Moneda Moves (137): Today’s Black and Latinx Investors Care About Social Impact
Happy Tuesday, mi gente! To our new Moneda Moves subscribers, welcome. A quick recap for our new community members: In this weekly newsletter, we will cover new money learnings, headlines about our Latinx community in business and contributions to our American economy. We also have a podcast publishing on an adhoc to a monthly basis currently where we speak with POC leaders in the business world and have culturally-relevant conversations. Expect us to be back to full capacity next year, while we complete the Google Podcast Accelerator Program we are a part of! Onto this week’s updates.
Last Friday, we had the pleasure of being featured at Chicago’s Money Makeover event hosted by My Money My Future in collaboration with the Nasdaq Foundation, where we spoke with fintech founder Ramona Ortega and marketing professional Michelle L Thames about setting foundations for a healthy relationship with money and building intergenerational wealth. A few of the takeaways shared for business owners:
Have a space for your community that you own: Even as a professional who’s worked in social media strategy as my day job, I can assure you: If you’re a creator or business owner it is in your best interest to have your community in a platform that is not social media exclusively. In worst case scenarios, we’ve seen accounts get hacked or entire platforms crash entirely. If you’ve nurtured your community, make sure you have an owned platform, like a blog, newsletter where you can stay in touch with your audience.
Have an accountant: Michelle, who runs a business of her own, is serious about her finances. Not only does she stay organized with an accounting software package like QuickBooks, she also hires an accountant. While it may be intimidating to let someone else in on the money details of your business, it is important to make sure a professional can help to ensure you’re getting all your deductions come tax season, make informed decisions as a business owner and above all, save time — a valuable resource.
Diversify your income sources: This mix harnesses your services and skills you can offer via your business. Perhaps your main business is a product, but you are not taking into account all the different ways you can bring in income by just selling the product itself. Ways to diversify include: developing digital products in addition to the product, corporate partnerships, social media partnerships, speaking engagements, for instance.
Funding matters: This is an issue I’ll continue to cover and push for, because for businesses to scale, funding matters. Unfortunately, it is also Latinx and Black business owners that often struggle with attaining capital to do so, whether it is via bank financing or through venture capital funding. The good news: We’re seeing people of color lead the charge to change the narrative when it comes to funding. More on that below.
If you’ve been following us for a while, you know our previous post was at Nasdaq leading on content, so the fortuity of being able to collaborate again through their Foundation was not lost on us.
This is just one part of a series of events Ramona, CEO of My Money My Future is doing all across the country. Let’s get it, mujer! 💪🏽
Con poder,
Lyanne
Headlines to put on your radar.
Black Women Who Are Funding Cultural Currency To Scale Companies: Especially after having a discussion about the importance of funding for founders and business owners, this Forbes article by money reporter Kori Hale (founder of CultureBanx) is incredibly timely. In this piece, Hale writes about Black power players who are focused on advocacy and funding founders. It was a pleasure to see a personally familiar name in the piece here, Chanel Cathey, CJC Insights CEO quoted on the importance of a storytelling as a company evolves and grows:
“Narrative development, storytelling and the power of all of that is not going to a lot of Black founders, they are not getting that kind of investment, and that’s why we’re seeing them missing from the headlines,” said Cathey.
Today’s Black and Hispanic Investors Care About Social Impact: Modern Latinx and Black investors don’t simply wants returns on their investments. They equally care about who runs the company and want to see representation of BIPOC founders as well. On the output, investors also want to see social impact. According to research from JP Morgan Wealth Management, 72% of both Black and Latinx participants say it's important their investments have a positive environmental impact compared to 55% of white respondents. We’re excited to see these kind of values take hold in the wider investment landscape.
Women Entrepreneurs Voice Out On Adam Neumann $350 Million Investment: When former WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann received a $350 million investment a few weeks back, the frustration on founder Twitter was palpable. Entrepreneurs voiced out in a recent NPR article:
"When 16% of investment partners at VC firms are women, 3% are Black and 4% are Latinx, it's not shocking that women founders have received 1.9% of venture dollars so far in 2022," Rebekah Bastian, the CEO and co-founder of OwnTrail, told NPR over email. "Black-founded startups in the U.S. raised less in Q2 2022 in aggregate ($324 million) than Adam Neumann received in a single check from Andreessen Horowitz."
Biden's Loan Forgiveness Plan To Heavily Impact Black Borrowers: By now it’s no longer news but still a milestone that the Biden administration plans to cancel up to $20,000 in student loans for borrowers. In this piece, ABC covers how it will impact the Black and Latinx cohorts. According to the Department of Education, Black college graduates on average owe $25,000 more in student debt than white graduates. Meanwhile, half of Latino borrowers will have their entire federal loan debt forgiven due to the $10,000 loan cancellation plan. While we’ve paid off our student loans, this was a big deal for our familia and community. Will you be benefiting from the administration’s plan?
Thank you for joining us! Until next week, catch us here on Moneda Moves.