We are not the first. We will not be the last.
Every community in American history that needed infrastructure the broader society was not building has built it themselves. The record is 240 years long. NewBWS continues it.
A pattern as old as the country itself.
The Free African Society was founded in Philadelphia in 1787, one of the first American mutual aid societies of any kind. The Ancient Order of Hibernians organized in 1836 to support Irish Catholic immigrants facing discrimination. The Sons of Italy formed in 1905. German, Polish, Czech, and Slovak fraternal societies operated by the hundreds through the late nineteenth century. Chinese and Japanese lending circles pooled capital when American banks refused to serve immigrant communities. UJA-Federation of New York has served the Jewish community since 1917 and is the world’s largest local philanthropy.
The Hispanic Scholarship Fund has awarded $756 million to more than 65,000 scholars since 1975. The National Society of Black Engineers serves 24,000 members across 600 chapters globally. The Human Rights Campaign, founded in 1980, is the largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization in the country. Chief, a professional network for women executives, has been valued at over a billion dollars. The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal benefit society founded in 1882, has more than two million members and over $100 billion in insurance in force.
The pattern is unambiguous. Every community in America that has faced exclusion has organized its own infrastructure. That infrastructure has strengthened America, not divided it.
Where NewBWS sits.
The Black capital ecosystem in America represents $253 billion of circulating capital, hundreds of Black-led investment funds, thousands of founders, and the professionals and institutions that move capital within it. The ecosystem exists. Infrastructure built for it does not. That is what NewBWS is building.
Our members are Black professionals, investors, founders, operators, and the institutions that move capital in this ecosystem, along with allies and partners who share the mission. There is no racial test. There is a mission. People aligned with it are welcome.
NewBWS is organized for the Black investment ecosystem. It is organized against no one.
Built to be unsellable.
Every previous attempt at building Black-focused digital infrastructure followed the same trajectory. A platform launches. It takes venture capital. It optimizes for an exit. It gets acquired, sunset, or pivoted into something the community never asked for. The pattern is well documented.
NewBWS is structured to make that pattern impossible. Community-funded through Wefunder Regulation CF. Owned by members. Governed by a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation charter. Protected by a golden share with an irrevocable veto against sale against community interest, behavioral advertising, behavioral tracking, and venture capital dilution.
If this works, it works for our community. If it fails, it fails without enriching anyone who was never part of our community in the first place.
In 1963, Dr. King named the standard: the content of one’s character, not the color of one’s skin. We hold ourselves to that standard.
Judge NewBWS by what we build, how we govern it, who we serve, and whether we keep our commitments. That is the record we intend to leave.
Fifteen questions, answered.
01
Is NewBWS racist?
No. Racism requires animus toward another race. NewBWS is organized for a community, not against one. Organizing for one’s own community is a two-hundred-forty-year-old American tradition practiced by Irish, Italian, German, Polish, Jewish, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Mexican, Cuban, Haitian, Catholic, Mormon, Muslim, LGBTQ+, women, veterans, disabled Americans, and dozens of other communities. The record shows this tradition strengthens America.
02
Is NewBWS separatist?
No. A separatist organization rejects integration with the broader society. NewBWS exists entirely within American civil society. Our members work at mainstream firms. Our legal structure is a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation. Our capital raise is an SEC-regulated Regulation CF offering. Our members pay taxes, vote, and participate fully in American life. We are a professional network, not a withdrawal from anything.
03
Does NewBWS exclude white people?
NewBWS welcomes allies and partners aligned with the mission. Members include the Black professionals, investors, founders, and operators who form the core ecosystem, along with people from other communities who want to participate in building this infrastructure. The orientation is toward the Black investment ecosystem. Membership is not a racial test.
04
If a white-focused network existed, would that be acceptable?
The question assumes parity between Black and white experience in America that does not reflect the historical record. Every ethnic and cultural group in America has organized its own communal infrastructure when it faced specific circumstances that broader institutions did not address. Irish Catholics organized against anti-Catholic discrimination. Jewish communities organized after generations of exclusion from professional networks and capital. Women organized after being shut out of executive tracks. The Black investment ecosystem has specific circumstances that existing infrastructure does not serve. NewBWS addresses those. A parallel organization for a community that has not faced systemic exclusion would be addressing a different problem.
05
Why call it New Black Wall Street?
Black Wall Street, the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was the most economically successful Black community in early twentieth-century America. In 1921, it was destroyed in eighteen hours by a white mob. Calling this network New Black Wall Street names the inheritance and the rebuilding. The name is historical, not provocative.
06
Is the Black investment ecosystem actually $253 billion?
Yes. The figure reflects Black-owned business revenue, Black-led investment fund assets, and Black professional and institutional capital. The ecosystem is documented. Infrastructure built for it is not.
07
What is the golden share and why does it matter for this question?
A golden share is a special class of equity with defined veto rights. The NewBWS golden share blocks five specific actions by any majority owner: sale of the company against community interest, introduction of programmatic or behavioral advertising, sale or licensing of member behavioral data, use of AI to target or manipulate members, and raising venture capital equity that would override the public benefit charter. The golden share cannot be overridden by any amount of capital. It is the structural answer to the question of what keeps this from becoming another extractive platform.
08
What prevents NewBWS from being radicalized or misused?
The same governance structure that prevents the company from being sold for profit also prevents it from being captured politically. The Delaware Public Benefit Corporation charter defines the public benefit: serving the Black capital ecosystem through professional networking, education, and economic infrastructure. Actions outside that charter are a breach of fiduciary duty to shareholders. The golden share blocks structural pivots. Quarterly member reviews provide transparency. The company is measurable by its own documented standards.
09
Who decides what the “Black investment ecosystem” is?
The ecosystem is defined by who participates in it: Black professionals, investors, founders, operators, institutions moving Black capital, and the allies working alongside them. NewBWS does not adjudicate Blackness. It builds infrastructure and invites participation from those aligned with the mission.
10
Isn’t this just another venture-funded startup with a cultural wrapper?
No. NewBWS has accepted no venture capital and will accept none. The capital structure is a community round, pledge-first today, meaning ownership is distributed across the members and community backers who fund it rather than a venture cap table. The Delaware Public Benefit Corporation and golden share make venture capital dilution structurally impossible. Every other Black-focused platform in the last decade took venture capital. NewBWS is the explicit structural alternative.
11
What happens if the founder leaves, is bought out, or is pressured?
The golden share survives any of those events. It is held by a separate limited liability company whose charter carries the same community-protection restrictions. A sale of NewBWS to any buyer carries the golden share’s restrictions forward to that buyer. The founder cannot personally release the restrictions. No shareholder vote can override them. The structure is designed to outlast any individual, including the founder.
12
Is this legal?
Yes. Delaware Public Benefit Corporations are a recognized corporate form used by Patagonia, Kickstarter, Allbirds, and thousands of other American companies. Regulation CF is a Securities and Exchange Commission regulation that became fully active in 2021 and has been used to raise capital by Substack, Mercury, Replit, and many other companies. Golden share structures are common in European corporate law and legal in American corporate law. Every element of the structure is standard.
13
Isn’t this just affirmative action?
No. Affirmative action is a policy requiring institutions to consider race in admissions, hiring, or contracting. NewBWS is a private membership organization building its own infrastructure. The American tradition of community-organized professional networks, from the Knights of Columbus to Chief to the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, predates affirmative action by more than a century and has nothing to do with it.
14
What about the allies who invest?
Allies are welcome as members and investors. The community round is open to anyone aligned with the mission who wants to back it, pledge-first today and activated through Wefunder as interest crosses the staged thresholds. Allies participate as members of the network and as owners of the company. The mission is the orientation. Alignment with the mission is the membership criterion.
15
What would cause NewBWS to fail?
A lack of members. A failure to keep our commitments. Insufficient capital to operate. Poor execution. We are a community-funded startup, which means we bear the same risks as any other early-stage company, disclosed fully in our Form C filing. The risks of this investment are substantial. The commitments we have made are also substantial. The record will show whether we meet them.
A partial record.
A partial record of culturally-focused professional, civic, educational, and mutual-aid organizations across American communities. Use the filters below to explore the pattern.
This is a partial record of culturally-focused organizations in American civic life. Inclusion is not an endorsement of any specific organization's current positions, practices, or leadership. These are examples of a pattern, not partners. The list is incomplete by design. We document what we know, and add as the record grows. Email hello@newbws.com to suggest additions or corrections.
Showing 0 of 0 organizations.
No organizations match those filters. The record is incomplete. if you know one that should be here, write us at hello@newbws.com.
Sources.
- Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice by Jessica Gordon Nembhard
- Black Wall Street: From Riot to Renaissance in Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District by Hannibal B. Johnson
- The Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s archive on ethnic fraternal societies and mutual aid
- SAGE Publications’ Multicultural America encyclopedia entry on mutual aid societies
- UJA-Federation of New York’s public mission documents
- The Associated Press reporting on mutual aid networks in communities of color
Continue the tradition.
The record is 240 years long. The next entry is being written now, by the founding cohort.
This page is a living document. If you see an organization that belongs here or a correction that should be made, write us at hello@newbws.com.