Transcript
Karen Leone de Nie: First of all, hello and welcome. My name is Karen Leone de Nie. I'm with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's Community and Economic Development program. If we can go to the next slide, please.
So, my job today is to talk a little bit about what we're doing at the Atlanta Fed, more specifically about this series. And then just give you a little bit of a segue into the conversation today on small business specifically. So here at the Atlanta Fed, we have a Community and Economic Development function that really wants to bring engagement and community listening and research together full circle, so that we can be supportive and really help move economic mobility and resilience in the South. I'm going to apologize now, if you hear background noise, it appears that the lawn crews are here. So, my apologies for that, but I'm going to keep going.
So, about this series. So, you're joining us today for the next installment of the Inclusive and Resilient Recovery series. We launched this program last year because we were hearing from people like you all across the country that we're determined to make this recovery different than past recoveries and really determined to make it equity-driven, and to use the resources aimed at stabilizing and recovering the economy from the pandemic, to really address the disturbingly long health disparities. So, as we listen to these community voices, we said, "We really want to help, and we want to make sure that we put our resources behind this momentum."
So, we created the Inclusive and Resilient Recovery initiative to leverage our existing expertise. So what you're going to see today and in other sessions is that we're doing this to broaden access to data and research that can inform what you do, to share expertise with thought leaders and change makers across the country, but particularly in the Southeast, and to really have candid conversations about the systemic barriers [technical difficulties].
David Jackson: Hi, everybody. It seems as if we've lost audio from Karen. So, I'm going to pick up where she left off. I know Karen wanted to talk to us today about what the Inclusive and Resilient Recovery series is about. We wanted to make sure that we brought in access to data and research that you can learn from and that can help people respond in their communities. We wanted to share the experience of thought leaders and change makers from around the District. We wanted to have these candid conversations about systemic barriers to a truly inclusive recovery, and to highlight ways to overcome them. There's a web page where we have all of the information from the previous sessions and related resources, and we invite you to reach out with questions and ideas. This series, along with all we do, is aimed at helping you foster inclusive economic resilience and mobility for the communities you serve. So, let us know how we can best help.
Again, about this session, small businesses are a critical part of inclusive recovery. These businesses provide services to our communities, they reinforce the cultural identity of communities, and they are an important economic engine to the regions they are in, creating jobs and fostering economic activity and innovation. When we talk about small businesses, we know they come in a lot of shapes and sizes, whether it's an individual who is self-employed to the mom-and-pop shops, employing a handful of people to the aspiring gazelle firm, looking for exponential growth, but a steady, not so small business that have been anchors in our communities, creating jobs and opportunities for generations.
With this in mind, I'll share a brief history of the Small Business Credit Survey. It started during the Great Recession, when in listening sessions across the country, we heard two diverging stories: financial institutions were talking about little demand for small business credit. At the same time, small businesses were telling us that they couldn't access credit. When we looked for data sources to examine these reports, none answered the questions we needed answers to. So, we got entrepreneurs on our own to start working on a small business survey. Over time, it became what we know today, the Small Business Credit Survey.
It's a partnership between the 12 Federal Reserve Banks and hundreds of organizations across the country who work directly with small businesses. Many partners are on this call today. On behalf of my colleagues in the Federal Reserve, I want to say thank you. For those who aren't partners yet, let us know if you're interested in joining. This survey and this partnership have been important. In 2010, it resulted in important changes in SBA [Small Business Administration] products to meet the need for small loans available from lenders who are best positioned to serve the historically underserved small businesses. Since that time, it has been cited in congressional reports and information-lending products, the product development, because it enabled us to see what was happening in rural areas or experiences of business owners of color.
Today, it's important again, because the economic impact of COVID has put a spotlight on existing disparities and relationships, networks, and resources that made it much harder for small businesses to survive. So, before we dig into the data, I want to again thank you for joining us today. I want to thank you on behalf of Karen; when we do these things, audio, technology doesn't always behave the way we want it to. We're going to move onto important information about the work that you do. I'll turn it over to my colleagues to share the latest from the Small Business Credit Survey, Mels and Mary Hirt.
Mels de Zeeuw: All right. Thank you, David. Thank you everyone for attending today. So together with my colleague, Mary Hirt, we'll be presenting to you a snapshot of the 2020 results from the Small Business Credit Survey. I'll start with giving a little bit of an overview and delving into the state of small businesses. Then my colleague Mary will pick it up and present some data on the impact of COVID and looking forward to the future, how small businesses are looking forward. So, let's go to the next slide.
So, just quickly, David already told us a little bit about the Small Business Credit Survey. It's an annual survey that the Federal Reserve System conducts, all regional banks participate in getting responses. In 2020, we received about 10,000 responses from employer firms and about 5,000 responses from nonemployer firms. When presenting any data on small businesses, we first make sure that we weight these data to try and be representative of the national population of small businesses.
When we present this data to state level to be representative of the population of small businesses in that state, we do so by weighting it on set variables using census data, including rural-urban geography, firm size, and also the race, ethnicity, or ethnicity of a firm's ownership. All right? Let's move to the next slide. So just quick highlights of some of the results from the 2020 survey. So, top level, we found that more than three-quarters of firms experienced a decline in revenues. I mean, that's significant number. Of those, another three-quarters expected that their sales would be about 25 percent smaller because of the pandemic.
We also found that 70 percent of firms expected that sales wouldn't return to normal until the second half of 2021, and about a third of firms didn't think that their firm would survive if sales didn't recover enough. We also included data on PPP [Paycheck Protection Program]. For instance, we found that approval rates vary and tend to be lower among minority businesses. Now, I forgot to mention that if you want to read all these data reports, employer firms just came out last month, and a report on nonemployer firms will come out pretty soon. Let's go to the next slide.
So here, we see a quick snapshot of some demographics of how small businesses look nationally and how they look in the Federal Reserve Sixth District. So that's Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. We see that firms look pretty similar, small businesses tend to be..two-thirds have less than a million dollars in annual revenues, they tend to be firms with less than five employees. But small businesses in the Southeast are a little bit more likely to be owned by people of color and tend to have slightly worse credit profiles. So, either a business credit score or the owner's personal credit score tends to be a little worse than if you look at firms nationally. So, let's go to the next slide, the slide after that.
With that, let's turn to the actual results of 2020 survey. So, immediately, you see the steep drop-off in these lines. So, the blue line indicates an index of how revenues have changed among small businesses in the past 12 months. The yellow line shows an index of employment, how employment has changed at these times. These indexes report the share of firms that have seen growth minus the share of firms that have seen a decline. You see a pretty dramatic drop-off from the previous four years of the survey to how businesses have fared in 2020 in terms of both revenue and the number of employees. So, for instance, in 2020, only about 13 percent of businesses reported a revenue increase, whereas 78 percent of firms reported declining revenues. Eleven percent of businesses hired more people, more employees, whereas 46 percent of firms have shrunk their workforce. So pretty significant effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
So, let's go to the next slide. Now here we see the results from that previous slide, how revenues change for firms. Again, across the U.S., 70 percent of firms reported that revenues dropped, and we break it down by Southeast states. We're only able to show data on five of the Federal Reserve Sixth Districts states. So, we're unfortunately missing Mississippi here.
But we can see the trends are pretty similar to the nation as a whole with just a large share of firms reporting revenue declines, with one exception being Mississippi, which still you see 69 percent of firms have declining revenues. Twenty percent of firms have revenue growth, but it is just a slightly more positive picture than the U.S. as a whole and a divergence from the rest of the Southeast region. So, we did want to highlight that. Let's go to...yeah, thank you.
So, this slide presents data on the financial condition that firms self-reported. This ranged from poor, fair, all the way to excellent, just as a snapshot of how they're doing. Then we break this down by the race or ethnicity of the business's ownership. First, if you look at the blue bars on the left, this indicates the overall share of firms that classified themselves as being in a poor condition and compares it to our five states in the Southeast. Generally, Louisiana, Florida, Alabama firms are looking pretty similar to the 22 percent of firms across the U.S. that are in poor condition. But again, we see that firms in Tennessee appear to be doing a little better, just 13 percent of firms report that. In Georgia, 16 percent of firms that report their poor financial condition.
Now, nationally, we see some pretty stark differences between different groups, by the race, ethnicity of public firms' ownership, with Asian but particularly Black- and Hispanic-owned firms just much more frequently reporting they're in a poor financial condition compared to white-owned firms. In the Southeast, we see similar trends play out, with some notable differences. So for instance, if you look at the three bars in Florida, you look at the orange bar, that's Hispanic-owned firms, you see that in Florida, Hispanic-owned firms report this poor financial condition in a pretty similar frequency to white firms, and you do see a big gap with the performance of Black-owned firms. This gap exists in Georgia and to a smaller degree in Louisiana as well. All right, let's go to the next measure of firm performance.
So, here we're looking at the share of firms that have reported they're facing some sort of financial challenge, one or more financial challenges. Now nationally, we saw a big increase in the share of firms that report any financial challenges. Now, what is a financial challenge? This could include a firm's ability to pay their operating expenses, to pay their rent, to make debt payments, to purchase inventory, to fulfill contracts they have going, and some other problems as well.
We saw a big uptick in the share of firms with one of these challenges, at least one of these challenges, from about two-thirds of firms last year to 80 percent of firms this year. Again, if you look at the blue bars on the left, you see how firms overall are doing in the Southeast, and you see that it's a pretty similar picture to the nation as a whole. Now, generally, larger shares of minority-owned firms across the country we find report these challenges. This is particularly the case in Georgia and Florida. Now, in Florida, I think the situation with spending on firms is interesting because the previous measures seem to indicate that we're doing a little bit better here, you see that 94 percent Hispanic-owned firms in Florida report one or more financial challenges.
So, let's go to the next slide. This chart shows us what firms expect their next year's revenues will be. So, it's a proxy of how optimistic firms are about the future. It's important in terms of investment and what you can expect; more optimistic firms are more likely to hire more employees. It's a pretty striking difference in the Southeast compared to the nation as a whole. So, across the U.S., we find that it's a very mixed picture. About 41 percent of firms expect their revenues to go down over the next 12 months, 40 percent of firms expect growth. Interestingly, Tennessee firms are about as optimistic as firms nationally, but in other Southeast states, we see a greater degree of optimism. Particularly in Georgia, we've seen 53 [percent] and in Florida, 51 percent of firms expect growth in the next calendar year, and to a somewhat smaller extent, firms are more optimistic in Alabama as well. So, we wanted to share that finding with you. With that, I'd like to turn it over to my colleague, Mary Hirt.
Mary Hirt: Thanks, Mels. So now having looked at the general state of small business, we'd like to move into looking specifically at small business responses to the pandemic through both an emergency funding and recovery lens. Next slide, please.
We first want to look at the effects the pandemic has had on business operations in the five southeastern states and nationally. On the far right of this chart, you can see that 95 percent of employer firms across the U.S. reported that the pandemic affected their operations, and the effect on operations can vary from reduced or modified operations, temporarily closing, expanding, or, in some cases, no impact at all. If we look first at Alabama, we observed that fewer Alabama firms reduced their operations due to the pandemic and were more likely to temporarily close than firms nationally.
Additionally, compared to 5 percent of firms nationally who expanded their operations, we see that in both Georgia and Tennessee, 11 percent of firms expanded their operations due to the pandemic and were less likely as well to temporarily close their businesses. So here, we think that some of the drivers potentially leading to operational changes can include the changing demands of products and services, government mandates and their effects on business operations, needing to adapt to new health and safety guidelines. Next slide, please.
Having already looked at how business operations are impacted by the pandemic, we next wanted to move into looking at the number of firms applying for emergency funding. In the Southeast, we saw that 90 percent of employer firms sought emergency assistance funding compared to 91 percent nationally, so very comparable. That's shown on the far right of this chart, with only 9 percent of firms nationally not applying for emergency funding. The most common emergency funding source sought was PPP or Paycheck Protection Program, with 74 to 87 percent of all firms in the Southeast applying for that. The next three most common sources firms applied to for emergency funding were EIDL loans, or Economic Industry Disaster Loans, EIDL grants, and then grants from state or local governments. The last thing to note on this slide is again, while only we saw 9 percent of firms nationally not applying for emergency funding, there's a bit of an anomaly in Tennessee where we see 17 percent of firms not applying for emergency assistance funding. We can go to the next slide.
Now moving toward looking to the future, we next wanted to look at the expected effect COVID-19 will have on sales, specifically from firms who believe that their sales will be decreasing in the future. So nationally, we saw that 81 percent of firms reported a decrease in sales as a result of the pandemic. Here on this chart, you can see that 65 percent of firms expecting a decrease anticipate the decline to be greater than 25 percent. From this chart, we can also see that Georgia, Florida, and Alabama are all relatively in line with those national expectations. However, we see a more optimistic response in Tennessee, with only 15 percent of firms expecting a decrease in sales to be greater than 50 percent and slightly less optimistic response in Louisiana, with 39 percent of firms expecting decrease in sales greater than 50 percent compared to 32 percent of firms nationally. Next slide.
Lastly, we wanted to look at what challenges firms are expecting to face in the next 12 months due to the pandemic. Overall, we see that 95 percent of firms nationally expect to face at least one or more pandemic-related challenges in the next 12 months. The challenges we asked about range from a weakened demand for products and services, government-mandated restrictions or closures, supply chain disruptions, credit availability, labor shortages, and owners' or employees' personal and family obligations. So, across the board, the most significant expected challenge is a weakened demand for products and services, as seen in the chart in dark blue. This ranges from 52 percent to 59 percent in the southeastern states expecting a weakened demand and 59 percent of firms nationally.
In the red bars, you can see that all southeastern states, and especially Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee, have fewer firms expecting government-mandated restrictions and closures compared to 53 percent of firms nationally. Additionally, compared to 17 percent of firms in the U.S., credit availability in the orange bar is a greater concern in all five southeastern states. In conclusion, the 2020 survey findings highlight the magnitude of the pandemic's impact on small business and the challenges they anticipate as they navigate changes in the business environment due to the pandemic. In the 2020 SPCS, we find that few firms avoided the negative impacts of the pandemic and furthermore revealed disparities and experiences and outcomes across firm and owner demographics. Next slide.
So today, we encourage you to go to FedSmallBusiness.org to look at the Employer Firms Report and the accompanying data appendix, which includes the state-level data we presented here today. Future publications, as Mels mentioned, will explore the impact of the pandemic on different subsets of businesses, including a report on firms owned by people of color, which will be released early this spring. And we'll also have a report on nonemployer firms coming out later this year. So, thank you so much. Now I'm going to pass it on to my Atlanta Fed colleague Janelle Williams to kick off our panel.
Janelle, right now, you are on mute. Hi, Janelle. You're still on mute.
Jackson: So, we seem to be having a little technical difficulty again while Janelle gets her mute off.
Janelle Williams: Good morning.
Jackson: It looks like it's there. Go ahead, Janelle. Great.
Williams: Great, wonderful. Good morning. Thank you for joining this conversation. So, we all heard some sobering statistics. We are pleased to be joined by a brilliant panel to offer some additional insights around what this means on the ground, what are some policy levers to buffer, even reverse these trends, and what are some innovative ideas, innovative investment opportunities, to support small businesses. So please join me in welcoming our guests. Latresa McLawhorn Ryan is the executive director of Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative, an intermediary organization leveraging ideas, people, and capital to close the racial wealth gap in Atlanta. Thank you, Latresa.
Joyce Klein is the director of the Business Ownership Initiative, which advances business ownership as an economic opportunity strategy. Ines Hernandez is the South Florida market leader for Citi community relations, and she developed and catalyzes innovative initiatives that expands equitable opportunities for South Florida's communities. Brian Bond is a senior VP of Experian Business Information Services, where he is responsible for leading product marketing strategy and investment for the commercial bureau. We have shared their bios in the chat, which provides additional details. Welcome, panelists. Thank you for joining this timely conversation. So, let's get to the matter at hand. What strikes you about the data that's been presented?
Latresa McLawhorn Ryan: Well, I'll jump in here. So, there were actually a number of items that struck me about the data. But I think what stuck out most was that 71 percent of those who participated needed funding of $250,000 or less. I think that's important to note, particularly since 48 percent require funding less than $100,000. But I think it's important to note because there's a lot of opportunity and funding going into all traditional resources or financial service providers such as CDFIs [community development financial institutions]. But CFDIs are often positioned to provide loans and capital that's $150,000 or above.
It's important to note that we should explore other intermediaries in capital providers to ensure that the capital can be provided at that level. This is particularly true in the Black community where they often have revenue-based businesses or don't or may have some aversion to debt. As a result, either use debt early on such as SBA loan to secure their businesses and have been able to sustain themselves and their growth through their revenue. I think it's important to note that we have to have other vehicles like line of credit and other vehicles that are available to access not just in times of challenge that the pandemic has presented, but overall, to ensure that all businesses have an opportunity to access the credit and capital that they need.
Brian Bond: That was really well said. Maybe Janelle I can offer a perspective from experience point of view on some of the data, which strikes us because we can see some of the data on our side. I think many people on the call would know Experian is one of the world's leading consumer credit bureaus. But we're also one of the leading providers of business information services. So, from this viewpoint, we can validate a lot of the findings that Mels and Mary shared and talk to some of those trends they just hit on there. One of the challenges that sticks out for me is the percentage of minority-owned business owners that are in the high-credit-risk band compared to their white counterparts.
A lot of the reasons for that we see in the data and again, they kind of corroborate the survey we saw, limited access to capital, therefore, likely utilization is very high. But at the same time, we also see it significantly help your business, significantly less bankruptcies, less tax liens, and much collections activity. So, when the business data is showing that they're less credit active but still a healthy business, we know there's systematic changes and challenges we need to address to begin to change the lending environment to address this kind of disparity.
I know we're going to get a chance to talk about that a little bit more this morning. I really like the comments Latrice just made about some of those options. So, I just wanted to share that with you, that same thing in the actual data there. It's heartbreaking, I'm hoping we can do something about it.
Williams: Thank you for sharing your comments. I really wanted to ask you to offer feedback. I'm going to turn to Joyce and Ines, around the White House recent announcements on changes to the PPP. There is a two-week window where smaller businesses, firms with less than 20 employees, have exclusive access to apply to the program. This was designed to support smaller businesses of color, microbusinesses, and even applicants that before were excluded from the program to be able to participate. What do you think needs to happen on the ground to really make this accessible? What are some policy levers to make this opportunity sustainable? Ines, can you start?
Ines Hernandez: Sure, first of all, I was so happy to see that, because especially in a community like Miami, actually 81 percent of our private establishments have 10 or less employees. So, it's the lifeblood of a community like ours. The first round of PPP, really, they were left out for numerous reasons. But what we noticed, and the learning from the first time, was it's a really diffuse environment, information is diffuse, a lot of these really microbusinesses aren't connected to their chambers. They don't have a way to plug in for technical assistance.
So, at least what we did, and I think what we can learn for hopefully this new round of PPP that is aimed for them is what worked for us when we did, by the way, produce a creative product that was in line for them was we had this amazing and concerted effort of a campaign that not just had mass media and social media, but aggregated small audiences through these small community organizations, and then put boots on the ground. They kept reinforcing each other and created a momentum to really get the word out about the opportunity. But I really don't think it's just about putting money or dollars toward a program. You really have to almost build the infrastructure or the scaffolding around that.
Joyce Klein: Great. Thanks, Janelle. Happy to offer some thoughts here. First of all, I would just echo what Ines said, that to reach the smallest businesses, there's a lot of work that can be done. It's really important at the community level to really organize folks to get the word out, particularly among folks who are typically not connected to traditional resources, banks, chambers, all the folks who are connected to that, you need to find a way to reach them, I think is really important. Let me know if my sound is not okay, because something sounded weird to me. I'm okay, great. Okay, thanks.
Williams: It's great.
Klein: The other thing I would say is a number of the changes that were announced this week and from the first two rounds were really helpful addressing barriers that we were hearing from CDFIs, they were facing in trying to reach certain entrepreneurs. So, making it much more clear about and easier to deal with self-employed individuals who are a huge part of our business base, but who are really difficult to serve. Allowing lenders to lend to folks who have an ITIN [individual taxpayer identification number] but not a social security number brings in a whole lot of business owners, reducing or eliminating the bans on lending to folks, getting PPPs to folks who had nonfraud felony convictions or who were delinquent on student debt. Really important changes, I think.
Two other things that are important, I think, for the lenders who are trying to step into this market but have to think about their own financial condition. One is that the way that program was changed to really cover the costs of folks who were doing the smaller loans, Latresa is absolutely right. If you're going to reach small businesses and businesses owned by people of color, you have to do smaller-dollar loans. The way the PPP was structured, if you were doing $10,000, $20,000 loans, you are not able to cover your costs as a lender for originating those loans.
So the fact that the structures have been changed, so that there's a much higher fee for loans under a certain amount makes it much easier for lenders who want to do those loans but don't have a way to pay the people who are going to do the work to be able to do it. Then the other piece is for some CDFIs who are again reaching businesses who banks are not, to have access to the Fed's liquidity money. The liquidity window was really helpful. So, we're hearing for CDFIs that are really stepping into this round, that was really, really important. Those who can get access to the window, that's a really important thing.
Williams: Great, thank you for sharing those comments. I anticipate we will get additional questions from our audience around the changes made to the PPP program, both opportunities and implications. Brian, I wanted to follow up with you to really set the stage around what are some ideas you think are really important to explore? When we think about this recovery and really supporting our recovery through existing programs, doing this without interrogating structural limitations can actually reinforce some inequitable outcomes. So how could policies and practices be expanded to assess the viability of a business in a nonfinancial way? How could we think about expanding the rules of engagement so that we see greater participation from small businesses of color, microbusinesses, younger firms?
Bond: Such a good question, thanks for bringing it up. It's a complex problem. I think let's start off by saying there isn't a silver bullet. I think Ines and Joyce, you hit on a couple points there that were really, really important where the holistic solution needs to be in place. Some of that is systematic in how our financial system works right now and our lending environments work right now. Some of that is from an outreach perspective and a programs perspective. I think for us to make a real impact against this problem, it has to be a combination of all three of those things: education and credit awareness within the community, engagement at the community level with some of the great programs my colleagues here on the panel put forward, but then also support for banks and the lending environment to allow them to think differently about these communities and how to approach them. I think we have some good ideas already. I start off again with the data and what we can see.
Because we can see stark patterns for underserved communities. I mentioned one a few minutes ago, but the other one that really starts for us is the interplay in the pattern between personal and business credit. It really foreshadows the problems that we're seeing in the systematic approach we have to addressing small business in need of funding or capital. We see founders of color are less likely to seek capital for some of the reasons that Mary hit on earlier. We see a reliance on personal funds and personal credit, if that's even an option, which we know in some of these communities it's really not.
The result of that really is that business credit isn't being built and established, while we're also impacting personal credit through high utilization. That makes a future business loan in our current environment really, really hard. So, it's almost a vicious cycle. So again, we can't have a one-size-fits-all approach to this. But one thing I think that we can start to approach this with is from a policymaker or a policy standpoint or regulation standpoint, it's a relatively easy place for us to start.
Really, it's around what kind of clarity can we provide bankers on consideration of nontraditional financial data? Views that can be used for decisioning in the lending environment that are safe and sound, just like traditional data, but helps the bank provide a more certain aspect or certain visibility into the total history of business activities, their cash flow, their payroll, their ways that we can help look at a business through alternative lenses in addition to the traditional lenses that really start to paint a brighter picture of what business health looks like. I think this could go a long way in helping small businesses and especially businesses of color to get access to that early-stage capital or get access to the growth capital they need at the time that they want to expand their business.
But without that clarity from policymakers and regulators, really, it provides a little bit of a barrier for banks to think differently and have that confidence that they can use these data sets. I'll just leave you with one example that I like to use over and over. Take an example like a food truck business that might have 10 or 12 vehicles in a community with lines around the corner every day, that's a very cash-intensive business. Their traditional credit footprint is going to be very, very light, but they're clearly a healthy business. So, a wider view of both traditional and nontraditional data would provide that business a better access to capital. So, those are some of the systematic changes I think we need to think about in the current lending environment.
Williams: Thank you, Brian. Those are really helpful ideas and recommendations as we think about expanding the menu of options for small businesses. Latresa, I want to turn the conversation to you. As an intermediary with a race-explicit focus, you've clearly articulated that capital is not the silver bullet to address these issues. Can you share what you're seeing on the ground in terms of structural limitations and innovative ideas to help small businesses thrive and really weather this crisis?
McLawhorn Ryan: Sure. I'll say, while, capital is not the silver bullet, it certainly is helpful to have it locked and loaded. So, we don't want to diminish that at all. However, what we found at Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative and just through our partners in the community is that it's important, in addition to financial capital, social capital is important, access to technical expertise. One thing that happened during the early stages of distribution for PPP is that a lot of businesses in what we call the missing middle, and it's interesting because your report has indicated that they are indeed the missing middle, that $100,000 to $1 million, $1.5 million range. They're not quite at the level where they have an ongoing relationship with their banker or CPA or technical service provider. But they're also beyond the stage of an accelerator or incubator.
So, they are building thriving businesses, but for additional capital are not able to grow it at the rate that they need. But critical to that, and just critical to business development or revenue growth, is this social capital piece to have access to business development opportunities or relationships to grow. Additionally, additional access to technical assistance. Again, they're not at the level of a more established business or they are established, I should say a larger business or a larger revenue business where they have to have regular conversations with their technical expertise providers.
Or on the other hand, with accelerators. So, having access to that technical assistance as needed, meeting them where they are, not a kind of general curriculum, but really meeting them where they are to help guide them for growth, many businesses in the Black-owned community, a lot of entrepreneurs, they may be the only entrepreneur they know, or they may be the only entrepreneur in the space in which their business and sector in which your business operates. So, really understanding the tricks of the trade and opportunities for growth and lessons learned and having some connectivity to that is really critical. Finally, I'll just add, that another critical component that we've noticed on the ground, and we were able to develop a community loan fund, which is a revolving community loan fund as well as provide grants in response to COVID is that there really is a need to provide flexible capital or flexible criteria.
A way to do that is by being more proximate, either through community partners or through your culture as a financial service provider, so that you can provide the kind of capital needed at the level that a lot of our community-based businesses serve. With that, it's important that the underwriting criteria is very flexible, but also the terms in providing, for example, at our community loan fund, businesses can opt in to credit reporting, which helps them to—Brian's point— build business credit, which allows capital down the line to be more affordable and accessible. So, those are some of the things that we're seeing on the ground that have been helpful and useful to be more inclusive of the broader community, particularly within the Black community.
Williams: Thank you so much for sharing those examples, Latresa. It's really helpful. Joyce, we're having a conversation that's really at a macro level. It's important to have this conversation at a macro level. But the small businesses we're talking about, they're really economic anchors for their communities. They are the sole place sometimes to get fresh food or a much-needed service. So, what do you think are some of the factors that need to be considered to really support small businesses as the engines for these local economies? What are some levels do you think we need to draw more intentionally on?
Klein: Yeah. Happy to speak to that. I want to go back, build on something that Brian and Latresa both commented on, and just be clear about something, because Latresa talked about the fact that many businesses owned by people of color, particularly Black-owned firms, are smaller and need smaller amounts of credit. Brian talked about the fact that they often have higher credit utilization, weaker credit scores. I just want to draw the line back to the fact that the reason we see these kinds of outcomes is because of structural racism.
It's not because of some inherent weakness in the business or the business owner. It's because the fact that we've denied people of color opportunities to build and hold wealth means it's harder for them to invest in their own businesses, because we've denied them access to build credit and to access affordable credit products, their credit profiles look weaker. They're overleveraged. They have, some cases, higher debt levels. Occupational segregation has meant that people of color are often in businesses that are in certain industries where they've been sort of forced or allowed to work that have lower revenues, lower profit margins, and exclusion from networks and markets and information limits your ability to build a business. So, I just want to call that out, about what the reason is. Those are the issues we have to confront in order to address some of these issues.
I think some of the things I think we need to do, I think we need to invest in building lenders who are much more likely to serve these businesses. To me, that's CDFIs. That's minority depositories. It's other mission-led lenders, who are much more likely to serve those that traditional banks don't want to serve and to do the kinds of work that Latresa is talking about, about how really to get in community and understand and be flexible to the needs of those who are there. I think one of the lessons from past recessions and disasters is, if you will offer relief on SBA programs that run through banks, you're going to miss a whole set of folks who desperately need aid. So, we need to think about that.
I do want to maybe do a little bit of a counterpoint to a point that Latresa noted. I mean, you noted, Latresa, that CDFIs often don't want to make loans less than $150,000 so we need to think about other lenders. I will say, I think it's absolutely the case that we do not see enough CDIF lending in smaller-dollar amounts. I will also note that we work with a collaborative of six CDFIs that are microlenders. They do thousands of loans a year under $50,000. Seventy-five percent of their business owners are people of color. I think there's ways that they underwrite that are much more focused on cash flow than on credit score collateral, which allows them into that market.
I also think the other thing gets to the economics of small-dollar lending, which is the reason that banks don't want to do these loans. It's often the reason that CDFIs don't want to make these loans. Then sometimes CDFIs are making hard financial choices about how they manage to stay sustainable and managed to stay alive. So, I think we need to think not only about how we get money to these lenders, to CDFIs, minority depositories, but how we create the right forms of subsidy incentives for them to be able to do lots of small-dollar loans, which is what's needed in this marketplace.
I think that Latresa has pointed out needing equity or near-equity products is essential. I guess the other thing that I would say is that the community is important, but the federal rules and the federal policies set the stage for a lot of what needs to happen. So just a couple things that I think federal policies that are really important to making things work in CDFI fund and some of the money in the stimulus bill for CDFIs and minority depositories will allow them to grow in ways. The State Small Business Credit Initiative, which is being discussed as part of the stimulus bill, is going to be really important. The data in the Small Business Credit Survey show that people are worried about revenues, and revenues being down, and there's going to be risk in the economy, and lenders are going to need additional credit in the essence to be able to lend and the [technical difficulties].
The other thing I will just say is, in the wake of the last recession, we had a lot of nonbank lenders coming into the market. Some of them had really good products that were serving folks the banks were no longer serving. Some of them had some problematic products in terms of high costs, lack of transparency, and I think we need policy to deal with that as well. That's me.
Bond: Perhaps maybe I could jump in on the last point. Really great, great summary there. I think you made some really, really strong points. I'm really interested in maybe addressing a little bit of that products in the market that we're at, high rates or nontransparent or really last-option resorts. You see this in the survey about when it comes to satisfaction and use of some of those alternative products out there. I think there's definitely some opportunity for guidance there for that segment of the products that are in there in the market.
Also, I think that that's a product of the lack of visibility on the total health or the actions of a small business. So, when we think about those that are not credit active or that are not necessarily in the financial system today, it doesn't necessarily represent that they are small businesses just starting out or fragile or risky. It could just be that they're out of the system. I think to your earlier point, they haven't had an avenue to get into the traditional financial systems, they are already disadvantaged. I think some of these alternative products tried and offered that step up into the product, but don't do enough because of that lack of visibility, because of a lack of understanding around whether that's at a local level of understanding actually who this business is and how they're operating.
Or that's more of a data level and can have a clearer picture of everything that's going on in that business that may not be traditionally financially focused, I guess. As we keep saying, it's a combination of a couple of different thoughts to address the issue, but I think it's really good that you called that out. Thank you.
Williams: So, I'm going to invite Ines to rejoin the conversation, because I think it's important, what we're really focusing on is like moving beyond these blunt investment instruments and strategies, right? Ines, what are you seeing in your work in South Florida that is emerging as a promising practice to address some of the nuance to connected and disparate outcomes that Joyce referenced as we're thinking about supporting small businesses through this crisis and really helping to facilitate their sustainability long term as well?
Hernandez: Thank you for that. Not to diminish the need for those blunt instruments. Of course, we need them. But I guess where we've been focusing over the past few years. Really, to be honest, it was after the last recession, that even when you inject capital, just there's an absorption issue, right? We've been looking at really complex systemic issues and how we can improve, hate to use the word, an enabling environment. But that's funny, I can't think of a better word. So, there's two things I'd like to talk about quickly. What we did after the Great Recession, and then how we capitalize on the current emergency. Really, both things were important in this current emergency that we're facing.
So, after the Great Recession, we commissioned a study from FIU [Florida International University] just to understand what was happening in our local economy. Without a doubt, one of the biggest takeaways is that all the gains we had made within economic mobility across race and income were erased, or the income quintile was impacted. This was having a major drag on our local economy. So, we were beyond trying to make a case, a moral case, which of course I can make, but there's a business case to be made about how do you design interventions that are complex, maybe not sexy, definitely not silver bullets, and required, to be quite frank with you, a village to come together in some unusual bedfellows?
So, some of the things that we started work on immediately was putting together an anchor alliance in partnership with the Health Foundation of South Florida. That took us about three and a half years, four years. How do you bring the procurement? We're talking about revenue with that crazy drop, I think it was 81 percent drop in revenue in the businesses that you surveyed. Well, for me, if you just come out at an inclusive recovery from just a debt perspective, I think you're missing the boat. We have to figure out how do we have access to the revenue to help small businesses recovering that aspect, too. In a way, all the work that we had done around the anchors and bringing those 20 anchors together had an effect.
Now, I'll give you an example. We saw one small business that was in branding and the swag type of materials. At the start of the pandemic, of course, nobody was having conferences. His sales fell to the floor. We're able through the Anchor Alliance to plug in him to be able to pivot toward PPE [personal protective equipment] and using his supply chains to do that.
We have another business, for example, that she actually, on a good day, was able to revive her business through anchors, universities, and airports. But then at the start of the pandemic, there's no students, and there were no people at the airports. So, she also was struggling, but through the Anchor Alliance, she was also able to pivot and get into hospitals and the county. So that's not the kind of thing that we could have pulled off in a crisis in the moment. But because we were doing all this work leading up to it, we were well positioned during this current crisis. That was the whole point of that. Look, the other thing we looked at right after the last Great Recession were conversions. We're thinking about the silver tsunami at the time and legacy businesses and how can we preserve this talk space.
Then here comes the pandemic. To be frank with you, a lot of these business owners who have nobody to sell their business to don't want to deal with one more financial crisis. What would that risk was the closure of more businesses and the loss of those jobs when maybe, with the right tools, we can preserve them and make the employees not only preserve the jobs, but actually offer them an avenue to earn more assets or earn more. Then there was the opportunity of the actual pandemic. I say opportunity, I know that maybe doesn't go together. But for me, sometimes emergencies are the best way to accelerate people coming together, where the other initiatives took years in the making, there are others that came together within months.
A perfect example was in the very early days, in March of the pandemic, I did a call down to our partners. I asked them, "What is the number one issue?" Nobody was talking about credits in businesses or technical assistance. It was information, trusted information that they could give to their community partners or businesses that wasn't overwhelming, to be honest. So, we launched a portal that took all this information, it's called Axis Helps. Really made it easy to understand, wasn't just a wall of information, overwhelming. It's from the federal, state, local, philanthropic, it's all that information just managed and always up to date.
Not only is it important to the small businesses, but also to the nonprofits that help navigate resources and has been instrumental in being a backbone. So, when I was telling you about that revolving loan product that we set up with our CDFIs, that was small-dollar amount, by the way, to get those boots on the ground, was this portal. They actually had people that were able to understand the data, and understand where businesses were, and be able to activate the communities around those small businesses so they could have the help. When the anchors wanted to be helpful and offer avenues to their procurement at the start of the pandemic, it was the portal that took 20 different avenues.
I mean, imagine a small business trying to navigate 20 different ways to enter into an anchor to procure. We're working on that, that's a long-term fix. But the portal gave one place where they can go and seek all that information. So, a lot of times, we're talking about businesses that are barely hanging on, on a good day. Then you throw in a crisis. It's diffused, that's why I mentioned before, everything's diffused. Information is diffused. Opportunities being like, for example, procurement is diffused, technical assistance is diffused.
It's, I think, unfair on top of everything else that we ask of these small businesses to also have to manage all these other things. I guess what I'm saying to the general public is that it I think it takes a village, it takes intentionality, it takes creating the enabling environment. So, whatever programs or initiatives that you are trying to design, when you plant them, there's a way for it to actually take root.
Williams: Thank you, Ines. Those are really great, concrete examples of what you can do to really help buffer these businesses during this time. I really appreciate the example around the entrepreneur with swap products and really transitioning to PPE. I think it really leads us to a point in our agenda where we are eager to get the audience involved.
We have received some really interesting questions in our Q&A, so I'm going to start reading some of these questions. Hopefully, we'll get to two or three, because we really want to make sure we get audience participation in this. I'm excited to hear your thoughts as well. So, first question really says from Stephanie, "So much of the focus on small businesses is on the owners. Yet they employ almost half the workforce. What measures would support their workers, who largely bear the risk of these businesses? Low wages, fluctuating income, few benefits, and rarely do they receive the upside. Any recommendations to this question?"
I will just say as an aside, we did a brief analysis looking at the demographic composition of employees in small businesses within our District. We found, by and large, it was disproportionately workers of color. They were younger workers, and they were less credentialed. As we think about the workers for these smaller businesses, I'm really interested to hear your thoughts around what measures could actually support them to weather this pandemic.
Klein: Janelle, I'm happy to jump in a little bit. Although I will say, the program I work with at the Aspen Institute, the Economic Opportunities Program, actually does a lot of work on small business job quality, but it's not my area of work. So, I know less about it. I may be able to chat out a link or two to folks or we can send it out later about some of that work.
Williams: That would be great, that would be great.
Klein: So, I think it's really important, this is a really important point. There's a lot of our workforce that is employed in small firms. I think someone also asked the question about what do we think about the impact of the $15 minimum wage, which gets to this, because people are obviously really concerned about what the impact is on small businesses. I think certainly in the short term, there are some small businesses that are going to be affected by it.
But I think, to me, the ultimate question is, where do we give people more opportunity to benefit from the value of the productive work they're putting in, in the economy? So, one of the ways I think about this question is that there are a lot of people who are self-employed because their options in the labor market in terms of what they will pay, what they can do, are not great. So that's why they're self-employed. We actually get them to a place where they're employed in a better-quality job, that may be a better outcome for them.
We may have some people moving out of self-employment, some people moving out of small firms. But so much of how our economy is structured right now is based on the fact that we have low job quality. It's a problem across our economy, and I think one we need to fix. I think the things that we do, whether it's for small firms or in big firms to raise job quality, we're actually going to end up in a bigger economy, although we may see some impacts on firms along the way.
I don't want to go too far down that road, but I do think that's really important. The other thing that I will say is that in some of the work we've done on small business job quality, there's a lot of interest in small employers in having better-quality jobs for their workers. They're trying to deal with constraints that they feel like they face, which are in many cases much more structural or much have to do with the structure of the industry. So, how do I access affordable health care for my workers?
I would like to be able to offer them health care, I can't find a good way to offer them affordable health care. So, I think that's a real critical question, is I do think there's actually interest there if we can create sort of the right policy construct for them to be able to do that. Then the other thing I will say is that Ines just briefly talked about transitions or conversions to employee ownership. I think the more we give people a stake in the places where they work, the more we'll be able to help people have better jobs and build wealth.
Hernandez: I just want to add one quick thing to what she said?
Williams: Yeah.
Hernandez: Because what she said about health care reminded me again of the empanada company, the one that I'd mentioned to you, because I asked her, by the way, she was interviewed by president Biden yesterday. When you ask her what her goal was, she said, "I want to be able to afford to give health care to my workers." When we talk about the pathway, how she can do that, it is being able to expand her revenue, which a lot of times it's such an overwhelming task for a community to take on, how do you do that? Which is why for us, we started with what we have as an asset, which are anchors. In South Florida, we estimate the anchors at the table have $222 billion in procurement. So how much of that can we find on-ramps for our local businesses so that it can grow their business and be able to offer those kinds of benefits to their employees?
Williams: Thank you, Joyce and Ines. I want to switch to another question that came in. We are dealing with a pandemic and it's unleashing the tragedy of loss. As a result of that, what we're seeing is that there will be gaps in loan payments and loss of insurance coverage are some potential risks. So, what are some opportunities to really think about supporting small businesses around their succession plan? How are we actually supporting this for small businesses of color, in particular, in a time when they are challenged to weather so many unknowns? Latresa.
McLawhorn Ryan: Yeah. I can speak to this. I'm a former estate planning attorney. During the last recession, I had a law firm focused on estate planning, asset protection, and nonprofit law, serving venture capitalist private equity firm owners and small businesses. So, I can speak to this intimately. I think first of all, as was the case in the last recession, the time for estate planning and business succession is not in a time of crisis. It's leading up to this and preparation for that. So what we're doing at Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative as part of our 1,000 Black Businesses in 1,000 Days campaign that we've launched, is there is an anti-displacement retention pillar to the work that part of the focus is on business succession and estate planning, providing and connecting services to legacy business owners, established business owners so that they can prepare for smooth transitions whether they be through acquisition or retirement or to preserve generational wealth within that, not just within that business owner's family, but within the community as a whole because we know that, at least here in Atlanta, a lot of our historically Black neighborhoods are very vulnerable to market forces at this point. When some of those legacy businesses or established businesses are gone, it sends a message to the broader community about a shift in that community. And as a result, shifts the culture and other access to resources for the existing legacy business or excuse me, legacy residents.
Another component of that is introducing worker-owned models. So, employee ownership as an equity, excuse me, as an exit strategy, as well as introducing established professionals who are not perhaps interested in starting a business from scratch. They want to buy a business with goodwill, but at the same time, retains, in our case, focusing on retaining Black ownership within a community.
Doing that, planning ahead of time, beginning to cultivate relationships, beginning to cultivate partnerships, part of our 1,000 Black Businesses program is also an anchor strategy that can help those businesses with revenue growth to sustain level living-wage jobs and create living-wage jobs and sustain growth. All of that has to be done together in order to create a healthy ecosystem and ultimately, a healthy community of businesses and workers. So, I'll just leave it there. But it's a critical part. I'm glad they asked that question because many business owners don't. They don't prepare or don't know that they should be thinking about business succession beyond their immediate family.
Williams: Thanks, Latresa. Thanks for giving us that context around ways to really mitigate some of the risks and think about both scale and succession simultaneously. We had a really interesting question that came in from Kiera around where we could leverage social capital and network as part of really assessing business value. It bleeds a bit into this character-based space. Kiera's question was really like, and we started this conversation, and thinking about how we could expand the rules of engagement.
So, how could we really lean into business valuation by incorporating their access to social capital and networks in their loan applications? Crowdfunding is essentially a quasi-proxy for some of this, because it does rely on networks for some of this financing. But I was really curious to hear the panel's thoughts on this approach and how you could potentially implement and synthesize this in an innovative but sustainable way. Any thoughts on that?
McLawhorn Ryan: I'll start, but I'll be brief. What we noticed from a social capital perspective with our COVID fund was that.... Sorry, it was that having a review committee, again, going back to being proximate, but having a review committee that was familiar with community, in fact, all financial service experts, but financial experts, but having an understanding of the social capital, and the meaning of that business in that community. So, they had a sense, personally, of the opportunities for growth and sustainability for that business either because they frequented it itself or they had a sense of how the community supports or the market supports that business long term.
Bond: Yeah, maybe I'll add in, I think you can proxy that as more of a broader level as well. When you look at the activity that businesses might have and the reputation they might have in the community or even broadly, if it's a business that has reach outside the community, there are different data sources and different kind of measures that even if you're not as intimately familiar with the people behind the business can really serve as a proxy for what is the reputation within the community, within their customer base. I think those are really important for us to look at and factor in as proxies for that work that might exist.
Hernandez: I have an interesting example. Okay, sorry.
Williams: Go ahead, Ines. That will be great. We love examples.
Hernandez: Of course, it's not a perfect shoo-in. But it's interesting in maybe an adjacent example, we funded a food entrepreneur accelerator at FIU, where we leveraged a commercial kitchen that they have for food entrepreneurs that were cooking from their home. How do you get them into a commercial kitchen? But what I guess one of the things we realize in the process is that FIU also had relationships with the industry. You're able to get them on shelves, markets, and in places that they would never have been able to do on their own.
One of the things that also started to happen is because they're coming through a major anchor and had that approximate, those relationships, with Whole Foods and Publix and whatnot, the lenders also especially in the community lenders were more active listening and entertaining them. Whereas they just had been a home-based business, they had not. So, there was almost lent social capital, I don't know if that makes sense, by going and pairing with an anchor and their relationships that the small businesses benefited from. I think it was an interesting case study.
McLawhorn Ryan: I just want to quickly add that for some folks in the audience that can extend themselves and make introductions and extend their network and promote, that's a critical part of extending social capital. So not just the introduction, but really bringing them into your network of business and growth of your own, to expose them to more opportunities to be included.
Williams: Well, thank you so much, panelists, for such insightful feedback. I'd like to invite you to share your closing thoughts, 30 seconds on what are some key takeaways you would like us to hold from the last recession that we should avoid or lean into more, as we think about supporting an inclusive and resilient recovery for small businesses? Big question. Thirty seconds, what's the tagline?
Klein: I'll jump in. What I think is important is what we're experiencing right now is not just a recession, it's like a disaster and a recession at the same time. Right now, we have a lot of products like PPP and EIDL that are really important, they're really disaster products. This is going to last for a while even when our economy starts to come back, I think the data show that. So, we're going to need the recession, the things that worked out of the last recession, the things that work when the economy slowed, but not as far down as it is right now. Remember that low-income communities and people of color are always the last to recover if we don't get the right pieces in place.
Hernandez: I would just say, there's two things. We have to make sure we understand for whom we are designing our intervention for. I feel a lot of times, we don't do that. I think the first PPP is a perfect example. For a community like Miami, which we're all microbusinesses, it's our lifeblood, there was a mismatch. I think we have to be very intentional about that. But I also think, and it's harder said than done, but I said it before, it really does take a village. This is not a silver bullet, there will not be one program from the feds or from your local government that can solve this.
It really does take the anchors coming to the table, the different employers coming to the table, finding ways, that maybe just you'd think differently about things and develop enduring solutions that are not just for the pandemic, but really here to stay and grow the local economy. I think it's hard, so people don't do it, and they just want an easy answer. I'm sorry to say there isn't. I think it's important to do the hard work, my soul needs an emergency to build that momentum.
McLawhorn Ryan: I'll just...go ahead, Brian.
Bond: No, go ahead, please.
McLawhorn Ryan: Okay. I'll just say to echo some of those points, but to be very specific. I know a lot of people are anxious to get back to normal. I just want to urge everyone to embrace the new normal, that where we were before, it was never equitable. It was never inclusive. We have an opportunity to build upon the lessons that we've learned, the importance of community, the importance of being thoughtful and intentional about how we enter the market and how we consider the economy. We have an opportunity to build on that. So, I want us all to encourage or embrace that fully.
I think that one other thing I want to note particularly as we are being intentional about being inclusive, that it's important to not approach communities of color as if they are deficient in some way. In all cases, any business owner, I don't care if it's a tech business that is in their series C or a new business, everyone needs entrepreneurial residents. Everyone needs someone that has experience to help lead and guide their business through growth, to introduce the business owner and the staff to new ways of doing things to sustain their business.
So, I just encourage, to Ines's point, it's not a silver bullet, one-size-fit-all, to embrace that fully. It does require a sense of community, and a sense of patience, and looking beyond free market capitalism and the bottom line to ensure that our communities are healthy overall, and our economy is healthy overall. The study noted that 99.7 percent of, I think it was, what, overall employer establishments in the United States were small businesses. We have to hold that and treat them as...that number is too big to bail in the same way that we do for some of our larger businesses.
Bond: See, I know you should have gone last. That was so good. No, I just echo everyone and what you said. I think for me, looking at the last recession and this recession, what I take heart in is the resilience in small business owners, of entrepreneurs, right? They don't throw in the towel easily. They push and try to strive to be successful. It's our obligation to meet them least halfway, if not more. I think putting the programs and again, you said it over and over and I agree, there's no silver bullet. But what it takes is everyone taking a higher degree of consciousness, no matter if you're a policymaker, a legislator, a community activist, a service provider, or a lender, what have you, and understanding the community and understanding the challenges and the drivers behind that. Not just understanding but having empathy for the problem and wanting to solve it.
I feel like we're in a moment in time here, where whether it's because of a disaster with a recession or because of a higher degree of consciousness within the community, for us to actually solve some of these problems for lasting effect. If we don't rise to that challenge right now, we'll be very disappointed with our country and all of us, because I think we have a lot of the tools at our hands and disposal to actually make that change. For me, it's not just about how do we create financial inclusion. I think, Latresa, what you said was really impactful because what that's about is belonging, right? Belonging into the broader community, the broader entrepreneurial community, and that's what we need to strive for. So, I encourage everyone on the call to really rise to the challenge that we have today. I think it's the right time.
Williams: Thank you so much, panelists. You really offered concrete examples, big ideas. You challenged us to be bolder. You centered us on root causes that contribute to the inequitable outcomes we see. But really charged us to remember, small businesses should be treated as entities that are too big to fail, they are a lifeline. They're part of our essential community. So, thank you so much for participating in today's discussion. It was really great to have you. We are really excited to share additional resources with you as we continue to think about opportunities to support people and places to bolster an inclusive and resilient recovery. We will be sharing a copy of the presentation, which will include links to the resources that are listed below.
Please register for our upcoming webinar on March 25, which will focus on the Small Business of Color Recovery Guide, which was authored by Kansas City and Atlanta Fed. We are really excited to talk about strategies to support small business ecosystems with a particular focus on small businesses of color. Lastly, we invite you to register to stay in touch. Sign up for our weekly newsletter. We have our information and our contact details if you would like to follow up, if you have additional questions for our panelists, or would like to reach out to anyone on our Atlanta Fed team. Thank you again so much for participating in today's discussion. We're excited to see you in upcoming webinars sessions. Take care and be safe everyone. Thank you.