How to Use Data Portal

State/Metro Area allows you to choose an available state or metro area depending on your choice for Geographic Scale. Not all state or metropolitan areas in the U.S. are accounted for in the portal, although we are expanding it to add more geographies. Currently, the portal focuses primarily on SBAN’s target metro areas, which are experiencing some of the most intense gentrification in the country.

Type of Data Source allows you to filter for one of the following types of data included in the portal:

• Government surveys
• Public tax, licensing, contracting, and administrative records
• Nonprofit or chamber of commerce lists
• Private industry lists

Government surveys

The U.S. Census and several other government agencies (e.g., the Federal Reserve, the Small Business Administration, etc) conduct a range of surveys on businesses. The most recognizable for the purpose of understanding minority businesses is the Census’ Annual Business Survey (ABS), which provides valuable information on selected economic and demographic characteristics of business owners. The ABS program, however, is a survey and not a complete census of all business owners across the country. Moreover, access to microdata is restricted and information is otherwise only available at aggregate levels of geography. This dataset is helpful in understanding some broader issues involving minority businesses at aggregated levels, but can’t be easily used for finer-geographical level studies. The same is true for other datasets of this type.

Public tax, licensing, contracting, and administrative records

Administrative government databases track micro-level business information for various reasons. At multiple levels of bureaucratic administration, businesses must register, obtain licenses to operate, remain certified for health or other criteria, and pay taxes. This varies by geography, and the size and type of businesses. Accordingly, there are administrative government databases across levels of geography that track this information. This could range from a local health department inspecting restaurants, to a state government collecting property taxes, or the federal government collecting income taxes. It could also be administrative records of firms that applied for special loan programs, like the COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program. 

At certain levels of administration, information may be collected on business ownership characteristics. For example, a municipality may have a special program for veteran or minority owned businesses, and collect such information when businesses apply for annual licenses. Some administrative records may include demographic information as an optional item, which tends to lead to many blank records.

The most notable category of data in this realm are what we refer to as “minority/other certified enterprise databases”. To comply with various laws and regulations, many units of government certify minority businesses to remain on contracting lists and databases. Often these lists are maintained by agencies of state or federal governments, publicly accessible, but not, however, comprehensive. To be included, a business must provide a service needed by the agency and have the required certification. This creates a highly selected subsample of minority businesses to be included in the dataset.   

Regarding tax records, most businesses pay a range of taxes at varying levels of governance. One prominent example is the unemployment insurance tax system, which is collected from employers (and employees) to cover all employees eligible for coverage under that program. This is how the Bureau of Labor Statistics produces its Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, which is built from microdata records of firm employment and wages collected through mandatory reporting for taxation. Administrative agencies that collect and maintain tax records and databases therefore have lists of firms, and often associated information, but these are generally inaccessible and do not typically include owners’ demographic information.

Nonprofit or chamber of commerce lists

Across the country, a vast network of nonprofits operates to support small businesses and local economic development. Such organizations often have their own internal contact management lists or databases of local firms that they have assisted. These nonprofits may specifically target assistance to minority businesses as they boost main streets, attract local economic development, and more. The contact and assistance databases these organizations generate are generally not publicly available and may not be comprehensive, though the nonprofits may be willing to share non-identifying and non-sensitive information.

Chambers of Commerce can extend beyond the traditional city chamber of commerce model, and may be differentiated by geography, race, gender, or other characteristics to serve a specific subset of businesses. These associations of businesses will also maintain databases of businesses with similar geographic restrictions. Depending on the chamber, demographic attributes of business ownership may or may not be tracked as a part of an internal database. These organizations may or may not be able to share this data. 

Private industry lists

Several data aggregation companies collect and maintain lists of firms and their characteristics. These databases are for sale, and generally have good geographic coverage across the country. They are available from companies like Data Axle and Orbis, or the NETS database, and more sources. Technology firms like Yelp and Google control a great deal of information in the form of business databases for use in their search engines. Such databases probably offer relatively comprehensive censuses of businesses, but the data may be prohibitively expensive to access or simply be inaccessible to governments or researchers. These databases may include information on owner demographics, but due to the large scale of the databases, this information may not be available for all firms, and what information exists is generally self-provided. Without extensive research of private sector databases, it is not possible to verify how accurate their minority ownership information is. 

Some companies, like Data Axle, may manually verify firm owner ethnicity and race through research, phone calls, and direct contact with businesses. A range of smaller, mostly online operations offer lists of minority-owned businesses to the general public with the goal of attracting commerce to such establishments. These include databases like “byblack,” among others. They are not comprehensive, are often geographically limited, and grew in number during the COVID-19 pandemic. One general concern with these databases is that it is not clear how well they are maintained and how often they are updated.