We’re already here. Now you can find us.
A verified directory of Black-owned businesses in Sacramento, with real hours, real photos, and a badge that expires so nothing quietly goes stale. Free to list. Free to use. Checked by neighbors, not an algorithm.
Sacramento first Nonprofit Always free to list
Start here
However you got here, there’s a way in.
I want to spend it here
Search by what you need, where you are, and whether they’re open right now. No account, no fee, no catch.
Browse the directory →I own the business
Claim your listing, get verified, and get a decal for your window. Ten minutes, no cost, and it stays free.
Reserve your listing →I want to help build it
Verification, photography, and hand-checking every listing costs money. Here’s exactly what yours pays for.
See where it goes →The directory
We launch at 250 businesses.
No half-empty directory. The doors open the day 250 Black-owned businesses are on the map, so the first time you search, it’s worth your while.
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businesses to go
Matching works before launch — tell us what you need and we connect you with businesses already on the list.
What we’re building toward
Numbers we’ll be held to.
The badge
A sticker in the window that actually means something.
Verified businesses get a physical decal for their door, carrying the year it was issued and a code anyone can scan to check it’s still current. Walk past it and you know.
- A real person claimed it. Identity confirmed, control of the business phone or email confirmed.
- The owner stated it on the record. At least 51% Black-owned, operated and controlled — signed, dated, kept on file.
- The doors are open. We checked the business is actually operating, not a listing left over from 2019.
- It was renewed this year. Twelve months, then it has to be earned again.
And what it isn’t. Not an MBE certification, not a government credential, and not an endorsement of anyone’s food, prices or workmanship. It means a business told us who owns it, we checked they’re real and open, and we wrote it down. Nothing more — and we’d rather say that plainly than let a badge imply something it can’t back up.
About us
What we’re for.
Our mission
To close the economic and inequity gap by providing literacy to business owners and redirecting the Black dollar back into our communities.
Every program below comes out of that sentence. Literacy is the teaching — the skills that decide whether a business gets found at all. Redirecting the dollar is the directory — making sure that when someone in Sacramento wants to spend it here, they can. Closing the gap is the part nobody else is doing: counting what’s actually happening, and publishing it.
Community. Ownership. Powered together.
What we do
Four programs, straight out of the mission.
Literacy first, because a business that can’t be found online loses money whether or not it’s in a directory. The directory is how the dollar gets redirected. The research is how we prove any of it worked.
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Business literacy
Free, hands-on teaching for the owners least served by the digital economy:
- Workshops on hours, photos, maps and reviews — and why they decide who gets found
- Free professional photography for businesses that have never had any
- In-person setup for owners without the time or comfort to do it alone
- Procurement readiness — certification and public contracting, explained plainly
- Referrals to certifying bodies, chambers, lenders and technical assistance
Mission: providing literacy to business owners
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The directory
A free, public directory of Black-owned businesses in Sacramento. No listing fee, no subscription, no paid placement, no advertising. Every listing is checked by a person, carries the date it was last confirmed, and can be corrected or removed by its owner at any time.
Mission: redirecting the Black dollar back into our communities
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Verification and the badge
Annual verification, with a physical window decal carrying the year of issue and a scannable code. Verification is free, cannot be bought, and expires after twelve months so the information has to stay true. A dollar only gets redirected if people trust what they’re looking at.
Mission: redirecting the Black dollar back into our communities
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Research and public reporting
An annual published report on the Black business economy in Sacramento: how many, where, in what sectors, what owners say their barriers are, and what closed and why. Given free to the public, the press, and local government. Nobody publishes this today, which is part of why the gap stays invisible.
Mission: closing the economic and inequity gap
Why it matters
The gap is structural, not personal.
Visibility is capital. A business nobody can find loses money every day it’s open. For an owner with no marketing budget, being findable isn’t a nice-to-have — it’s the difference between staying open and not.
This isn’t a failure of the owners. It’s the compounding result of who has time to manage a digital presence, who can afford photography, who gets reviewed, and whose neighborhood the review platforms bothered to cover in the first place.
The apps that tried this went stale. They collected listings nationwide and couldn’t maintain them. A directory people stop trusting is worse than none at all, because it teaches people that looking isn’t worth the effort.
Sacramento is winnable. Covering one city completely is achievable. Covering the country is not, and trying is what broke everyone who came before us. Oak Park, Del Paso Heights, Meadowview, Florin — that’s the work, and we’ll finish it before we add a second city.
A note from our founder
Sacramento has hundreds of Black-owned businesses. Most people can name four.
I hear the same thing from owners constantly: the customers want to support them, and simply cannot find them. Meanwhile people tell me they’d spend their money differently if they only knew where to go. Both of those things are true at the same time, in the same city, and that is an information problem — which means it’s a solvable one.
So we’re doing the opposite of what everyone else did. One city. Checked by hand. Badges that expire every year. And free for every business, permanently, because charging the people you claim to be lifting up isn’t a model we’re interested in.
Replace this with your own words before launch
Support the work
Here’s exactly what your money does.
Listing is free for businesses, which means somebody else has to cover verification, photography, and the hand-checking that keeps this accurate. That somebody is you.
- $25One decal in one windowPrints and delivers a verified badge for a storefront, with the year and scan code.
- $60One business, fully verifiedCovers the claim review, an operating check, and a proper set of photographs.
- $150A whole blockFive neighboring businesses listed, verified, photographed and badged together.
- $500A district, kept currentA month of re-checking every listing in one Sacramento district so nothing goes stale.
Amounts are working estimates while the first budget is being set, and we’ll publish the real per-listing cost once we have it. BuildBLK is a nonprofit in formation; whether a gift is tax-deductible depends on our exemption status at the time you give, and we’ll tell you plainly either way.
Where every dollar goes
What we’re committing to.
- 70% Programs — verification, photography, outreach, the directory
- 18% Operations — hosting, insurance, accounting, compliance
- 12% Fundraising
These are targets in our founding budget, not audited results — we haven’t spent a dollar yet. Once we have, this gets replaced with real figures and an annual report, published whether it flatters us or not.
Be part of the first 250
We’re building the launch list now.
I own a business
Build your full listing now — it goes live the day we launch. Nothing to come back and finish later.
- Takes about five minutes
- Free, and it stays free
- Reviewed by a person, then published automatically at launch
We never sell your information or add you to anything you didn’t ask for.
Know a business that belongs on here? Most of the ones we’re looking for don’t have a marketing budget or a website — they have a phone number and a line out the door. Send it over and we’ll reach out to the owner ourselves. Nothing goes up as verified until they say so. Suggest a business →