Living Cities, better known for its work on affordable housing, is doubling down on entrepreneurs of color.

Why? New small businesses create most new jobs in America, but most of those jobs have been created by white-owned businesses. As the U.S. population mix changes, more investment is needed to ensure that the entrepreneurial mix keeps pace.

To help entrepreneurs of color access capital, grow revenues and create good jobs, Living Cities is pioneering initiatives like the BuildNOLA Mobilization Fund for entrepreneurs of color in New Orleans. Ben Hecht, LivingCities chief of staff says,  “We invest very intentionally in a limited number of cities, like New Orleans, so we can prove models and then try to get those adopted elsewhere in the country — so we can have conversations with people about launching mobilization funds in 20 cities, not just one.”

ImpactAlpha: Living Cities is known for its work in affordable housing. How did the shift toward other issues like job creation and entrepreneurship come about?

Ward: Affordable housing is now an established market. There’s isn’t as much of a need for philanthropic capital to serve a catalyzing role. There is that need in job creation and entrepreneurial ecosystems, especially for entrepreneurs of color.

ImapctAlpha: Can you enlighten us, statistically-speaking?

Hecht: In 1996, 77% of new business starts were by white entrepreneurs. Two years ago, that was down to 57%. That’s a loss of 150,000 startups. Latino and black entrepreneurs have tripled the number of businesses they’ve started [in that time], but that only filled 15,000 of the 150,000 lost. We’ve wrung most of the job creation potential out of white people in America. If we’re going to get more jobs, it has to come from people of color.

Read the full article about Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Through Innovative Financing by Jessica Pothering at ImpactAlpha.