A Denver-based startup launched a national Green Book-style guide Sunday that directs users to safe businesses that are inclusive of all races, genders and abilities.
Inclusive Journeys, founded by Crystal Egli and Parker McMullen Bushman, started its “Inclusive Guide” in beta phase last December and focused on only Denver-area businesses. It launched nationally Sunday with a celebration at the Juneteenth Music Festival in Five Points.
Egli and McMullen Bushman encouraged people at the festival to sign up and begin reviewing businesses. They wouldn’t publicly disclose how many people are registered on the Inclusive Guide website, but Egli said they about doubled their users at the event.
“So many people said they had stories to tell and places people needed to know about,” Egli said.
While the duo is still focused on growing the guide in Denver, McMullen Bushman is planning a 17-day road trip with her family this summer to promote the Inclusive Guide across the country, particularly in Southern states.
Egli said she had the idea for an inclusivity guide when she started hunting. She began traveling to new places to hunt on public lands, and as a Black woman felt uncomfortable not knowing where she might be met with racism.
“I said to myself, ‘I would love to be able to identify those spaces that are safe and welcoming for people like me all the time,'” Egli told Colorado Inno.
The concept for the digital guide was modeled after the 1936 “Negro Motorist Green-Book,” which was a guide for Black travelers to identify businesses where they’d be relatively safe. Egli and McMullen Bushman want users to leave positive reviews in order to create a “network of safety.” However, they also encourage honest negative feedback.
Inclusive Journeys partners with businesses to give them training and resources to become more inclusive and allow them to access data generated from the guide. At some point, Inclusive Journeys will charge businesses for those resources, but the program is free while in its pilot stage.
“It is important to let businesses know that they do have some negative experiences happening, and that’s where our business partnership program comes into play,” Egli said. “Nobody is perfect, and no business is perfect. We want to work with companies that want to improve.”
Inclusive Journeys started in 2019 with a GoFundMe page, asking for $25,000 to start the website. The page has now raised nearly $110,000, and the duo received a $1.3 million anonymous donation.
Egli and McMullen Bushman are seeking other investors but struggling with the process. The investors they’ve pitched to don’t understand the underlying problem, Egli said.
According to Crunchbase, as of July 2021, Black female startup founders had only received 0.34% of the total venture capital spent in the U.S. That's despite the fact that Black women in the U.S. are starting new businesses at a faster rate than white men, according to a 2021 Harvard Business Review study.
“The people who hold the purse strings can’t believe it because they’ve never experienced these problems themselves,” Egli said. “People stop us and say, ‘Wait, so you get followed around stores?’ They don’t understand the problem that needs solving.”
