working closely with the Federal
Home Loan Bank of Chicago
Illinois Service Federal, Chicago, IL
Better response of banks to
homeownership and rental
housing needs
Affordable rentals
Rental tax credits
Homeless Prevention Program,
Washington, DC; DHS; National Low
Income Housing Coalition, Washington,
DC; Housing and Financial Empowerment,
Chicago Urban League, Chicago, IL
HOMEOWNERSHIP
Disparities in
homeownership
Access to mortgage loans
Helping local communities grow
and prosper
Pricing and availability of
housing
Elimination of major
homeownership barriers
22
Table 9: Examples of Business Development Activities Aimed at Advancing African American Wealth Creation
BARRIER
CHANGE
MITIGATING ECONOMIC EFFORT
EVIDENCE
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Entrepreneurial barriers
Business outcomes
Closure rates
Profits
Employment Sales
Owners education, human
capital, and access to
financial capital
Fairlie and Robb
Fostering a small
business climate and
improving access to
capital
Programs that support the success of
small businesses such as government
contracting goals, micro-lending and
crowdfunding
Demand for small business
goods and services and
access to capital
Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic
Development, Washington, DC; National
Development Council, Washington, DC; Small
Business Teaming Center, NCRC, Washington,
DC; District of Columbia Department of Small
and Local Business Development, Washington,
DC; Metropolitan Economic Development
Association; Northside Economic Opportunities
Network, Minneapolis, MN
Inadequate data to
understand small
business credit markets
and unmet needs
Closing gaps in lending data that make
it difficult to determine whether credit
needs for small businesses are being
met
Improved publicly available
small business loan data as
mandated by Dodd-Frank
VEDC, Los Angeles, CA; The Aspen Institute,
Washington, DC; Federal Reserve Bank of
Atlanta, Atlanta, GA
Increasing
entrepreneurship rates
of minority and women
entrepreneurs
African Americans likely to move into
higher income groups
Benefits to U.S. society because of job
creation
Access to capital, business
networks, skill development
Michael S. Barr; Metropolitan Economic
Development Association; Northside Economic
Opportunities Network, Minneapolis, MN
Limited participation in
high-tech incubators
and accelerators
More inclusive of African American hightech entrepreneurs
Recruitment challenges addressed
Biases in application and selection
processes addressed
Biases in program design and culture
addressed
Intentionally designing
programs for African
American entrepreneurs
Resources such as
mentoring, business
education, networking, free
or subsidized office space,
and access to capital
Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC),
Roxbury, MA
Market development
Expand Pike Place Market to
accommodate 127 farmers, 220 small
businesses, 250 artisans, and 40
affordable housing units for seniors, and
a neighborhood social services center
with expanded services
Increase opportunities for
farm and food retailing
Support small and marginal
businesses
Services for people with
limited incomes
Pike Place MarketFront, Seattle, WA
Small business lending
Increased small business formation and
growth
Improved loan underwriting
practices
Better bank responsiveness
to community needs
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco;
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta; BBVA
Compass, Houston, TX
Small businesses
struggle to find/secure
financing
New lending climate, lightly regulated
non-banking lending institutions (online,
local nonprofits, credit unions, state and
local government)
Finding/securing financing
New Initiatives, AEO, Washington, DC; Accion
Chicago, IL
23
Table 10: Examples of Employment Activities Aimed at Advancing African American Wealth Creation
BARRIER
CHANGE
MITIGATING ECONOMIC EFFORT
EVIDENCE
Income inequality
Income equity
Asset building
Tax fairness
Equitable criminal justice
policies
Increased college
graduation rates
Center for Global Policy Solutions;
Financial Regulation Studies; Cato
Institute; Wealth-Building initiative;
National Council of La Raza; NCRC,
Washington DC
Unemployment
Employment opportunities/wealth building
Connecting 2,000 African American men to
meaningful, sustainable, living- wage employment
Job creation
Hire locally (neighborhood)
Workforce training
Community-wealth.org; Urban League
of Atlanta Information Technology
program; North@Work, Minneapolis,
MN
EMPLOYMENT
Software, customer service, medical office procedures
training, extensive job search support/job hunting
Internet age, 6-week healthcare internship
ABLE Medical Office Skills Training,
Boston MA; T-Per Scholas, South
Bronx, NY
Social enterprise to increase opportunities for
members to be part of tech economy
Serve as blueprint to launch StartUp Boxes in other
low-income communities nationwide
Address economics and environment through green
job training, community greening programs, and green
roofing social enterprise
StartUp Box NY; Sustainable South
Bronx, NY
Living-wage jobs (median household income below
$18,500)
Three worker-owned businesses: an energy efficiency
business, an indoor produce farm, and a laundry
cooperative
Homeownership; harnessing the purchasing power of
anchor institutions
Job creation
Hire locally (neighborhood)
Workforce training
Business development/
ownership
Evergreen Cooperatives, Cleveland,
OH
Table 11: Examples of Health and Wellness Activities Aimed at Advancing African American Wealth Creation
BARRIER
CHANGE
MITIGATING ECONOMIC EFFORT
EVIDENCE
HEALTH AND WELLNESS
Community violence
Restorative practices such as
treatment, reentry, and youth support
programs build neighborhood stability
Restorative practices such as treatment,
reentry, and youth support programs shift
resources from the criminal justice system,
making them available for community
development initiatives that can address
the structural causes of violence
Using Community Reinvestment Act to
address systemic causes of violence
(supporting social services for youth and
workforce development)
Voice Buffalo, Buffalo, NY; Key
Bridge Foundation, Largo, MD;
Restorative Strategies, Chicago, IL
Urban violence
Decline in juvenile violence (U.S. cities)
African American entrepreneurship
Parker, Karen F.
Health disparities
Reducing health disparities through
community development
Innovative policies/practices that
integrate housing, health, and community
development through organizing and
strategic partnerships
East Bay Asian Local Development
Corporation, Oakland, CA; The
Neighborhood Developers,
Chelsea, MA; Isles, Inc., Trenton,
NJ; American Public Health
Association, Washington, DC
24
Table 12: Examples of Banking and Financial Services Activities Aimed at Advancing African American Wealth Creation
BARRIER
CHANGE
MITIGATING ECONOMIC EFFORT
EVIDENCE
Influence bank’s community
investments
Advance age-friendly banking
Enhanced financial services products
Use Community Reinvestment Act to
increase reinvestment in community
National Community Reinvestment
Coalition (NCRC), Washington, DC;
Illinois Service Federal, Chicago, IL
Fair lending
A new aggressive approach to
addressing noncompliance and
undoing the historical patterns of
segregation in urban, rural, and
suburban housing markets
Improved quality
AFFH-Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing
rule (“taking meaningful actions, in addition
to combating discrimination, that overcome
patterns of segregation and foster inclusive
communities free from barriers that restrict
access to opportunity based on protected
characteristics)
Relman, Dane & Colfax PLLC,
Washington, DC; Housing and Civil
Enforcement, U.S. Department of
Justice; Texas Appleseed, Austin,
TX; U.S. Department of Housing and
Urban Development, Washington,
DC
Create a fair financial marketplace
Making total loans of less than $1 million to
$6 million over 7 years
Savings and credit building opportunities
Financial education classes
Lending circles (zero-interest loans
for citizen application fees, deferred
application fees, and security deposits)
Mission Asset Fund, San Francisco,
CA
Personal experiences
and challenges facing
youth
Support program providing
development and social growth
Investment club creating personal/group
wealth
Community Foundation supporting
community organizations
Poise Foundation, Pittsburgh, PA
Responsible banking
Using Responsible Banking
Ordinances to spur investment in lowand moderate-income communities
and communities of color
Passing and implementing Responsible
Banking Laws
NCRC, Washington, DC
BANKING/FINANCIAL
Lack of banks
or strong bank
relationships in
community
Table 13: Examples of Environmental Programming and Services Aimed at Advancing African American Wealth Creation
BARRIER
CHANGE
MITIGATING ECONOMIC EFFORT
EVIDENCE
Environmental justice
Provides additional tools for
analyzing environmental hazards
and environmental justice
Pairing environmental and
economic justice work
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Sustainable
Community Development Group; Environmental
Justice and Community Partnership Program Sierra
Club; Water Alliance, Washington, DC
Heavy environmental
burden
Increased recreational space,
expanded waterfront access,
improved transportation safety
Green jobs training, community Sustainable South Bronx, Bronx, NY;
greening programs, and social movementforblacklives.com
enterprise
ENVIRONMENT
25
Table 14: Examples of Community Development Activities Aimed at Advancing African American Wealth Creation
BARRIER
CHANGE
MITIGATING ECONOMIC EFFORT
EVIDENCE
Leveraged capital
Low interest rate loans to nonprofits
Purchasing locally
Pay local vendors in advance/working capital
Redirected purchasing to local businesses
Affordable housing loan fund (homeownership,
community stabilization)
Local private sector development
Incubating new businesses development
Incubating nonprofit enterprise development
Community Venture Capital (nonprofits, entrepreneurs,
employee-owned firms)
Foundations catalyzing anchor institution programs
Outcomes on non-performing loans and real estate
owned properties
Community-wealth.org; National
Community Stabilization Trust,
Washington, DC; Empire Justice
Center, Rochester, NY; Hogar
Hispano, Inc., Phoenix, AZ;
Africatown, Seattle, WA
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
Community Divestment
Community investment/
substantial improvements
Table 15: Examples of Anti-Predatory Behavior Activities Aimed at Advancing African American Wealth Creation
BARRIER
CHANGE
MITIGATING ECONOMIC EFFORT
EVIDENCE
PREDATORY BEHAVIOR
Debt Collection and
Wealth Diminishment
Fewer exploitative practices Limiting loans from predatory lenders
and policies regarding debt Policy solutions (debt collection)
collection
New Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau rules to address the worst abuses
of payday lending
ProPublica, New York; Center for Responsible
Lending, Washington, DC; New Economy
Project, New York; California Reinvestment
Coalition, San Francisco, CA; New Jersey
Citizen Action, Newark, NJ
Table 16: Examples of Savings Activities Aimed at Advancing African American Wealth Creation
BARRIER
CHANGE
MITIGATING ECONOMIC EFFORT
EVIDENCE
Children born to
families with limited
incomes to invest
Potential to expand educational and economic opportunity
for low- and moderate- income families
Low- and moderate- income children with college savings of
$500 or less are 3 times more likely to enroll in college and
4 times more likely to graduate
Family ownership of assets give children a transformative
sense of possibility and hope for the future
Children’s Savings
Accounts (CSA)
Corporation for Enterprise
Development (CFED),
Washington, DC
Rising cost of college
Matching dollar to dollar college savings accounts support
the college dreams of low-income children
Matching college savings
fund
Corporation for Enterprise
Development (CFED),
Washington, DC; Minnesota
College Savings Plan, Others
Savings accounts for
people with limited
incomes (typically for
individuals earning
200% or less of the
Federal Poverty Income
level)
Matching dollar to dollar savings (can be up to $8 to one
match)
Savings and match money can be used to buy a house, pay
for education or job training, or to start a small business
Learn about budgeting, saving, banking and more, one-onone counseling and other training
Individual Development
Account (IDA)
Corporation for Enterprise
Development (CFED),
Washington, DC; Minnesota
College Savings Plan, Others
SAVINGS ACCOUNTS
26
Multi-faceted
Collaborations for
Collective Impact
There is evidence that the multi-faceted
collaborations discussed above are
working and that efforts to build wealth
in African American communities can
be successful. A few multi-faceted
collaborations have long histories
of success in the African American
community. One is the Illinois Service
Federal (ISF), a black-owned and
operated bank that opened in 1934 by
working closely with the Federal Home
Loan Bank of Chicago. ISF opened a
one-room office on 70 East 47th Street
in Chicago “with deposits of $7,000.
The first few depositors had balances
ranging from $4.00 to $50.00.” The ISF
has “continued to grow and prosper.” In
the Fall of 2000, it “opened a new, stateof-the-art facility at 8700 S. King Drive.
In combination with the main branch at
4619 S. King Drive the association today
serves over 14,000 customers and has
assets of more than $133 million dollars.”41
Over the past decade, the integrated
collaborative approaches taken by
these initiatives have been tried around
the country to address highly complex
barriers to self-sufficiency and provide
resources and guidance to help people
exit poverty and achieve new safety
and stability. These include programs
in childcare, financial counseling, legal
support, education, and employment.42
The individual and family success models
adopted by these initiatives include
providing safe and stable community
resources and various categories of
community economic development
by providing basic needs programs or
services such as the following:
•
•
•
•
•
Energy assistance/home repair
Affordable housing/eviction prevention
Co-occurring disorders treatment
Transportation assistance
Financial literacy programming
• Mentoring
• Youth and adult college enrollment
assistance
• Family development services
• Youth education persistence services
• Student loan debt counseling
• Academic support for college and
careers
• DUI (Driving under the influence)
deferred prosecution
• Barrier reduction for college enrollment
• Psychiatric evaluation and treatment
• Training for in-demand jobs
• Credit counseling services
• Small business start-up counseling
• Legal services for veterans
• Career assessment and planning
• Youth leadership development
• Entrepreneurial assistance training
• College exploration and visitation
The multi-faceted collaboration approach
described in this paper is illustrated in
Figure 10. As it shows, the economic
development platform at the center of
this model makes it possible for all of the
stakeholders to participate in a process
of collaborative action. This process,
also known as co-creation, allows
collaborators to come to the platform,
access the same data using the same
tools, and make collective choices in the
face of several different decision paths.
The decisions made and the resulting
actions taken would not have been
possible without the value provided by
the platform. Each collaborator will be
able to track the health of their specific
constituency through interactions
with each other and data gathered
based on key progress indicators; to
understand the relationship between
their contribution to the economic
development benchmark and those of
other collaborators; and to engage in
dialogue, learning, and improvements
to make the overall model clear and
sustainable.
Figure 10: Collaborative Economic
Development Platform
Banking
Savings
Accounts
Addressing
Predatory
Behavior
Business
Development
Community
Capacity
Platform for
Community
Economic
Development
Home
Ownership
Community
Development
And, at a second stage, tools and
resources to “exit poverty are:”
•
•
•
•
Nutritional education for childcare
Student enrichment activities
Student dropout prevention
Youth social and emotional
development
Health &
Wellness
Employment
Environment
27
The research conducted for this paper
suggests that it is important for collaborative
efforts such as those discussed above to
pay attention to all seven types of capital
(natural, cultural, human, social, political,
financial, and built):
• Natural capital: Assets that are integral
to a location, such as natural beauty,
resources, amenities.
• Cultural capital: The dynamics of
people living in a community, such
as traditions, racial and ethnic
characteristics, ways in which creativity,
innovation, and influence emerges and
is nurtured.
• Human capital: Community members’
skills and expertise, their ability to
access outside resources to increase
understanding and identify promising
practices.
• Social capital: Connections among
people and organizations.
• Political capital: Influence of standards,
rules, and regulations and their
enforcement.
• Financial capital: Resources to invest
in community capacity building, to
underwrite business development,
to support civic and social
entrepreneurship, and to accumulate
wealth for future community
development.
• Built capital: The physical infrastructure
that supports the community, such as
telecommunications, industrial parks,
main streets, water and sewer systems,
and roads.
These forms of capital are necessary to
support healthy, sustainable communities
and economic development. Investing
in one of these types of capital can also
help build assets in others.43 Communities
with such anchor institutions as
universities and hospitals in Detroit,
Durham, Los Angeles, San Francisco,
and West Philadelphia, have seen great
progress in wealth creation through the
use of a variety of types of capital and
collaborative strategies. These strategies
include creating local jobs, leveraging
capital, offering low interest rate loans to
nonprofits, and purchasing locally. Others
include the following:
• Paying local vendors in advance to
provide working capital.
• Redirecting purchasing to local
businesses.
• Providing affordable housing loan
funds to promote homeownership and
community stabilization.
• Supporting local private sector
development.
• Incubating new businesses
development.
• Incubating nonprofit enterprise
development.
• Providing community venture capital
to nonprofits, entrepreneurs, and
employee-owned firms.44
28
Folding financial capability services
into other social services can also help
address the central and interrelated
problems families face in achieving
financial security. This previously
mentioned practice of bundling social
services to address the multiple needs
of families is growing among community
practitioners and charitable foundations
across the country. Social service
providers in both the nonprofit and
government sectors have embraced the
idea of coordinating access to multiple
types of services, including financial
capability services, as a way to improve
outcomes and enhance the financial
well-being of their clients. Evidence
from these service providers shows that
embedding various financial capability
strategies can help families access
financial information; connect families to
safe, affordable financial products and
services; build savings and wealth; and
teach families to protect themselves in
the financial marketplace. Innovative
partnerships that leverage resources
such as local, state, federal, and private
grants and traditional bank financing
can also infuse capital into areas where
poverty has persisted for decades.
Progress Builds Hope: Conclusions and
Recommendations
Although significant barriers to widespread economic change in the Twin Cities African
American economy remain, the successes of local and national initiatives offer considerable
potential for improving that economy.
Based on the research conducted for
this paper, multi-faceted, comprehensive,
and place-based initiatives offer the best
overall framework for such interventions.
Much of this progress will depend on
the economic leadership of multiple
agencies that are specifically focused on
the African American economy. As the
economy of African American communities
transitions from an emerging market to
an advanced economy, multifaceted
collaborations among public and private
sectors will need to expand and change
to meet the needs of the population.
Ongoing innovative collaborations
can yield new operating models
and processes to overcome the big
challenges facing these communities.
Shaping the resources necessary
for African American communities to
continue to advance economically in
numbers sufficient to have a visible
impact requires changes in thinking
within the larger society and in African
American communities. It also requires
great financial investment. Significant
economic change will require innovative
leaders who have the capacity to work
effectively together in new ways to have
a collective impact. This paper describes
innovative approaches that are serving as
engines of change in many communities.
These findings make clear that greater
change can happens when two or
more of the identified approaches are
combined.
Based on this research, it seems apparent
that a multifaceted collaboration platform
consisting of tools for exploring and
understanding data and offering multiple
services, resources, and programming
offers the greatest hope for the future.
The paper therefore recommends
that the African American Financial
Capabilities Community of Practice do
the following:
• Seize the future. The AAFCOP has a
once-in-a-generation opportunity to
build a new platform for economic
growth in the Twin Cities African
American community.
29
• Develop a vision of a sustainable
future that can be communicated to
key stakeholders. It should incorporate
the costs and benefits of ecosystem
services and the interdependence of
economic factors.
• Build on the lessons learned from this
research.
• Continue to assess, develop, test,
and learn from alternative economic
development approaches to inform
the start-up stage of the AAFCOP’s
expanded economic development
collaborative.
• Stay on the cutting edge through
ongoing review of the research and
adapting new discoveries that enable
economic innovation.
• Make African American economic
development central to the Twin Cities
agenda and facilitate a local paradigm
shift.
30
Endnotes
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
Neil C. Churchill and Virginia L. Lewis, “The Five Stages of Small
Business Growth,” Harvard Business Review (May 1983).
Thomas C. Frohlich, Michael B. Sauter, and Samuel Stebbins,
“Worst States for Black Americans,” 24/7 Wall Street (September
24, 2016).
“Race and Ethnicity Matter for Economic Success and
Opportunity,” St. Paul, MN: Metropolitan Council, June 2016, pp.
1-2; Also Edward Lotterman, “A Study of Earnings, Education and
Race,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, July 31, 2016
“Race and Ethnicity Matter for Economic Success and
Opportunity,” St. Paul, MN: Metropolitan Council, June 2016, 1-2.
Andy Rathbun, “Study Finds Minorities with Post-Secondary
Credentials Still Make Less Than Whites,” St. Paul Pioneer Press,
July 27, 2016.
The typical threshold is $24,230, annual income for a family of
four. One reason the Metropolitan Council used a higher figure is
that “the median income in the Twin Cities region is relatively high
compared with other metro areas in the U.S.”
Metropolitan Council Choice, “Place and Opportunity: An Equity
Assessment of the Twin Cities Region,” St. Paul, MN: January 2015.
As of January 2015, the Metropolitan Council stopped using the
term Racially Concentrated Areas of Poverty (RCAP), which had
been required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development. It now uses Areas of Concentrated Poverty to refer
to areas in which half or more of their residents are people of
color.
Minnesota State Demographic Center, “The Economic Status
of Minnesotans,” St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Department of
Administration, January 2016.
Andy Mannix, “Minnesota Sends Minorities to Prison At Far Higher
Rates Than Whites,” Minneapolis StarTribune, April 14, 2016.
“Racial Disparities Research Reports,” Minneapolis, MN: Council on
Crime and Justice, 2016.
“ACLU releases data showing racial disparities in low level arrests
in Minneapolis” St. Paul, MN: 2014.
Tim Post, “MN Near Bottom in On-Time Graduation for Students of
Color,” Minnesota Public Radio, Saint Paul, MN, February 19, 2015.
Alejandra Matos, “Minnesota Graduation Rates Flat But More
Minority Students Finishing School,” Minneapolis StarTribune,
February 22, 2016.
“The Racial Gap in High School Graduation Rates in the 50 States,”
Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (Bartonsville, PA: Journal of
Blacks in Higher Education, January 2016).
Minnesota Compass, “High School Graduation,” Saint Paul, MN:
Minnesota Compass, 2015.
Kira Dahlk, “Minority Workers in Minnesota: Today & Tomorrow,”St.
Paul, MN: Minnesota Department of Employment & Economic
Development, 2007.
“Advancing Health Equity in Minnesota: Report to the Legislature,”
St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Department of Health Commissioner’s
Office, February 2014. Also Susan Perry, “Minnesota Has Major
Racial and Ethnic Health Inequities, Report Finds,” Minn Post,
Minneapolis, MN, January 13, 2015; and Lorna Benson and Laura
Yuen, “’Structural Racism’ Blamed for Some of State’s Severe
Health Disparities,” MPR News, St. Paul, MN, January 30, 2014.
U.S. Department of Labor, “The Black Labor Force in the
Recovery”, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor, July 2011.
Center on Women and Public Policy, “Status of Women and Girls in
Minnesota,” Minneapolis, MN: Women’s Foundation of Minnesota,
2014.
“Alternative Measures of Unemployment,” Saint Paul, MN:
Minnesota Employment an Economic Development, September
2016.
Minnesota Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil
Rights, “Unemployment Disparity in Minnesota,” Saint Paul, MN:
Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights,
December 2013.
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
31
Christopher Magan, “Minnesota’s Worsening Racial Disparity: Why
it Matters to Everyone,” Pioneer Press, Saint Paul, MN, April 29,
2016.
“Race and Ethnicity Matter for Economic Success and
Opportunity,” St. Paul, MN: Metropolitan Council, June 2016, pp.
1-2.
“Homeownership Gap,” St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Compass, 2015.
Kim Skobba, “Understanding Homeownership Disparities
Among Racial and Ethnic Groups,” Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota
Homeownership Center, 2013.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development defines
incomes between 51% and 80% of AMI as low, between 31% and
50% AMI as very low, and less than or equal to 30% of AMI as
extremely low. “Statewide Analysis of Gaps in Affordable Rental
Housing,” St. Paul, MN, Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, 2015.
Samuel Myers. Jr., Won Fy Lee, and Jermaine Toney, “Responsible
Banking in the Twin Cities: Analysis of Banking Practices Based
on 2008 - 2013 HMDA & CRA Data,” Minneapolis, MN: University
of Minnesota, Roy Wilkins Center for Human Relations & Social
Justice, August 19, 2015.
“Homelessness in Minnesota: Findings From the 2012 Statewide
Homeless Study,” St. Paul, MN: Wilder Research Center, 2013.
Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, Chuck Collins, Josh Hoxie, and
Emanuel Nieves, “The Ever Growing Gap,” Washington, DC: CFED,
Racial Wealth Divide Initiative, and Institute for Policy Studies,
2016.
Rachel Vilsack, “Minority-Owned Firms in Minnesota,” St. Paul, MN:
Minnesota Employment and Economic Development, December
2015.
Gary L. Cunningham, “Concept Paper: Adapting the Economic
Development Ecosystem to serve Minority Entrepreneurs,”
Minneapolis, MN: Meda, 2015.
Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, Chuck Collins, Josh Hoxie, and
Emanuel Nieves, “The Ever Growing Gap,” Washington, DC: CFED,
Racial Wealth Divide Initiative, and Institute for Policy Studies,
2016.
Gary L. Cunningham, “Concept Paper: Adapting the Economic
Development Ecosystem to serve Minority Entrepreneurs,”
Minneapolis, MN: Meda, 2015.
“Disrupting Poverty.” Seattle, WA: Paul G. Allen Family Foundation,
March 2014.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Valeria Perez-Ferreiro and Heather McCulloch, “Community-led
Asset Building Innovation: Promising Practices of Immigrants and
Communities of Color in Urban Areas,” St. Paul, MN: Northwest
Area Foundation, 2009.
“The Village at Market Creek: Social Economic Impact Report,” San
Diego, CA: Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation, 2010.
“Annual Report: Building Better,” San Francisco, CA: Mission Asset
Fund, 2015.
Marjorie Kelly, Violeta Duncan, and Steve Dubb, “Strategies
for Financing the Inclusive Economy,” Washington, DC: The
Democracy Collaborative, 2016.
Illinois Service Federal, “Thirteen African-American Men, And Their
Many Supporters, Had A Dream to Establish A Savings and Loan
Association Sensitive to the Needs of Black Residents of Chicago.
Chicago: August 2016, 1-2.
Metropolitan Development Council, “Driving Social & Economic
Impact,” Tacoma, WA: MDC, 2016.
Iowa State University, “Community Capitals,” Department of
Sociology, 2008: 1-3.
Community-Wealth.Org, “Anchor Institutions,” Democracy
Collaborative, July 2016: 1-3.
TWIN CITIES
African American Financial Capabilities Community of Practice
Black Paper Thematic Bibliography
This thematic bibliography organizes the 108 sources consulted for the
AAFCCOP Black Paper into four categories: Programs, Models, local
Research and Statistics, and general Research and Statistics. It includes
publications that have examined African American/Black economic
development from the perspectives of innovators and change agents.
The organization of the bibliography offers insights into the tools and
resources that appeared in the literature and in that respect, provides
support for future actions and research into African American/Black
economic development. The sources pose a more optimistic view
of African American/Black economic development than is typically
presented and recommend using a variety of actions that make a
difference in the lives and communities of African Americans/Blacks.
Barnhart, Amy. “Revisit Your Community Unique Assets: Connecting
Asset-Based Economic Development to Community Transformation
Strategies,” Main Street America. www.preservationnation.org/
main-street/main-street-news/story-of-the-week/2016/revisit-yourcommunitys.html#.V7JAH2W7101
Barr, Michael. “Minority and Women Entrepreneurs: Building Capital,
Networks, and Skills,” Discussion Paper, March 2015. The Hamilton
Project. http://www.hamiltonproject.org/assets/legacy/files/downloads_
and_links/minority_women_entrepreneurs_building_skills_barr_final.
pdf
Beekman, Daniel. “Majora Carter and partners plan to open tech startup
incubator and education center in Hunts Point, Bronx,” New York Daily
News, June, 2012. http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bronx/majoracarter-partners-plan-open-tech-startup-incubator-education-centerhunts-point-bronx-article-1.1097947
Burayidi, Michael A. “Urban Planning in a Multicultural Society,” 2005.
Churchill, Neil C. and Virginia Lewis. “The Five Stages of Small Business
Growth,” Harvard Business Review, May 1983. https://hbr.org/1983/05/
the-five-stages-of-small-business-growth
Cohen, Bryan. “Africatown and affordability: City Hall wants Central
District’s Liberty Bank Building to be a model development,” Capitol Hill
Seattle Blog, February, 2016.
http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2016/02/seattle-city-hall-wants-centraldistricts-liberty-bank-building-to-be-a-model-development-project/
Cunningham, Gary. “Adapting the Economic Development Ecosystem to
Serve Minority Entrepreneurs.” Minneapolis: Meda, October 2015.
Fitzgerald, Ateleson. “Majora Carter and The Startup Box Enterprise,”
The Harlem Times.
http://theharlemtimes.com/business/majora-carter-startup-boxenterprise-digital-renaissance-south-bronx
Greenstone, Michael and Adam Looney. “Building America’s Job skills
with Effective Workforce Programs…” The Hamilton Project. November,
2011.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/11_training_
greenstone_looney.pdf
Hirsi, Ibrahim. “One Way to Boost Minority Incomes and Employment:
Support Entrepreneurs of Color.” MinnPost, October, 2016.
Kelly, Marjorie and Violeta Duncan, Steve Dubb. “Strategies for
Financing the Inclusive Economy,” The Democracy Collaborative, Sept
2016.
Keshavarz, Mahroo. “Africatown initiative receives Seattle Human Rights
Award,” The Seattle Globalist, December, 2015.
http://www.seattleglobalist.com/2015/12/09/africatown-innovationcenter-receives-seattle-human-rights-award/45232
Nembhard, Jessica Gordon Ph.D. “Cooperative Ownership in the
Struggle for African American Economic Empowerment,” University of
Maryland, College Park, September, 2004.
“Access to Capital: Growing Local Businesses, Financing Entrepreneurs,
Building Strong economies.” California financial Opportunities
Roundtable, August 2012. http://community-wealth.org/sites/clone.
community-wealth.org/files/downloads/tool-access-capital-CA.pdf
“A Briefing on promising workforce and job creation models,” Nexus
Community Partners. October, 2015.
http://nexuscp.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Briefing-on-PromisingWorkforce-and-Job-Creation-Models.pdf
“Community Capitals,” Department of Sociology, Iowa State University.
“Creating Inclusive High-Tech Incubators and Accelerators: Strategies to
Increase Participation Rates of Women and Minority Entrepreneurs,” JP
Morgan Chase & Company, ICIC, May 2016. http://icic.org/wp-content/
uploads/2016/05/ICIC_JPMC_Incubators_post.pdf?af674c
“Eliminating Health Disparities Initiative: Report to the Legislature,”
Minnesota Department of Health. January 2009.
PROGRAMS
Austin, Algernon. “A jobs-centered approach to African American
community development,” Economic Policy Institute. December, 2011
http://www.epi.org/publication/bp328-african-american-unemployment/
“Access to Capital,” Minority Business Development Agency. http://www.
mbda.gov/main/access-capital
“Approach” North@Work, Northside Funders Group. http://
northsidefunders.org/approach/northwork/
“Creating a Just Economy,” 2016 NCRC Annual Conference, March
2016. http://www.ncrc.org/conference/201-schedule-of-events/
“Disrupting Poverty: Coming Together to Build Financial Security for
Individuals and Communities,” The Paul G Allen Family Foundation,
March 2014. www.pgafamilyfoundation.org
“Driving Social and Economic Impact,” MDC-HOPE, Metropolitan
Development Council, Tacoma, WA. www.mdc-hope.org
“History. . . A Promised Kept,” Poise foundation. http://www.
poisefoundation.org/about-us/history.html
“History: Illinois Service Federal. Thirteen African American men…Black
residents of Chicago.” Illinois Service Federal Bank https://www.isfbank.
com
“Member Profile: Center for Community Self-Help Helps Communities
Generate Wealth.” Community Power Network.”
“Our Mission: Addressing economic and environmental issues in the
South Bronx – and throughout New York City” Sustainable South Bronx.
http://www.ssbx.org/our-mission/
“Per Scholas Job Training Program” Collation for Evidence-Based Policy.
March, 2011.
http://evidencebasedprograms.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/PerScholas-Job-Training-Program.pdf
“Priorities,” Itasca Project. 2016. https://www.theitascaproject.com/
priorities.html
“Sustainability at PNNL- Economic Prosperity.” Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory http://sustainable.pnnl.gov/report2011/economic_
prosperity.stm
“Training Programs” Operation A.B.L.E. of Greater Boston.
http://www.operationable.net/training_programs.html
Evergreen Cooperatives. http://www.evgoh.com/
Roberts Enterprise Development Fund. http:/www.redf.org
StartUp Box http://www.sbsq.org/about.html
Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership. http://www.wrtp.org/
Yearup. http:/www.yearup.org
MODELS
Abello, Oscar Perry. “These Neighbors Got Tired of Waiting for
Transitional Developers.” NExtcity.org/daily/entry/cooperativecommercial-real-estate-development-minneapolis. Aug 2016.
Baker, Mallen. “Definitions of Corporate Social Responsibility-What is
CSR?” Mallen Baker’s Respectful Business Blog, February 2004.
32
“Opportunity Neighborhoods for Regional Prosperity Outline,”
Minneapolis: Northside Funders Group, 2015.
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African American Financial Capabilities Community of Practice
c/o African American Leadership Forum
222 So. 9th Street, Suite 1600
Minneapolis, MN 55402
Phone: 612-532-3694
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.aalftc.org