Startup leaders across the Ocean State have spent the last month redirecting their attention to diversity and inclusion in their own organizations and programs, a small piece of what has become a nationwide reckoning with how racism permeates social and economic systems.
Earlier this month, Venture Café and District Hall Providence, sister organizations that fall under the umbrella of Venture Café New England, publicly renewed their commitment to amplifying voices of color in the Rhode Island startup ecosystem. That work began in part with a call for submissions to build a directory of businesses led by minorities and allies.
It was a well-intentioned effort led by two women of color, Sydney Manning and Kajsa Whitney at Venture Café Providence, with the support of Daniel Enríquez Vidaña, president of Venture Café New England. At the time, the goal was to create a robust directory that Venture Café and similar organizations could use to guide their programming. It could also connect entrepreneurs of color with investors, consumers and each other.
But within a few days, it became clear that the directory—particularly the way it was titled, “RI Minority-Owned, Led, and Ally Business and Organization List”—had hit a nerve with some members of the Providence community. According to Vidaña, people took issue with the term “minority,” which has fallen out of favor as people use it to denote status more than a statistical group. They were worried that the inclusion of ally-led organizations would effectively nullify the list’s intended mission. And there were concerns about Venture Café Providence itself, which launched only last summer and is still interweaving itself into the fabric of the Rhode Island startup community. (Whitney and Manning both moved to Providence last spring to work on the organization's launch; Vidaña is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.)
“The team was starting to feel very, very inundated,” Vidaña said. “[We needed to clarify that] the reference guide was an addition, an enhancer of what we do, not the only thing we do. That’s not who we are. That’s what I’m trying to correct.”
Over a period of a few hours, Vidaña said, Manning and Whitney found themselves overwhelmed by feedback and questions over email and social media. They asked if the list could be taken offline, at least for the moment, while they figured out a better way to approach it. The leadership team agreed.
It remains to be seen whether Venture Café will make the list live again under a different name, or whether the team will scrap the project altogether and focus instead on their core competency: programming. Social media posts advertising the directory have been taken down. Meanwhile, Vidaña intends to set up conversations with some of the people who reached out to better understand their concerns, as well as to clarify what Venture Café Providence’s intentions are in Rhode Island.
“We want feedback. There’s no question about it,” Vidaña said. “That’s the only way you improve as an organization. I think there’s an opportunity to also create some allies for us, being very clear about what we do and how we do it, and what our intentions are and will be in the future.”
The incident surrounding the business directory—which, Vidaña stressed, was only a single component of Venture Café’s work in the diversity and inclusion space—serves as a timely reminder. During this flashpoint in U.S. history especially, it is more important than ever to bring in established, local stakeholders as soon as possible.
“We want to make sure we’re doing right by the community.”
Kelly Ramirez, CEO of the incubator and coworking space Social Enterprise Greenhouse (SEG), learned that lesson about five years ago. Founded in 2009, SEG exists to break down barriers for aspiring entrepreneurs and create opportunity. To do that, SEG’s team would have to make active efforts to ensure the organization was serving a diverse community across Rhode Island.
“We had to make it a major focus of ours,” Ramirez said. “We have a lot to learn and a lot of work to continue to do, but we really started internally training staff, focusing on trying to diversify our staff and our volunteer network on our board. We have been participating in a lot of equity trainings. We have, for years, worked to make partnerships with community-based organizations that are very active and credible in the communities we serve, and learn from them and try to understand what we could possibly bring in as a value-add.”
Those partnerships, Ramirez said, have been crucial to SEG’s diversity efforts. SEG has worked with the Island Foundation, FabNewport, Health Equity Zone, Progreso Latino and others as it works to boost entrepreneurs across the state, especially outside of Providence, where most resources tend to be based.
Also crucial to SEG’s work is funding. In December 2018, SEG was awarded a $257,321 grant—SEG’s “big breakthrough,” Ramirez said—from the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) to expand its programming to regional satellite locations, including Pawtucket, Central Falls and Newport.
“The proposal for the EDA was really based on the fact that there was a small number of entrepreneurs who were really in the know and knew how to access all the resources. I felt like the same people were accessing all the resources, and I thought, ‘But where is everyone else?’” Ramirez said. “It felt like an amazing opportunity to try to really serve the people who could benefit from our programs. We’re only scratching the surface, but I’m excited about what we’ve scratched so far.”
SEG has since established programming, including Spanish-language programming, in the three cities through partnerships with various local organizations. In Newport, SEG has frequently run programs out of the Florence Gray Center, a nonprofit-focused facility run by the Housing Authority of Newport. In Pawtucket, SEG works out of a coworking space called The Rail.
Any startup leader worth their salt will tell you that there’s more work to do: more internal audits of organizational diversity, more equity workshops to partake in, more partnerships to set up and conversations to be had with community leaders.
Vidaña and Ramirez both said they continually intend to add value to existing initiatives, not parachute into communities and expect their approach will work. Manning told Rhode Island Inno earlier this month that Venture Café Providence is in talks to partner with other business-focused organizations and the Providence Mayor’s Office on events.
“It’s not one-size-fits-all,” Ramirez said.
Vidaña also pointed out that, like SEG, Venture Café is a nonprofit organization. (Venture Café is partnered with the Cambridge Innovation Center, a for-profit organization, but is a separate entity.) And the coronavirus pandemic has put nonprofits, which rely heavily on donor funding, in shaky territory. Venture Café St. Louis, a sister organization in Missouri, came dangerously close to shutting down this spring.
A last-minute crowdfunding campaign saved Venture Café St. Louis. It’s a testament to the work the organization is doing in Missouri: The community stepped up to ensure it didn’t disappear.
Now, less than a year into its work in Providence, Venture Café will have to earn that same kind of trust and investment from Rhode Islanders.
“We want to make sure we’re doing right by the community,” Vidaña said. “We’re one of many organizations that are already doing something. We don’t have to create anything. We’re already doing it. And we can do more with more support.”
