I've been sitting with The Blackout Report since it dropped in late April.
Published on April 23, 2025 by Onyx Impact in partnership with the Global Black Economic Forum (GBEF), American Pride Rises, and The Araminta Project, The Blackout Report is a special edition research report documenting the economic impact of recent federal executive orders — specifically the March 26, 2025 executive order targeting DEI initiatives — on Black-owned businesses and their access to federal contracting opportunities. It is one of the most direct analyses to date of how shifting federal policy is affecting Black wealth generation in America.
The report documents something many of us already felt in our bones — that the policy environment is actively narrowing one of the most concrete wealth-building pathways available to Black entrepreneurs: federal contracts.
The data is real. The impact is real. And I'm not going to dress it up or pivot away from it too quickly. A thing has to be acknowledged before it can be changed.
What do we do next?
Here are three things I believe with clarity.
In this post:
- Why building direct relationships now is a long-term stability strategy
- How Black women's collective economic power becomes a force when deployed with intention
- Which organizations have demonstrated real, sustained commitment to Black business growth — and how to stay connected to them
One: We Have to Stop Waiting for Systems to Include Us — and Start Building the Table Ourselves
The federal contracting pipeline was never designed with us in mind. Black-owned businesses currently hold roughly 1.2% of federal contract dollars within a $774 billion market. Even at its most generous, the system was offering us a narrow path. Now that path is getting narrower.
That is not a reason to abandon the pursuit of federal contracts — some of us have built real, sustainable businesses through that work, and that expertise has value. But it is a reason to be honest about the risk of any single-source revenue strategy, particularly one governed by political will.
The businesses that will move through this moment with the most stability are the ones that have been building direct relationships — with clients, with collaborators, with communities — that don't require a policy to protect them.
That is the table we build ourselves. Not in reaction to what's being taken, but in commitment to what we're creating.
Two: Our Collective Economic Power Is an Asset We Are Still Learning to Deploy
Nearly half of all Black-owned businesses in the United States are owned by Black women. Forty-eight percent. That number represents billions in revenue, hundreds of thousands of employees, and an enormous amount of purchasing power.
Now: how much of that purchasing power is circulating within our own ecosystem?
This is not a guilt question. It is a strategy question.
When Black women-owned businesses choose each other — as vendors, as partners, as referral sources, as clients — we are not just making a values-based decision. We are building an economic network that has velocity independent of federal policy. Every dollar that moves between us builds a track record. Every referral that lands creates a relationship. Every contract that goes to a Black woman-owned firm is a data point that says: we are capable, we deliver, and we are here.
I graduated from the Goldman Sachs One Million Black Women: Black in Business program. What I walked away with wasn't just a sharper business model — it was a cohort of women who understood the same pressures I was navigating, and who were willing to show up for each other in concrete ways. That network has been worth more than any single curriculum lesson.
We have to be intentional about creating and protecting those networks. Not just attending the events, but following up. Not just celebrating each other online, but actually sending the referral, making the introduction, sharing the contract opportunity.
Collective economic power is not automatic. It is practiced.
Three: Partner With Organizations That Have Demonstrated Commitment — Not Just Proximity
There are organizations doing serious, sustained work to support Black-owned businesses — and in a moment like this, knowing who they are and staying plugged in matters.
ICIC (Initiative for a Competitive Inner City) has been building economic infrastructure for underserved business communities for over 30 years. I was in the room in Atlanta when ICIC held their Annual Conference — "Changemakers Take Action: Leveraging Innovation for Growth" — and unveiled the 2025 IC100 winners: 100 of the fastest-growing businesses in under-resourced communities across the United States. The #1 winner was LifePlate, a Dallas-based family-founded company that started in 2017 when a health crisis prompted a pivot to plant-forward eating. What began as a personal mission — rewriting their family's medical history — became a meal delivery business built on that same conviction: that people deserve access to food that actually sustains them. That story doesn't happen without a community that recognized it, invested in it, and put it on a stage.
What struck me most wasn't any single winner. It was the breadth of who was in that top ten — Black and Hispanic men and women, different industries, different cities. A genuinely diverse cross-section of founders who had all done the same thing: built something real in communities that didn't always make it easy, and grown it anyway. That is the counter-narrative we need right now. Not as inspiration content. As evidence.
Their partnership with Goldman Sachs produced the One Million Black Women: Black in Business program — a rigorous, free 12-week executive education experience developed with NYU Stern School of Business. Since launching in 2022, the program has graduated more than 1,600 entrepreneurs across eight cohorts. Sixty-five percent of alumni reported revenue increases — nearly double the rate of comparable non-employer firms. That is not a soft outcome. That is a return.
SCORE, the nonprofit SBA resource partner, offers free mentorship and coaching from experienced business leaders across industries. It's a practical resource — particularly useful when you need a thinking partner who has navigated a specific business challenge before and can help you see the angles you might be missing.
The Global Black Economic Forum, which co-published the Blackout Report, is itself an example of the kind of institutional advocacy that creates longer-term structural change — naming the problem, centering the data, and building a policy case that Black business owners can point to.
These organizations are not saviors. But they are partners who have shown up consistently. In a moment when many institutions are retreating from their commitments to equity, that consistency is worth something. Find your connection point and stay in relationship.
The Call
I'm writing this as a Black woman business owner — someone who built a boutique travel firm from the ground up, serves a 250+ client base, and has had to think hard about revenue diversification, strategic relationships, and what it means to build something sustainable without a guaranteed safety net.
I don't have a perfect answer to what the Blackout Report is surfacing. But I have a clear conviction:
We are most powerful when we are in deliberate community with each other.
That means championing each other's businesses publicly and specifically — not just a like, but a recommendation. It means creating access for each other — an introduction, an invitation, a referral that you didn't have to make but chose to. It means staying connected to organizations that have demonstrated they believe in our success and are doing the structural work to support it.
The system doesn't have to say no. It just has to make yes feel dangerous.
Let's make yes feel like the obvious choice — for each other.
Resources mentioned:
- The Blackout Report — Onyx Impact & Global Black Economic Forum (April 2025)
- Goldman Sachs One Million Black Women: Black in Business — blackinbusiness.com
- ICIC (Initiative for a Competitive Inner City) — icic.org
- SCORE — score.org
- Global Black Economic Forum — gbef.org