Black wealth data can unlock solutions to advance racial wealth equity, showing leaders where and how to invest to disrupt systemic inequities and generate sustained Black wealth accumulation.
DataKind partnered with the Black Wealth Data Center on their recently released, first of its kind Racial Wealth Equity Database, drawing from dozens of different data sources and producing more than 30 visualizations to transform data into actionable insights.
With support from Google.org, DataKind is expanding its collaboration with Black Wealth Data Center to advance racial wealth equity by better supporting U.S. Black-owned businesses and developing a tool that identifies community zones for capital investment policy targeting.
In the U.S., business ownership is key to wealth accumulation. Federal, state, and local policies are in place to support businesses with access to capital through investments or loans. Data has shown that this capital doesn’t reach Black-owned businesses at proportionate rates. In order to better target these opportunities to Black-owned businesses, government and institutional lenders need greater insight as to where to focus their outreach efforts and capital resources.
DataKind and the Black Wealth Data Center will expand our partnership to provide just this type of support. The collaboration will develop a tool identifying key community zones for capital investment policy targeting, using a combination of statistical, geospatial, predictive, and machine learning modeling techniques.
This project brings together indicators across business and commerce, community infrastructure, banking and finance, education, and demographics to create a comprehensive profile of Black-owned business candidates for increased capital investment. The target users of this tool are government actors and financing institutions administering business capital funds.
The tool will be accessible in two ways: as an interactive geographic visualization housed on the Black Wealth Data Center platform and as a GitHub repository accessible through an open source license.
This work falls under DataKind’s Economic Resilience portfolio of work and is funded by Google.org’s $1.1M grant, enabling DataKind to support a cross-cutting cohort of U.S.-based projects under its DataCorps® program. For information on how we’re working to advance economic empowerment, learn more about our project partners.
At DataKind, we’re honored to harness the power of data to help drive solutions for racial wealth equity. We’re looking forward to moving into the next phase of our partnership with BWDC, working to create economic progress for Black families and communities. Thanks to Google.org for supporting this critical and timely work.
Resource: https://blackwealthdata.org/explore/business
The Black Wealth Data Center is on a mission to empower decision makers—including practitioners, elected officials at all levels, philanthropists, and journalists—working to improve and chronicle economic opportunity by making it easier for them to find and analyze a wide range of factors correlated to economic well-being and progress by race. This new effort will also build a network for leaders and organizations working to create economic progress for Black families and communities.
DataKind has worked previously with other indexing tools, notably the Foreclosure and Eviction Analysis Tool (FEAT) with New America’s Future of Land and Housing Program, using local data to drive housing loss decision making. For more information on FEAT, check out the impact stories, user guide, FAQ, and more here.
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Quick Links
- Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Greenwood Initiative Launches New Racial Wealth Equity Database (Bloomberg Philanthropies)
- A Better Future for Economic Resilience
- Advancing Economic Empowerment in Communities Across the U.S.: DataKind Launches Seven New Projects
- Understanding Equity in Local Governments: DataKind San Francisco Partners with the City of San José
