Copyright Forbes
In 2025, Black women-owned businesses accounted for 14% of all women-owned businesses in the U.S., totaling 2.02 million in 2024. Among all women, race, and ethnicity groups, Black women saw the largest year-over-year increase in the number of firms, at 7.1% according to WellsFargo. Yet one challenge remains stubbornly persistent: funding. And not just the funding to launch their endeavors but the resources to scale, adapt, and lead in a rapidly evolving market that demands constant innovation. For many women of color whose majority of businesses are more likely to generate less than $10 million in annual revenue, access to funding remains a structural barrier. Traditional capital paths, like bank loans and venture capital (VC), have long favored established networks and dominant demographics. While grants offer debt-free support, and less than 2% of VC funding reaches female founders, a different path is gaining traction among us: crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is emerging as a powerful alternative for those founders who want to retain ownership, build visibility, engage with their community and raise capital in alignment with their mission. Serial entrepreneurs like Rachel Rodgers, author of the best-selling book We Should All Be Millionaires, are tapping into this model to back ambitious projects that blend business growth with cultural impact, creating platforms that reflect, represent, and redistribute opportunity for historically excluded communities. To better understand how this model can serve as a source of financial stability for women of color in business, I sat down with Rachel Rodgers to discuss her upcoming show, which is currently being crowdfunded. What Is Crowdfunding And How Can It Benefit An Entrepreneur? Crowdfunding allows entrepreneurs to raise money directly from their audience, customers, or community, bypassing traditional institutions and connecting directly with their clients, who become investors in their businesses or projects. Crowdfunding exists in several forms: reward-based, where backers receive gifts, rewards, or exclusive incentives; equity-based, which offers shares in a startup or project and is regulated by the SEC with food, beverage & restaurant industry being the primary beneficiary of this model; and donation-based, where backers can contribute to the project by just donating to the vision. MORE FOR YOU For founders who lack access to venture capital or traditional financing, it offers a low-barrier, highly visible way to bring an idea to life. For Rachel Rodgers, crowdfunding her new series was a strategic move to build her next venture by engaging with her community, raising awareness of the project, and offering rewards, as much a tool for connection as for capital. Her new reality show, focused on entrepreneurs’ lives, was launched via a reward-based crowdfunding platform, with a $155,000 goal. “The entire global majority gets like 2% of billions of dollars in venture capital funding. That means a world being created only by white men. Only white men’s ideas get funded. That’s a problem,” Rodgers said in our conversation for Brown Way To Money podcast episode. When looking to bring a business or project vision to life, funding can be both a major barrier and a way to prove the concept by inviting real people to back a founder and eventually engage with the business. Crowdfunding addresses both. Rodgers explained, “A lot of us have creative, amazing ideas that we aren’t doing because we don’t have enough funding for them. There’s another way and I want to showcase crowdfunding as another option for your creative projects and ideas.” With more platforms emerging, crowdfunding is becoming an essential tool for financial literacy. It gives women of color entrepreneurs a way to test demand, build a customer base, and fuel business growth, even in the absence of institutional support. Beyond Capital, What Else Can Crowdfunding Offer? Capital is only part of the equation. For women of color, crowdfunding delivers another critical asset that is limited to obtain: visibility. It puts founders in front of the people they serve, allowing them to tell their stories, connect with communities, and validate their ideas, publicly. “We are not backed by a rich uncle,” Rodgers said. “We’re figuring it out, scraping by, and making something out of nothing with our own two hands and our ideas.” Crowdfunding platforms reward that hustle. Campaigns with videos showing the reasons behind the project, or the first steps toward making it happen, and compelling narratives raise significantly more than those without. It has been reported that campaigns with video pitches are 105% more likely to reach their goals. For Rodgers, visibility and voice go hand in hand. “Sometimes when you collaborate with a network that’s not 100% aligned, your brand gets so controlled that it no longer feels true to who you are,” she said. “I don’t want to be curated by corporate people in a boardroom. I want to own my narrative.” This is especially important for founders building media, consumer, or culture-facing businesses. With crowdfunding, every campaign becomes a chance to build brand affinity and community loyalty. “Even if you back at $5, you’re part of this,” Rodgers said. Crowdfunding also creates a feedback loop, giving entrepreneurs real-time insights into what resonates, what converts, and who their audience really is. That level of connection is often missing in traditional funding models and represents a key component of financial stability. Can Women Of Color Rewrite Their Industries Through Crowdfunding? Although it could be seen primarily as a way to raise money, crowdfunding can also serve as a strategic tool for long-term sustainability and market relevance,particularly for women of color who have limited opportunities for visibility in many cases. It connects founders directly with their community from the beginning, enabling them to validate their ideas, gain support, and create offerings that reflect real demand. However, many entrepreneurs hesitate to engage publicly because it requires a great deal of trial and error with everyone watching. This positions crowdfunding not only as an alternative to traditional financing but also as a complement for those seeking venture capital, as it checks many of the points VC investors have said they are looking for. Rodgers’ crowdfunding campaign illustrates this dynamic in action. By offering tiered rewards tied to her upcoming reality show, she built a direct feedback loop between her audience and the product. Each contribution signals trust in the project’s vision, a validation that helps to reduce early-stage risk and generate proof of concept in real time. At the close of a successful campaign, founders gain more than just capital. They walk away with a ready-made audience, marketing traction, and meaningful data about their supporters. “We exist. We have something to say. And we’re going to keep building,” Rodgers said. The growth of crowdfunding among women of color may be a response to long-standing financial exclusion that combines what I believe to be key points for financial stability, visibility and capital. From startup dreams to scaling strategies, women of color are rewriting their entrepreneurial playbooks by turning directly to their communities for support. The funding gap that persists may be structural, but for a rising number of founders, crowdfunding platforms are proving that structural change can start from the bottom up.
