The Baldwin Project, LLC is an urban business and economic development firm organizing community wealth, production and trade among Metro Atlanta's Black SGL-LGBT community to boost economic power to drive collective solutions.
Lack of organized capital among Metro Atlanta's Black SGL-LGBT community has placed us in vulnerable conditions maintaining us in sup-par positions to other Blacks and White LGBTs without adequate resources of our own to address them. Examples: HIV, poverty, youth homelessness, lack of access to mental and physical health care, lack of relationship support, unemployment, lack of life-skills support, lack of ethnocentric socio-recreational spaces for social enrichment, community building and affirming and strengthening our individual and collective identities as a double minority.
The wealth of a community is based upon the rate of commercial transactions within it. If personal economics is about saving money, group economics is about holding money within a community by trading among your own with companies in partnership with organizations giving back to your community and thereby enriching its condition. If personal economics is about how much money you have in the bank after all the bills are paid to then save and invest, community wealth or group economics is about how much of the money we collectively earn is kept in our community to then generate resources for our non-profit organizations in service to our community to effectively carry out their missions. If we were to ask any of our non-profiteers in our community about their struggles to receive monetary support from the community they serve, we ought to be prepared to sit a spell and hear the litany of their woes.
Is it because our Black LGBT businesses do not support their work? Is it because our Black LGBT businesses are struggling themselves to stay afloat and can not afford to give back? Do our businesses struggle because our community does not support them? Do our community fail to support our businesses because we are not aware of them, and/or spending our dollars with businesses outside our community is more convenient and/or personally economical? Is it because after satisfying our basic needs by doing business outside of our community, the individual is not left with much to purchase "luxuries" from our community? Why are we not in the business of serving our own basic needs (housing, food, clothes, transportation, utilities)? Our nonprofits which are surviving and getting work done, who is paying their bills? If not us, you mean to tell me another community is dictating the extent to which we serve ourselves? Would our nonprofits prefer do more under their own direction and authority but dare not bite the hands which feed them? What reason have we to trust anyone else but us to give ourselves what we want and need in they way that we want it, as much as we want?
The NAACP reports: “A dollar circulates in Asian communities for a month, in Jewish communities approximately 20 days and white communities 17 days. How long does a dollar circulate in the black community? 6 hours!!! African American buying power is at $1.1 Trillion; and yet only 2 cents of every dollar an African American spends in this country goes to black owned businesses.” Laban King, CEO of Millennium Global Investments has reported that in the Black SGL-LGBT community, money circulates for only 3 minutes, quicker than a Beyonce' track and our collective condition and situations correlates directly with this and testifies to its truth.
The problem has a lot to do with a lack of ownership over the industries which provide for our basic consumer needs and then a lack of awareness of the few that do exist. For every consumer need within our community which is not met by our own is a leak in our community wealth. It must flow out of our community by necessity until that hole is plugged. Right now, Metro Atlanta's Black SGL-LGBT community collectively earns $10 Billion annually and our community bank account looks very much like a colander. Money in and money right back out into the coffers of other communities. I am sure at this notice our non-profiteers are scratching their heads trying to figure out where the heck does it all go. (Groceries, housing, utilities, clothing, transportation, employment, healthcare). We must have these things and if we are not serving it, we've got to get it where we can.
The existing businesses of our community struggle to stay afloat to grow and compete against overwhelmingly more resourced competitors in pricing due to the inability to buy goods in bulk, which is caused in part by lack of community support and struggles to access capital from traditional funding methods such as the standard bank lending criteria. Depending on banks often limits capital, credit, contact and collateral challenged entrepreneurs from ever getting their great ideas off of the ground to see the light of day. Secondly, there is a dearth of guidance, education and support assisting novice individuals in our community with ingenious, feasible and perhaps very lucrative business concepts in bringing their ideas into fruition and then to the marketplace to surviving the cut of the first few years in business to then going on to flourish. This for the most part takes experience, wisdom and creativity, and most importantly a plan....a business plan. I imagine I do not lack in connections with members of our community selling "hustling" something, but if I were to ask to see their business plan or who is their mentor if they are just starting out, how many do you suppose would be able to satisfy my query? Wonder now why failures are so prevalent among us which in turn disheartens other aspiring entrepreneurs from ever taking a stab at business?
The Baldwin Project, LLC is launching to provide niche marketing through this journalism media platform, "The Baldwin Business Journal" to build awareness of the entrepreneurs among our community and urge them to sponsor and support non-profits which are working to benefit our community so that they may benefit from an ennobled brand, word-of-mouth marketing and the law of reciprocity.
We aim to pool capital from among our community to support the launching of enterprises operating in the industries which serve many if not all of our consumer needs and then be given an incentive to continue their support thereafter by allowing contributors to share in the profits.
We aim to organize and mobilize an interconnected network of entrepreneurs within our community with monthly mixers to build support and alliances among one another, share resources, refer customers, learn industry best practices, create bartering arrangements, collaborate and trade with one another. Within this community, we aim to build a more cooperative society rather than a cold and malicious competitive one. Competitiveness will only be used to inspire excellence.
We will also provide cutting-edge training and education for novice and seasoned entrepreneurs to assist in the real-world tactics of creating, starting and getting a business off of the ground and then flourishing and developing a workforce to bring gainful employment to our own community.
James Baldwin, the late great Black Gay author and activist so passionately valued the immense creativity, art and ingenuity of our people that he would have probably and rightly considered our minds as our real gold mine and our most effective weapon against oppression. We have only to mine it, and that's exactly what The Baldwin Project, LLC, named in his honor professes and intends: G.O.L.D. M.I.N.E.: Once in business that you stay in the mode of GROWTH, for what does not grow is dying. That your business is ORGANIZED with interest in mind for all stakeholders to move with you as one organism. That you LEAD with excellence and originality in your chosen industry. That our entrepreneurs are DISCIPLINED professionals constantly studying and perfecting their craft. Once these principles are taken to heart and acted on, The Baldwin Project, LLC aims to provide the MARKETING, INVESTING, NETWORKING and EDUCATION (M.I.N.E.) to bring them success unlimited for the benefit of all of us. Let's get this engine started.
"Be careful what you set your hearts upon-for it will surely be yours." -James Baldwin
