SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) – The South Dakota Black Chamber of Commerce (SDBCC) is holding their inaugural ribbon-cutting ceremony February 1 at Startup Sioux Falls.
The chamber’s goal is to connect black business owners in the state with resources, education, exposure and leadership.
“We’re really looking to be that catalyst for black businesses to really allow for us to be the assistance to help them voice their needs in the community,” SDBCC Communications Director Sidney Bazemore said.
They will be partnering with city chambers in Sioux Falls, Aberdeen, Watertown, Brookings and Vermillion to help reduce the high barrier of entry in the business world and to becoming chamber members.
“What we’re doing is filling in the gaps so that we’re helping the community and through education, access to resources,” Co-founder Immanuel Bassey said. “It’s very, very necessary to make our community thrive.”
Bassey is also the SDBCC’s vice president of finance. A large part of the chamber’s mission is to educate business owners on financial literacy and connect them with opportunities they may not know about to grow their businesses. Bassey said the chamber is also working with local banks.
“I’d like to make sure that people understand the ways to have financial stability so that way they can actually have the tools to scale when it comes to black businesses,” he said.
Bazemore said it’s difficult to track the number of black-owned businesses in the state and even harder to find the ones involved in their city chamber. The Greater Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce only has 25% of businesses in the city register.
“We do know that there isn’t a very high volume of black businesses that would even register with any of the local chambers,” he said. “You can think of it as something as a language barrier. When we come into these spaces and we’re looking to access resources, can someone speak the language or have the cadence of communication that would allow for me as a business owner to understand what the benefits of this chamber is?”
Bazemore hopes the SDBCC can break that metaphorical language barrier and get more businesses to become chamber members.
Bassey added that through the SDBCC, they can start documenting black businesses in South Dakota to get a better account of how many black owned businesses there are, what their needs are and how to help them grow.
“When it comes down to it, how many black businesses are there out here?” Bassey said. “Being a Black Chamber, what we can do now is catalog, we’re cataloging information so that we can properly assess the needs of South Dakota.”
