Things Black Women Entrepreneurs Lost in a Year of Federal Policy Changes

THE RISING PERCENT | Reported coverage of Black women entrepreneurs through a faith lens

Three separate policy moves, all landing within roughly a year of each other, have quietly reshaped the federal infrastructure that Black women entrepreneurs relied on to access capital, contracts, and technical support. None of the changes arrived with much fanfare outside of policy circles. All three are worth paying close attention to.

The agency that existed specifically for you is gone

The Minority Business Development Agency was the only federal agency in the country dedicated entirely to supporting minority-owned businesses. According to Small Business Majority, at its operational peak the MBDA employed upward of 100 people and oversaw a nationwide network of business centers providing hands-on technical assistance to entrepreneurs who needed help navigating capital markets, federal contracting systems, and growth strategy.

According to MBDA’s own published data, the agency helped businesses access more than $1.5 billion in capital in fiscal year 2023, facilitated over $3.8 billion in contract awards to minority business enterprises, and helped create or maintain more than 19,000 jobs.

Small Business Majority reported the agency now has no more than one politically appointed staffer remaining, down from roughly 100 employees. The state-level business development centers that MBDA funded have had their federal contracts terminated or are facing termination. The Capital Readiness Program, which Small Business Majority called the largest federal program of its kind, assisted more than 6,000 entrepreneurs in its first year and helped raise $263 million to support small business growth before being shut down.

Six Democratic senators asked the Government Accountability Office in February 2026 to investigate whether the Commerce Department broke the law when it dismantled the agency, according to Federal News Network. The White House’s own FY2026 budget request acknowledged the Commerce Department had “fully eliminated” the MBDA. Whether the dismantling was legal is still being investigated. What is not in dispute is that the agency is functionally gone.

A Black Christian woman entrepreneur who used an MBDA business center to prepare her first federal contract bid, or who went through the Capital Readiness Program to access growth capital, is immediate. Navigation assistance, hands-on technical support, and the pathway into federal procurement that MBDA spent years building for small businesses like hers, all of it gone.

The federal contracting door got significantly narrower

The SBA’s 8(a) Business Development Program has been one of the primary vehicles through which minority-owned small businesses accessed federal contracts. Participation in the program opened doors to sole-source contract awards and set-aside procurements, with federal agencies awarding more than $30 billion in 8(a) contracts in fiscal year 2024, according to federal procurement data cited by Emerge and Rise.

On January 22, 2026, the SBA issued formal guidance eliminating the longstanding presumption that members of certain racial and ethnic groups are socially disadvantaged for purposes of 8(a) eligibility. Under the previous framework, belonging to a designated minority group established a rebuttable presumption of social disadvantage, which was the program’s eligibility foundation. Under the new guidance, every applicant must now demonstrate disadvantage through specific, verifiable, individualized evidence, regardless of race.

Numbers tell the story of what the policy shift produced before the formal guidance was issued. The SBA announced the agency accepted 65 new 8(a) firms into the program in all of 2025, compared to over 2,100 firms accepted during the prior administration, a drop of roughly 97 percent. In January 2026, more than 1,000 currently participating firms were suspended from the program after failing to respond to a December document request, with termination proceedings initiated against over 620 of those firms by March.

Legal analysts at Ogletree Deakins noted the guidance materially changes the risk-benefit analysis for any business considering 8(a) certification, with applications built on prior presumption-based frameworks unlikely to succeed under the new standard.

The capital pipeline faces a proposed 59 percent cut

Community Development Financial Institutions, known as CDFIs, have served as one of the most consistent sources of capital for Black women entrepreneurs who face higher loan rejection rates at traditional banks. CDFIs are mission-driven lenders operating in underserved communities, and the federal CDFI Fund provides the grants and awards that enable them to deploy capital at scale.

The Trump administration’s proposed FY2026 budget would cut the CDFI Fund from $324 million enacted in FY2025 to $133 million, a reduction of approximately 59 percent. The proposed cut has not been finalized into law, but the direction of the policy is clear, and CDFIs are already adjusting their projections for what capital they can deploy.

For Black women entrepreneurs in communities where CDFIs represent the primary alternative to predatory lending, a 59 percent reduction in the federal fund that capitalizes those lenders has downstream consequences that show up not in policy documents but in loan applications that do not get approved.

What faith has to say about building when the scaffolding comes down

The three policy changes documented above did not happen in a vacuum. Brookings reported in March 2026 that Black-owned employer businesses surpassed 200,000 for the first time in history, a 62 percent increase since 2017. Female-identifying Black business owners drove a disproportionate share of that growth, expanding at 20 percent compared to 6 percent for Black male owners.

Growth and institutional withdrawal are happening at the same time. Black women are building faster than ever into a policy environment actively removing the structures designed to support them.

Proverbs 31:17 describes a woman who girds herself with strength and makes her arms strong. The Proverbs 31 woman was not building inside a system designed for her success. The text does not promise favorable lending conditions or cooperative government agencies. What it promises is that a woman of virtue and capability builds anyway, and builds with intention.

The MBDA’s dismantling, the 8(a) restructuring, and the proposed CDFI cuts do not change the calling. What a Black Christian woman entrepreneur built before these changes, she can continue building after them. What changes is the navigation, the specific pathways require more creativity, more community, and more awareness of what federal resources remain and which have been closed off.

Knowing which ladders have been pulled is the first step in figuring out how to build without them.

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Sources: Small Business Majority, MBDA.gov, Federal News Network, U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, SBA.gov January 22 guidance, SBA.gov January 28 announcement, Ogletree Deakins, Emerge and Rise, Brookings Institution