Ticker Tracks Spending To Black And Ally Businesses

Dr. Charles Walker is the CEO of Friends of the Movement Global, a social data analytics company that has created the Black Wall Street Ticker. Photo provided by Dr. Charles Walker.
Dr. Charles Walker is the CEO of Friends of the Movement Global, a social data analytics company that has created the Black Wall Street Ticker. Photo provided by Dr. Charles Walker.

Ticker Tracks Spending To Black And Ally Businesses

By Tia Carol Jones

Dr. Charles Walker has created a way to track the spending of people, companies and organizations that want to align themselves with the interests of Black people. The Black Wall Street Ticker is part of Our Money United, a campaign with partners that include the city of Atlanta and civil rights organizations throughout the country.

Walker is the CEO of Friends of the Movement Global, a social data analytics company. Walker has been working on The Black Wall Street Ticker for 34 years. His family owned the Augusta Focus, a Black newspaper based in Augusta, Ga., and they created a phone directory that listed Black-owned businesses. While the directory was successful, the compensation for the referrals needed to be tweaked.

“We’ve been looking over the last 34 years for ways to track the referrals and make it convenient for Black people to support each other and we wanted to incentivize it as well,” Walker said.

Now  technology exists to track the spending of Black people and allies to Black businesses. Walker was able to bring his idea to fruition with the Black Wall Street Ticker for the world to see, much in the same way the stock market is tracked and displayed. The voto wallet was developed to power the Black Wall Street Ticker and is how people can register with their wallet. Once a consumer or merchant signs up, their spending is tracked. That spending is tracked by race and the aggregate spending is reported. Walker said while the spending is being tracked, the privacy of the individual is protected.

“The platform is the world’s first conscious spending platform because it’s more than a directory. You not only can connect to Black businesses, but you connect to ally businesses or Friends of the Movement, if you can’t find a Black business,” Walker said.

In March, Friends of the Movement Global unveiled the Black Wall Street Ticker at the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs in Atlanta. Walker said the plan is to create other tickers to track spending over time.

Walker said the goal is for people to vote with their wallet to bring about change. The technology is meant to seamlessly allow consumers to spend their money with impact.

“When you look at the African American community, our spending is enormous; $1.8 trillion and we spend less than 3% of that with Black businesses. Imagine if we spent money with each other, but imagine another $5 trillion coming from our allies,” he said.

Walker said allies have been invited into the digital community and over time, through spending, it will be shown whether those people are true allies or not. Currently, all of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce businesses and those businesses aligned with the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs have signed up for the pilot. The hope is that businesses across the country will sign up to participate. Walker is working to get partnerships and encourage people to sign up for the platform. He said that building a conscious economy will take time.

“We firmly believe that we’ve marched, we’ve voted and now it’s time to put our money where the movement is,” Walker said.

For more information about Friends of the Movement and the Black Wall Street Ticker, visit directoty.fotmglobal.com.

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