When Frederick E. Jordan, Sr. tried to start his engineering firm in San Francisco in 1969, he couldn’t get financing. He ran F.E. Jordan Associates part-time out of his home for its first six months, taking on whatever work he could until the business had enough of a footing to stand on its own. Today, that firm has completed more than 1,000 projects across three national offices, with clients ranging from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to Bank of America.
Thirty-five years after being turned away by lenders, Jordan didn’t want the next generation of Black entrepreneurs to face the same barrier he had. So, in 2004, he joined historian John William Templeton to establish National Black Business Month, an annual observance built around a specific idea: that Black entrepreneurship is a powerful force for economic opportunity, and that the greatest barrier to unlocking it is access to capital.
More than two decades later, that vision continues to be relevant. National Black Business Month celebrates the innovation, resilience, and leadership of Black entrepreneurs, while reminding us that investing in businesses is also an investment in the communities they serve.
Local Multiplier Effect – “Recycling Black Dollars”
When a Black-owned business succeeds, its success rarely stays within its own four walls. It spreads out into the block, the neighborhood, and eventually the city.
Economists sometimes describe this as the local multiplier effect. Dollars earned by locally owned businesses tend to stay local. They pay the wages of neighbors, cover the rent of the storefront, purchase from nearby suppliers, and support the schools, churches, and civic institutions that give a community its shape. A business on Main Street is also a customer of the print shop three doors down, a client of the accountant on the second floor, and a sponsor of the youth league at the church around the corner.
Black-owned businesses tend to do this work with particular intention. They are more likely to hire from their own communities, mentor the entrepreneurs coming up behind them, and reinvest in the institutions that shaped their owners. In practical terms, that means every Black-owned business is doing two jobs at once. It is serving its customers, and it is anchoring the community those customers live in.
The scale of what’s possible when that intention becomes practice is significant. Research cited by Recycling Black Dollars, a nonprofit focused on Black economic development, found that Black consumer spending topped $875 billion annually, and calculated that if that income circulated just twice within Black households and businesses before leaving the community, it could grow to more than $2 trillion a year. The gap between those two numbers is the local multiplier effect made concrete: the same dollar, spent and respent within a community, multiplies its own impact.
Anchors, Not Just Occupants
An anchor keeps something from drifting. Recent research from Brookings shows Black-owned businesses playing that role in several U.S. regions where the total number of businesses is shrinking. In these places, Black-owned businesses are the only reason the numbers aren’t falling further. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is a striking example. Between 2022 and 2023, the Baton Rouge area saw a net gain of just 49 employer businesses overall. In the same year, Black-owned employer businesses in the area grew by 242. Columbia, South Carolina, tells a similar story. In places where the broader economy is losing ground, Black entrepreneurs are literally holding the line.
The community impact extends beyond economics into something more human. Brookings’ Black Progress Index research found that higher rates of Black business ownership correlate with longer life expectancies for Black residents at the metro and county level. Researchers are still working through the mechanisms, but the relationship is measurable. Where Black-owned businesses thrive, Black communities live longer.
A Black-owned business does more than generate income for its owner. It functions as a piece of infrastructure, something the surrounding community can hold onto and grow stronger from.
A Growing Foundation
The foundation for this community impact is growing. According to Brookings’ analysis of Census Bureau data, the number of Black-owned employer businesses in the United States surpassed 200,000 for the first time in 2023, with 201,000 firms generating $249 billion in revenue and employing 1.8 million workers. Since 2017, the count has grown by 62%, a rate nearly twenty times faster than the U.S. employer base overall. Black women-owned employer businesses have grown even faster, up 78% over the same period.
Every one of those firms represents jobs created, families supported, and a community anchor established.
The Barrier That Still Stands
Twenty-one years after the founding of National Black Business Month, the barrier the observance was created to name, access to capital, has narrowed but not closed.
The Federal Reserve’s 2026 research on small business financing continues to show that Black-owned businesses apply for credit at higher rates than their peers and are approved at lower ones. Just as important, many Black entrepreneurs do not apply at all because they expect to be denied. That gap between need and access is where community potential gets stuck. The Urban Institute’s February 2026 analysis frames the stakes clearly: closing the racial gap in business ownership builds wealth not only for Black families, but for the cities they live in.
Every business that cannot get financed is a job that isn’t created, a supplier that isn’t hired, a mentorship that doesn’t pass to the next generation of owners. The capital gap is more than one business not growing; it’s a ceiling on community wellbeing.
Institutions Built to Close the Gap
The good news is that a deliberate architecture already exists to do exactly this work.
Community Development Financial Institutions, or CDFIs, are mission-driven lenders certified by the U.S. Treasury to serve the communities that conventional banking has historically overlooked. They deliver capital where it is needed most, and they do it sustainably. According to the Opportunity Finance Network, CDFIs collectively hold more than $25 billion in small business and microloans, with a cumulative net charge-off rate below 1%. Research from the Urban Institute has also shown that CDFI borrowers’ credit scores improve after origination, particularly for those who started with the lowest scores. CDFIs don’t just fund businesses. They build bankable borrowers.
The U.S. Small Business Administration operates on the same principle. The SBA 7(a) Community Advantage program is a mission-focused pathway within the broader 7(a) framework, designed specifically to reach underserved markets through mission-driven lenders. Loans are capped at $350,000, which keeps the program focused on the small and mid-sized businesses that anchor Main Street rather than on larger deals. SBA microloans, delivered through mission-driven intermediaries, cap at $50,000 and are especially well-suited to the neighborhood-based businesses that build community wealth.
AmPac has also built its own answer to one of the most persistent obstacles Black entrepreneurs face when applying for an SBA loan: the down payment. Even when a borrower qualifies for financing on every other measure, the required equity injection can put commercial real estate ownership out of reach. AmPac’s exclusive Down Payment Assistance Programs are designed to close that final gap. The It Is Possible Program provides down payment assistance to Black, Latino, and women-led businesses across California, covering up to half of the required down payment on an SBA 504 or 7(a) Community Advantage loan (up to $100,000) with no payment for the first 12 months. The First Time Buyer Program extends the same support to small business owners purchasing their first commercial property. And the Vet Advantage Program does the same for veteran-owned businesses. Together, they are a piece of the architecture built specifically for the entrepreneurs the rest of the market keeps missing.
Together, CDFIs, SBA Community Advantage and microloan programs, and AmPac’s exclusive Down Payment Assistance Programs are the practical answer to a barrier that has stood for generations. They put mission-aligned capital in the hands of the entrepreneurs most likely to hire from their own communities, mentor from within them, and reinvest in the institutions that shape them.
A Month and a Mission
National Black Business Month is a reminder that Black entrepreneurship is one of the most powerful engines a community can have. Every business that opens, hires, and reinvests locally is infrastructure for the neighborhood around it. Every entrepreneur that gets the capital they need is a step toward the outcomes the research now clearly connects: more jobs, more wealth, longer lives.
At AmPac, that mission is not seasonal. It is the work. And every time capital reaches an entrepreneur who was told they wouldn’t qualify, a community somewhere gets a little stronger.