Nia Evans says her professional history is made up of three pillars: education, entrepreneurship, and policy. All of that stands over her foundational commitment to community—a foundation as firm as cement.
The entrepreneurial spirit runs in her family. Her dad was a business owner, and she followed that same path in college, where she studied industrial and labor relations and launched her own enterprise with her friends. “I believe a lot in experimentation and taking risks,” she said.
But it wasn’t until landing a gig working on economic development at the NAACP’s Boston Chapter that she started to contemplate ways they could involve residents in the big financial decisions that affect their communities.
“There was a common thread of frequent school budget cuts [in the community], and this would hit families by surprise. I started to wonder: how can communities be a part of these conversations as early as possible, and as equal participants?” said Evans.
Evans is now director at Boston Ujima Project, a financial organization that’s breaking new ground in community-led investment at both the national and local levels. In December 2018 it launched what it describes as the “first democratically governed capital fund” in the United States.
For that fund, some of its investors are working class residents of color in the Boston area, although it is also open to investors outside of Boston.
More impressive than the dollar amount is how Ujima brings community members in to guide the investment plans for that money. No matter how much money you put into the pot, members get an equal say in how it’s used. Evans described Ujima as leading a “‘financial commons’ that serves the needs of people and planet over private profit.” Ujima works with residents to create community standard awards for businesses that advance ethical practices. They’re also building relationships with economic anchors like hospitals, universities, and financial institutions so that Ujimasupported companies can have access to major purchasing contracts. The pilot they launched in 2016 suggests their strategy is a winning one. They raised $10,000 from 175 community members in three days at their first local summit. After that, they picked up donations from local non-profits that brought their total up to another $20,000. From there, they identified five businesses to invest in, and sent out texts to community members to receive feedback on their investment plan for those businesses.
They’ve joined the UMA’s Pathways to Patient Capital cohort because they want to bring more urban manufacturers into their strategy. Boston is endowed with hardworking manufacturers in food production and other areas that Ujima’s products could lift.
“In the end, all of the businesses ended up getting financed, with zero percent interest loans,” remembers Evans, talking about their first five businesses. “That was the moment that it all clicked. Amongst all of the challenges we face, this was something where we created something concrete, and I could see that it was inspiring for the entire group [of local investors],” said Evans.
This case study was co-authored by Mark Foggin and Johnny Magdaleno and published in 2020 as part of the Urban Manufacturing Alliance’s “Forging Fairness: How community-based lenders are centering both inclusion and manufacturing to promote equity [link to report].” This report highlights the work of practitioners in UMA’s Pathways to Patient Capital cohort, and approaches these leaders are taking to help entrepreneurs of color–including makers and manufacturers–get access to the capital and know-how they need to realize their business ideas and plans at scale.