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Black Businesses and Urban League Staff Hit After Trump Cuts
Participating in the Urban League of Greater Atlanta's Capital Readiness program last year helped metro Atlanta entrepreneur Tamara Fowler secure enough seed funding to expand Wiggle Giggle, her Marietta-based indoor playground business.
The 31-year-old married mother of two said she was disappointed to learn earlier this year that the program's $3 million grant funding was canceled due to an executive order issued by President Donald Trump.
Trump's March 31 executive action sought to reduce the size of the federal government by eliminating departments that the president deemed 'unnecessary.' One of those departments is the Minority Business Development Agency, a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce that promotes the growth and competitiveness of minority-owned businesses.
The MBDA was the agency that awarded the capital readiness grant before the program was effectively eliminated. In May, a federal judge issued an injunction blocking Trump's elimination of the MBDA, but the Urban League said its funding hasn't been restored.
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'I was incredibly disappointed and disheartened,' Fowler told Capital B Atlanta on Wednesday. 'This program has brought a lot of funding and a lot of information to people, and it's free. It's not just for people of color. It's for all people that are in any sort of disadvantaged situation.'
Some inflation-weary Black voters who supported Trump in 2024 did so because they thought he would do a better job on the economy than former President Joe Biden. But local Black entrepreneurs, who benefited from the Urban League's capital readiness grant program, say Trump's opposition to similar initiatives aimed at helping minority-owned firms grow and thrive will hurt metro Atlanta small businesses and their employees.
The Urban League said that Trump's grant funding cancellation effectively eliminated the group's capital readiness program, which has helped more than 4,700 small business owners participate in the nonprofit's two eight-week accelerator courses and has assisted some entrepreneurs in completing loan and grant applications that many were previously unaware of.
Twenty-nine of those businesses have received a total of roughly $6.9 million in contracts, grants, and loan funding as a result.
'The cancellation meant we had to lay off our Metro Atlanta Capital Readiness team and end the programming in progress,' Nancy Flake Johnson, president and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Atlanta, told Capital B Atlanta. 'Our remaining entrepreneurship center team [members] are continuing to support the entrepreneurs in the program as best we can with the much smaller team.'
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Johnson said the local Urban League was one of 47 grantees nationwide who received funding through the MBDA's grant initiative.
'Almost every state received resources through this program,' she said. 'Government contracting has been a path for small and minority and women and veteran-owned firms to grow their businesses. Without those pathways being intentionally in place, it's going to slow down job creation. It's going to slow down economic growth in underserved communities and neighborhoods across the country.'
Atlanta resident Patricia Morgan said she was nearly finished with her Urban League capital readiness training when Trump's order canceling the program came down.
'One of the coaches that I worked with directly was let go,' she told Capital B Atlanta. 'I lost that direct coach that I had that was my procurement contact.'
Morgan is the founder of The Executive Learning Labs, a company that offers training and workforce development solutions to government and other small businesses.
She said the Urban League's grant cancellation didn't stop her from establishing business connections that she said boosted her company's profits by 120% over the course of about a year. But she's disappointed that other entrepreneurs may not get the same opportunity.
'There are not a lot of programs for us as entrepreneurs that are entering that accelerate phase,' Morgan said.
Fairburn resident Kimberly Jones said the Urban League's program helped her Atlanta-based IT consulting firm, KYJ Consulting, land a lucrative contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in February.
Jones, 55, a former nurse and data scientist for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said she began participating in the Urban League's programs last summer after seeing a related post on social media.
Her company specializes in work with emerging technologies, such as water intelligence and electric vehicle charging stations. She said the Trump administration is 'doing more harm than good' by eliminating capital readiness grant funding from the MBDA, in part, by reducing competition for lucrative government contracts.
'These prime contractors, they're the same people always winning,' Jones told Capital B Atlanta. 'Now it becomes that monopoly that we try not to have.'
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U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., who is up for reelection next year, recently sent a letter to Trump's U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, urging him to restore funding for the Urban League's program.
The 38-year-old Atlanta native, who received overwhelming support from Black Georgians in 2020, said he hasn't forgotten who sent him to Washington, and remains a champion for Black businesses, a value he said Trump doesn't share.
'The Trump administration is making war on Black-owned businesses,' Ossoff told Capital B Atlanta during a recent phone interview. 'They've tried to disband entirely the Minority Business Development Agency. They've canceled this grant that I fought for, for the Urban League of Atlanta to support Black-owned businesses. … I will continue to apply pressure to restore this funding.'
White House Spokesman Kush Desai told Capital B Atlanta via email on Monday that the president's trade deals 'have unlocked unprecedented market access for American exports to economies that in total are worth over $32 trillion with 1.2 billion people.'
'As these historic trade deals and the Administration's pro-growth domestic agenda of deregulation and The One Big Beautiful Bill's tax cuts take effect, American businesses and families alike have the certainty that the best is yet to come.'
The post Black Businesses and Urban League Staff Hit After Trump Cuts appeared first on Capital B News - Atlanta.
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