Small Business Builder: Boosting Minority Business

May 23 -- Small business is big and getting bigger, and U.S. entrepreneurs are discovering abundant resources, from advice to investors. But conventional services don't always address the particular needs and circumstances of MWBEs — minority- and woman-owned business enterprises.

Scores of public and private organizations offer special MWBE assistance. You'll find many of them on the Web site of the Commerce Department's Minority Business Development Agency, or MBDA (see link at right). It has has dozens of useful features.

A handy locator map, for instance, reveals sources of help in or near your zip code. I checked out the Chicago area, limiting my search to agencies offering "all types of services." The locator turned up about 30 organizations, including the Minority Network for Entrepreneurial Training, Accion Chicago, the Asian-American Alliance, Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council, the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, and the Women's Self-Employment Project.

You can use the site's tools to …

Enter your business in the Phoenix Database — a listing of minority-owned enterprises doing business in the United States — and find minority vendors in the Opportunity Database.

Visit one of the comprehensive "virtual business centers," where you'll find technical, financial, business, and market assistance in aquaculture, manufacturing technology, franchising, and international trade.

Click on one of hundreds of links to the agency's regional and local centers, affiliates, and other organizations that support minority business development.

Find news and special reports, such as "Minority Business: Automotive Opportunities."

An Unfair Advantage?

Not everyone thinks this is a good idea. Some label special assistance for selected groups "reverse discrimination."

Adversity.net, for example, claims to represent "the victims and survivors of racial preferences, quotas, set-asides, and race-based 'targets' and 'goals' in hiring, promotion, school admissions, and government contracting." The organization is, frankly, "proud to be doing something about it."