Black businesses’ needs will be the focus of a research project described to members of the Minority, Women, Disadvantaged and Evanston Business Enterprises Committee (M/W/D/EBE) Wednesday at the Morton Civic Center.

The study was approved in April by the city’s Reparations Committee. It is intended to identify obstacles facing Black-owned businesses, said Twyla Blackmond Larnell, president of Transformative Research Solutions, which will conduct the research. It will investigate disparities in access to financial and business information, increased operating or startup costs, networking, consumer bias and more. 

“This group is arranged to figure out what the needs of our constituents are,” said Fifth Ward Council Member Bobby Burns, an M/W/D/EBE Committee member. “That’s exactly what this study is going to help us determine.”

Larnell’s company, Transformative Research Solutions, will receive $22,000 to conduct the study. Another $3,000 will be used to conduct online surveys and compensate survey participants. The focus will be on ethical and socially conscious methods supported by community lived experience. 

The new study will expand on similar efforts the city took to understand racial business disparities in 1996. This initial research focused mostly on procurement of services by the city, and the current project will cover a wider scope of businesses. 

The new research will provide evidence-based policy recommendations that are up to federal legal standards.

“Legal precedent states that all cases in which the government distributes benefits according to race must be reviewed with ‘strict scrutiny,’” Larnell said.

“We can think about policies that are specifically focused to Black entrepreneurs and business owners. But at the same time, we can also think more broadly about those Evanston business owners that are having the most obstacles, and trying to figure out how to support them.”