Get Involved
There is no application. There is a first move.
No dues, no committee, nothing to qualify for. Joining is free and takes two minutes, and it is what turns looking into reaching people. What follows is the part that matters — five things you can do in here, in the order they pay off, and the four things we ask of you in return.
Create your profile
What you actually do here
Write the line that makes you findable
Not a résumé. One sentence a stranger could repeat to somebody else — what you can help with, said plainly enough that a person searching for it would recognize it. It is the only thing the form insists on, because it is the only thing that makes the rest of this work.
Claim your business if it is already in here
The directory holds 2,329 Black-owned businesses across 50 states, gathered from public sources rather than from the owners. If one of them is yours, claiming it puts you behind your own listing — and you are the only person who actually knows whether what it says is still true.
Take a seat in a room
6 rooms — entrepreneurship & business, financial empowerment, education & career growth, creative arts & expression, health & wellness, social justice & advocacy. Anyone can read them. You request a seat to talk, and a seat is a small commitment to answer somebody once in a while rather than only ask.
Put the thing you were going to text two people on the board
The job, the subcontract, the partnership, the board seat, the round you are raising. Those normally travel by private message to whoever you happen to know, which is exactly the access problem this place exists about. Post it here first.
Say whether you will mentor, or want one
Two open lists, and they only work if people are honest about which one they belong on. Being on the mentoring list is not a promise of unlimited time — it means somebody is allowed to ask you.
What we ask of members
Four things, and none of them are attendance. Nobody is checking — but a network is only ever as good as whether the people in it do these.
If you want to do more than join
The directory was built by hand from public sources, and it is still missing plenty. On 153 listings we name the owner and link where it was read — 94 to publications that named them, 59 to the business's own account of itself — and on the rest we say only what we could check. Any of the following makes it better, and none of them need you to be a member first.
- Send a Black-owned business we are missing — the name, the city, and a link that proves it, which is the part that makes it usable.
- Tell us about a listing that is wrong, closed, duplicated, or not actually Black-owned.
- Name a publication that covers Black business and belongs on the Newsstand, or a book that belongs on the shelf.
- Point us at an organization that certifies, lends to, or teaches Black business owners and is not yet in Institutions.
All of it goes to info@blackgatee.com. A correction with a source attached gets acted on the same day.
The first profiles set the tone
Nobody has joined yet, which means whoever writes the first ten decides what this room is for. Free, and there is no queue.
Create your profile