‘It works.’ How a little money spurred growth in these small KC Black owned businesses
When Omari Tatum won a $25,000 grant last month, he was able to immediately purchase new equipment and bolster the workforce of his Black Hawk Security and Neighborhood Watch.
It’s just the kind of boost that the local nonprofit GIFT had in mind as it got going last year. GIFT, which stands for Generating Income for Tomorrow, aims to build Black wealth by growing minority-owned businesses — which all too often struggle to access capital.
The organization offers grants to burgeoning businesses that show potential but may lack funding. So far it’s given $227,000 in grants to 14 Black-owned businesses. The sum is relatively modest, but those funds have already made a huge difference, allowing local companies to hire new employees, purchase new equipment and expand into new spaces.
“For somebody to buy into your dream or buy into your idea, it’s remarkable,” said Tatum. “It’s unimaginable, really.”
The unarmed and armed guards at his Black Hawk Security and Neighborhood Watch patrol homeowners associations and provide security to corporations and private events. Tatum, 21, was drawn to the industry after considering a career in law enforcement.
While security guards deal with similar issues as police, Tatum said the company tries to be proactive, working out problems before they escalate. That might be talking with neighbors about a noise complaint or responding to someone loitering outside a business.
“We can help deter and lower crime rates,” said Tatum, who also interns in the office of Kansas City Councilman Brandon Ellington. “We don’t want to give people to KCPD. We want to be a one-stop to have a conversation, listen to them and let them go on with their day.”
The security firm was among the first businesses to benefit from GIFT, which gave cash to Black-owned restaurants, a home remodeling company, an urban farm, a comic book creator and a holistic healer.
With less than a year of giving under his belt, executive director Brandon Calloway said the experience has made him more skeptical about the current small business supports in place in Kansas City.
That’s because many organizations that talk about supporting minority-owned businesses often focus on providing coaching and technical support rather than outright financial support like GIFT does.
Calloway frequently hears the old “if you teach a man to fish adage” when it comes to supporting disadvantaged businesses.
“What people always like to say to me is that, oh, we’ve got to make sure that we teach people, that we give them wraparound services and technical assistance,” he said. “It’s like oh money is good, but. There’s always a but.”
But GIFT, which also provides a year of business mentoring, has highlighted the unparalleled power of giving money directly to businesses.
“What if you teach a man to fish but you don’t give him a fishing pole?” Calloway said. “What if you give him the fishing pole but don’t teach him to fish? He might figure it out. That money is the fishing pole.”
Though Calloway has become more skeptical over recent months, he’s also become more optimistic. Because he’s seen just how much even a small amount of money can do for a small operation.
“It made me double down,” he said. “I’m ready to go back to work and raise more money because it works. It’s helping people.”
Making ‘big impacts without permission’
The challenge that GIFT seeks to address — the racial wealth gap — is massively complex and deeply rooted in American society.
In Kansas City and across the country, Black residents were redlined out of desirable neighborhoods, handicapping the ability to build wealth through homeownership. Banking discrimination has made it difficult for Black business owners to access traditional capital and lending markets that fuel the creation of new businesses.
“And that has kind of a ripple effect, said Dell Gines, the senior community development adviser for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. “You have a lot of minority borrowers, Black borrowers who don’t even go apply for the loan because they’re discouraged that they aren’t going to get it.”
That history played out again during the coronavirus pandemic, as Black business owners struggled to access federal relief funds.
The problem is so entrenched that it requires systemic solutions, Gines said. And an organization like Calloway’s cannot tackle underlying factors like lower homeownership rates, discrimination in the labor market and inequity in banking.
“He’s an important player, and I want to see more of them,” Gines said. “But to truly address the challenges, it has to be done in tandem with addressing some of the structural barriers in the lending market.”
Gines noted that both the problem and the solution GIFT proposes are deeply rooted in American history. Without the backing of traditional banks, Black Americans have long relied on pooling communal funds to support each other and their businesses.
Black Wall Street in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was regarded as one of the strongest Black communities in the nation before integration. There, Black investors acted as unofficial banks, providing loans and trades with local businesses.
In essence, a few people organized the power of the crowd, in the same way crowdfunding platforms online raise money today.
“I think that’s symbolically very, very important,” Gines said. “What Brandon is really doing has a legacy in diverse communities where historical discrimination has blocked them out of that traditional access to capital.”
GIFT got its start as a Facebook group with 15,000 members. The cofounders posited that if every member gave as little as $10 a month, they could raise tens of thousands of dollars to build up Black businesses in Kansas City’s urban core on their own.
The group has since received some corporate donations and support from nonprofits, including a $100,000 grant from Kansas City’s Hadley Project, which invests in nonprofits led by people of color. But the majority of the $435,000 raised so far has come from individual donors.
“We are limited by community support which means we are limitless,” Calloway said. “We are really showing that we can make huge waves, make really big impacts without permission, without being endorsed by the biggest community players.”
‘If they only had the money’
A Kansas City native, Elaina Paige Thomas traveled the world as a professional dancer, performing with such stars as Beyoncé.
When she came back home seven years ago, though, she realized there were few resources for those working in the performing arts. Managers and agents are generally in coastal hubs or bigger cities like Chicago.
“I’m like, gosh, I have to leave this city to get all that. Why not bring it back to my hometown?” she said.
So she did, creating The Next Paige Agency, which works with actors and dancers. The company works to help budding artists break into the industry and manages careers of those already in it. And by basing it here, it can foster creative careers without the need to relocate.
“This is bigger than me. This is a purpose,” she said. “There’s so much talent that comes from Kansas City.”
The agency is currently without a permanent space, using a rented church space in South Kansas City. But this month’s $50,000 grant from GIFT — the organization’s largest yet — will allow Thomas to rent a permanent space on Troost Avenue.
“If it wasn’t for the GIFT grant, I literally did not have the finances to make this dream a reality,” she said. “I’m so humbled and grateful.”
Thomas works a separate full-time job and hopes to one day make her talent agency her solo act. Working for herself would mean more than just paying the bills.
“We don’t necessarily come from generational wealth,” she said. “So I think that even with The Next Paige, I look at it as a legacy piece for me and my family.”
Unlike business loans or investments, GIFT grants come with very few strings.
“I thought it was kind of too good to be true,” said Tony Hatcher, owner of professional moving company Haul Pros.
His company had three trucks running local and long-distance moves last year. But all were put out of service from mechanical problems.
So a $25,000 grant in January from GIFT couldn’t have come at a better time. It allowed Haul Pros to get a new truck and keep the business going.
Though he’s under no obligation, Hatcher said he hopes to grow his business enough to be able to invest back into the organization that invested in him.
“There are so many great African Americans I know that have great ideas,” he said. “If they had the funding, they could be big. If they only had the money.”
This story was originally published April 26, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
