Black Entrepreneurs in Mobile: Ready to Take Off with RUNWAY?
Credit: Megan Totah Design
RUNWAY, a justice and equity-centered financial innovation firm with a mission to advance resiliency for Black businesses, is coming to Mobile as part of ROOTED, our 10-year initiative to invest in Southern Black entrepreneurship, creativity, and innovation.
We are kicking things off in Alabama, the home state of RUNWAY founder Jessica Norwood, to learn about the unique needs of local artists and entrepreneurs and understand how to best serve the community. Our work is focused on building community wealth by providing early-stage “friends and family” style funding and holistic business support for Black entrepreneurs. But, it’s about more than just giving money to Black businesses.
It’s about giving entrepreneurs a runway for creating a strong foundation for long-term economic growth and success in the community.
RUNWAY was born out of a question Norwood had been ruminating over following Hurricane Katrina and its impact on the Gulf Coast.
In the aftermath, the racialized economic disparities became tragically clear. As she was reflecting on what it takes for people to overcome disasters, the latest data about America’s racial wealth gap began to circulate. This data painted the economic disparities in real numbers, revealing how Black Americans only held a fraction of the wealth that white Americans did. A congressional report titled The Economic State of Black America in 2020 shows that the net worth of a typical white family ($171,000) is nearly ten times greater than that of a Black family ($17,150).
How are Black communities supposed to overcome disasters with such disparate resources?
The inequities are systemic, and they disproportionately place Black communities at a severe economic disadvantage. It’s like a rigged game that can never be won–unless the rules are changed.
Changing the game is what RUNWAY is all about.
We seek to dismantle the systemic barriers that block Black communities from building wealth and advance equity-centered practices within financial and philanthropic institutions.
We model our lending practices after “friends and family” funding–something that Black entrepreneurs have less access to due to the staggering racial wealth gap. The loan terms are patient and affordable, and a trust and character-based underwriting process is used instead of traditional assessments of “risk” to determine loan qualifications. Investors, banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions are invited to partner with RUNWAY, but only after they are reviewed for values-alignment.
RUNWAY’s values and ways of operating are thoroughly outlined in our Funder Manifesto, which calls for funders to be in “right relationship” when partnering with the organization–meaning they understand that funding Black-led social enterprises must come from a place of faith, trust, and equity in order to move capital in restorative ways and truly transform a fractured impact-investing sector.
Since launching in Oakland, California in 2018
RUNWAY has expanded to open an east coast hub in Boston and has more than doubled the size of our initial investment portfolio.
In addition to expanding the efforts into the South, we’re also gearing up to launch in Chicago in collaboration with Uptima, a national cooperative business accelerator program with which we are in deep partnership. 100% of the businesses RUNWAY has supported with advising and capital since 2018 are Black-owned, with roughly 70% being Black woman-owned. As one entrepreneur in the RUNWAY community has shared: “I feel politically aligned with RUNWAY. A lot of times as an entrepreneur, you feel like you have to put aside your Blackness. But my Blackness is important to me. And it’s important to RUNWAY too.”
RUNWAY’s relationship with the entrepreneurs and creatives WE support goes beyond capital.
In 2020 at the height of the pandemic, we connected with our entrepreneur community to listen to their needs and holistically understand how we could be of service. At a time when Black-owned small businesses across the nation were disproportionately experiencing financial hardships due to closures and a lack of income and safety net, it became clear that the most impactful support would come in the form of universal basic income.
RUNWAY responded quickly to pilot a rapid emergency fund to provide a no-strings-attached 6-month Universal Basic Income (UBI). This was provided as an up-front direct cash infusion of $2,000, with monthly stipends of $1,000 and free ongoing business and marketing consultancy services. The pilot allowed us to hypothesize whether this type of supplemental income could be curative for the racial wealth gap.
As a major port city and one of the largest cities on the Gulf Coast, Mobile’s economy is organized around a unique mix of industry specializations
Including aerospace, shipbuilding/maritime, logistics, and manufacturing. Over the last 35 years, Mobile has experienced an economic transformation driven by multiple initiatives supporting job expansion in these sectors. Mobile’s infrastructure and talent has made it an attractive location for global companies and local businesses alike due to its business-friendly policies and low costs.
However, there is a developing need to diversify the economy and promote growth and entrepreneurship in other areas such as technology, tourism and hospitality, health and wellness, and the arts.
Local entrepreneurs in Mobile and other regions in the South can learn more about RUNWAY and their 10-year initiative to invest in Southern innovation and creativity.
