The Liberty Project
Growing businesses owned by Black and African-Americans in Seattle at a rate equal to their representation in the population.
"Build a thriving, innovative, and equitable city we are all proud to call home."
The Goal
Growing out of Mayor Harrell’s One Seattle Initiative to “build a thriving, innovative, and equitable city we are all proud to call home,” the Liberty Project Seattle is a collaboration between The City of Seattle, Tabor 100, the Consulting and Business Development Center at the University of Washington Foster School of Business, and the Business Foundry at Seattle University’s Albers School of Business and Economics.
Our goal is to grow Black/African American-owned businesses to earn 7.9% of business revenues in Seattle which will match the 7.9% of Seattle’s population who are Black/African American.
Black Business
1.5
%
Black Population
7.9
%
Seattle based business or can provide services for the City of Seattle (construction/power utilities) or actively looking to have a location in Seattle?
Program Requirements
The business should be in one of these six categories:
- Commercial Construction
- Food and Beverage Manufacturing
- Personal Services
- Power Utilities
- Restaurants
- Retail
Have a minimum of three paid employees, including the business owner, and demonstrate prior success in increasing the number of employees.
Can provide financial statements showing profitability in the past two years.
Provide financial statements showing profitability in the preceding two years.
Let us help grow your business.
Liberty Project services range from technical assistance to business development. Let us help grow your business by first completing the following application link. Your application will be forwarded to the appropriate anchor partner, where they will help connect you with their services.
Better Together For a Better Tomorrow
The City of Seattle, the University of Washington Foster School of Business (Consulting and Business Development Center), Tabor 100, and Seattle University Albers School of Business (Business Foundry) will address the systemic issues that lead to the current under-performance of businesses owned by people of color (POC). Authored by the Consulting and Business Development Center, the Liberty Project Seattle will utilize the M3 Model to address the following areas:
Management
Education systems and institutions that incubate and accelerate businesses are not producing a sufficient number of skilled entrepreneurs and business owners of color that enable POC-owned businesses to reach revenue equity.
Money
Through an interlocking set of factors including regulations, underwriting guidelines, historic redlining, gaps in family wealth, and networks, businesses owned by POC face systemic barriers to securing debt and equity financing.
Markets
The structure and practice of corporate and government procurement systems produce barriers to accessing contracting opportunities for businesses owned by POC. At the consumer level, accessing clients through online and brick-and-mortar channels present such barriers. Rent costs in high-income communities and lack of access to appropriate distribution channels limit the POC business owners’ ability to reach consumers with significant disposable income.
In Partnership With
