Read our Policy Brief on the CHIPS and Science Act Read our Forging Fairness Report Read our St. Louis Convening Report Out Read our SSBCI Policy Brief Read our Black Paper on Inclusive Capital for Manufacturers Read our Executive Summary of the Black Paper Read our Succession Planning Policy Report

Research tells us that entrepreneurs of color are kept at length from capital that could help them launch or sustain businesses. Our State of Urban Manufacturing report highlighted how this disparity reaches across sectors: manufacturers of color told us they were less likely to get funding from traditional financial institutions or their own personal networks. In Detroit, for example, our research found that only a fraction of the African-American manufacturers we surveyed utilized seven out of eight forms of capital featured in the survey. Their white peers, on the other hand, were over-represented in each of the eight categories.

This matters because manufacturing businesses, in particular, are capital-intensive. They need costly assets like industrial space and fabrication equipment. These businesses are the principal drivers of innovation, research and development, and green technology in the United States; if we’re not giving nascent entrepreneurs what they need to enter the manufacturing sector, we risk stunting the potential of urban production economies. 

Over the next year, the Urban Manufacturing Alliance will be working with a cohort of innovative capital access providers to strengthen their programs and broaden their expertise on mission-driven capital on our Pathways to Patient Capital Project.

UMA sees the exciting beginnings of a solution to capital access gaps for manufacturing businesses and communities of color through multi-stakeholder approaches to capital deployment that can be developed and supported through a peer-learning, or cohort model. 

UMA will work closely with a practitioner cohort to build on existing programs and create new pathways to capital access by uniting a range of capital providers—such as CDFIs, public agencies, financial institutions, educational institutions, impact investors, and place-based philanthropies—that are working to address the capital needs of small-scale manufacturers, with a racial equity lens. 

We will also convene a group of policymakers, investors, and other thought-leaders in the capital access space through a Capital Access Advisory Board (CAAB). These leaders may not serve manufacturing-related businesses directly, but their expertise on capital needs and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) can inform and scale the work of the practitioner cohort. This Advisory Board will help us ensure that Pathways to Patient Capital builds upon and benefits from the best research and practices in the field to date.