Come get your coins, black-owned brands. New York-based beauty brand Glossier has followed up with details on how black-owned brands can apply for the $500,000 in grant money it committed to on May 30, 2020.
The call for submissions is open from June 7th through July 3rd and can be found on glossier.com/blog/grants. The grant is intended for companies selling physical beauty products which are at pre-launch, early stage or growth stage for their business.
In part, the effort reflects Glossier CEO Emily Weiss‘s goal of putting more money in the hands of black female founders. According to press, “When Glossier launched in 2014, we were fortunate to be one of the rare female-founded businesses to successfully raise venture capital; that year, only 3.1% of venture dollars raised by US-based companies went to women. We are also keenly aware that a Black woman with the very same vision likely would not have received the same support. Black consumers wield an enormous amount of purchasing power, yet Black women have received only .0006 percent of the $424.7 billion raised in venture capital since 2009.”
Weiss also acknowledged the brand has work to do to make its own workforce more inclusive. In a note on Glossier she wrote, “We have meaningful work to do within Glossier. Last week, we shared that 43 percent of our corporate workforce identify as people of color, including 9 percent who identify as Black. And while 37 percent of our leaders, and 60 percent of our board, identify as people of color, we currently have no Black representation at the leadership level.
“Creating an inclusive beauty industry starts with taking a hard look at where Glossier falls short and actively working towards building an organization that better reflects the customers we serve and the world we want to see. We plan to start holding ourselves accountable publicly by sharing our progress on an annual basis.”
In addition to the grant money, the company has also committed to donated $500,000 to organizations fighting racial injustice.
