Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs: Removing Barriers (2021)

In 2019, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation published Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs: Removing Barriers, a report that surveyed the landscape of capital available to entrepreneurs and highlighted the need for innovative concepts to improve capital access systems. 

In the two years since publication, much has changed. As we noted in America’s New Business Plan, the fundamental inequities of race, gender, and geography have become even more visible as America confronts the dual pandemics of both COVID-19 and racial injustice. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives and businesses of many entrepreneurs, their families, and their communities. Widespread concerns about public health and the economy have resulted in the shuttering of many small businesses, significant shifts in new entrepreneurial activity, and pervasive uncertainty. 

As the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic consequences persist, the Kauffman Foundation’s work to dismantle the barriers facing many entrepreneurs as they endeavor to start, grow, or sustain businesses becomes even more urgent. The need for access to opportunity, funding, knowledge, and support is perhaps greater than ever before. In particular, one of our primary priorities is to ensure that historically underserved entrepreneurs are able to access the capital required to survive and thrive.  

To help remove these barriers to capital access, our previous research focused on key pieces of infrastructure including capital, people, knowledge, and policy. We raised questions related to these infrastructure pieces, which have served as a call to action.  

We have been responding to this call in the months and years since, and have been learning from our results. We’ve seen that leaders of systems — including philanthropy, corporates, and policy — can broaden access to capital for historically underserved entrepreneurs if they think differently and collaborate together to reach a common goal. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for systems change in our financial systems, and these leaders must push for changes so that new and small businesses gain the access to capital they need to grow.

We want to take this opportunity to document what we have learned, share where we are in our efforts, and highlight possibilities and potential collaborations for these leaders as we move forward. In the report that follows, we discuss the work we have embarked on to generate more innovative and effective ways to support entrepreneurs in accessing capital.