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Our Origins

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The Black Butterfly Network began in 2019 to support the development of a community of Black business owners in Baltimore. Our goal was to support the individual entrepreneurs' growth, and to support the growth of the network to “Maximize assets and Minimize waste” — Cohado®. Cohado® facilitated the B'more Forward Truth Telling Project, a video exploration to understand the conditions impacting Black entrepreneurs in Baltimore, and to shape innovative and sustainable solutions.

The Black Butterfly Network's Stewardship Council consisted of Black business owners, entrepreneurial support organizations and community leaders. We launched the Black Butterfly Network and the Black Butterfly Exchange in October 2021. Since then we have conducted multiple cohorts totaling 60 businesses and aggregated more than 1000 resources. These businesses remain connected, providing each other much needed support through instant access to the network.

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Strategic Framework

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​​​​​​​Baltimore was chosen by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation as a pilot ESHIP Community to steward the creation of Black Butterfly Network. Due to its historical racial inequalities and socioeconomic disenfranchisement as well as the ground-level work already seeded, Baltimore was an ideal place to add additional resources to foster the growth of equitable entrepreneurship.

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The Black Butterfly Stewardship Council

Through support provided by Forward Cities as part of the ESHIP Communities initiative, extensive research was conducted to understand the current landscape for Black entrepreneurs in Baltimore. By addressing these challenges head-on in Baltimore, the effort intends to pave the way for equitable entrepreneurship for Black entrepreneurs creating a model for BIPOC businesses in other communities as well.  The below data depicts the current entrepreneurial landscape for Black businesses. Cohado® was selected to steward the effort in Baltimore utilizing their innovative and proven Emergent Development Strategic Framework designed to foster collaborative planning at scale.

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Emergent Cultural Design

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The Black Butterfly Network was designed and developed using the Cohado® model, an Afrocentric set of strategic development tools and processes. The initiative was developed using this collaborative organizing process as was the Black Butterfly Entrepreneur Immersion that trained the cohort participants in collaborative ecosystem development. It was critical to have Black stewardship to anchor this work in Black culture, utilizing an African-centered approach. With input from the Stewardship Council, a scalable and transferrable model was developed that would yield significantly different results from approaches used by traditional business ecosystems that focus on individual founders as opposed to building community.

Most cohort-based programs focus on standard 101 business training and development. Recognizing that each business needs different resources, making content relevant to all cohort members was a key consideration. The network has business owners whose enterprises have been in existence from a few months to more than a decade. Clearly a one-size approach would not work. The focus on building the group and progressively growing a connected community has proven itself. With four cohorts completed, the trained network has grown to 60 businesses.

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The full network meets monthly and the majority of businesses have remained engaged and are collaboratively developing initiatives to support the member businesses and strengthen the capacity of the network.

 

The eight-week Immersion experience follows the Cohado Emergent Development process. The process moves participants through a progressive set of content blocks and linked interactive experiences that move the group through the stages of formation.  Sessions were designed to foster trust, collective reliance and resilience, and community within the membership and across cohort groups. Each session taps different Black locally-owned establishments to provide food and/or space for the sessions, expanding both the awareness of the broader ecosystem and providing visibility and revenue for these businesses. The goal is for cohort members and the broader business community to achieve the mission to connect Baltimore’s Black business owners through the network to steward a movement that aggregates the power to create economically-sustainable, thriving communities.

 

​​​​​​​The eight-week Immersion experience follows the Cohado Emergent Development process. The process moves participants through a progressive set of content blocks and linked interactive experiences that move the group through the stages of formation.  Sessions were designed to foster trust, collective reliance and resilience, and community within the membership and across cohort groups. Each session taps different Black locally-owned establishments to provide food and/or space for the sessions, expanding both the awareness of the broader ecosystem and providing visibility and revenue for these businesses. The goal is for cohort members and the broader business community to achieve the mission to connect Baltimore’s Black business owners through the network to steward a movement that aggregates the power to create economically-sustainable, thriving communities.

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Investment

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In addition to the resources provided by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, significant local investment to build out the platform was provided by the T. Rowe Price Foundation and operational support was provided by the Open Society Institute - Baltimore. These funds have enabled the continuation and expansion of the effort proven out through the three-year pilot. Additional support is needed to grow the scale of the initiative to realize the capacity of the Black Butterfly Network to have a significant impact on the economic future of Baltimore.

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CoPowered With

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The Black Butterfly Network is a fiscally sponsored project of Fusion Partnerships, Inc.

© 2024 Cohado® 

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