Due to racial bias and systemic discrimination, BIPOC and women business owners have difficulty accessing the capital, expertise, and network needed to grow. Services businesses (e.g., accounting, legal, insurance, etc.), are easy to start with no capital requirement, but hard to develop without capital. There are many profitable mature professional service businesses that have been in operation for years but have not had the capacity to expand due to a lack of resources. These small service businesses usually have no exit and no succession plan in place.
Accounting is the backbone of any business but is the Achilles heel of organizations operating in underserved communities. BIPOC in particular is severely underrepresented, with Black people accounting for only 2% of accountants and 0.7% of CPAs nationwide.