What Does the Legacy Lab Do?
Black businesses with community governance models face heightened barriers to capital, support, and market access, as well as narrative challenges that undermine collective ownership and its focus on community well-being.
The Legacy Lab empowers and scales community-owned Black businesses through targeted investments and advocacy. We aim to model an equitable economy that fosters the well-being of the Black community in all areas—physical, social, political, and economic. Through this program, our goal is to transform the narrative surrounding Black entrepreneurship, shifting the focus from mere risk and rapid growth to community wealth-building and restoring economic power to historically Black communities.
How we are doing it:
Ecosystem Strengthening
Bridging the gap that exists between the co-op ecosystem and the entrepreneurship ecosystem and developing a shared framework for a more inclusive and community-centered entrepreneurship.
Increased Access to Capital
Developing recommendations to increase private and public investment in black-led, community-governed enterprises, as well as our own deployment of funds.
Narrative & Norm Change
Shifting mindsets and narratives that position entrepreneurship as a tool of racial capitalism to entrepreneurship as a community wealth-building tool.
Six months, ten Black-led community-rooted businesses, four cities, and what they built together
Black Americans built tools of survival, resistance, and self-determination across every one of those generations, and today Legacy Lab documents what that practice looks like in its present forms: cooperatives, community-accountable businesses, and nonprofits, all rooted in the communities they serve. Across Baltimore, Detroit, Durham, and Memphis, ten Black-led, community-rooted businesses and organizations each received $50,000 in unrestricted capital, a cohort of peers doing the same work in other cities, and a funder willing to trust their judgment: Baltimore Roundtable for Economic Democracy, Black Classic Press, Culinary Femme Collective, Cxffeeblack, Detroit People's Food Co-op, Elite Performance Foundation, Howard Family Bookstore, Our Time Kitchen, Partners in Equity, and ProsperUS Detroit. The report makes the case to funders and intermediaries with the rigor and evidence it deserves, and translates it into concrete, actionable commitments.
Download the Legacy Lab Report here.
Community-owned and governed Black businesses are essential to building collective wealth in Black communities and deserve protection and investment.
What drives this work
Transforming economic systems means shifting power, capital, and the narrative, and doing so in ways led by those most directly impacted. By supporting Black community-owned and community-led businesses, the program helps return economic power to communities that have long been excluded. It invests in local leadership, not just as beneficiaries, but as the visionaries and strategists needed to build a more just economy.
Through this work, the program challenges extractive systems and uplifts models rooted in care, ownership, and community well-being.
Our Program Partners
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