Business Resources

The Chamber connects its members and business and professional opportunities, and professional development, and a supportive atmosphere of queer and allied people who want to see you succeed. We are fortunate, however, to exist in a region with a rich community of government, non-profit, and industry institutions that support our community as well (and often partner with us in doing it). Some of the key resources are listed here.

Partner and Other Supporting Organizations

The DC Center for the LGBT Community: The DC LGBT Center educates, empowers, celebrates, and connects the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities.

DC Small Business Resource Center: The Small Business Resource Center (SBRC) provides direct business education services with the theme of navigating the District’s regulatory environment.

How to Get a Business Loan guide from Consumer Affairs: This guide is useful for entrepreneurs who need funding for their startup businesses, and includes information for expanding businesses. It’s also useful for minority startup and expanding business owners.

Mayor’s Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning Affairs: The Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Affairs (LGBTQ) is a permanent, cabinet-level office within the Executive Office of the Mayor established by statute in 2006 to address the important concerns of the District's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender residents.

Metro Weekly: This award-winning news magazine has provided the best in local news, lifestyle and entertainment coverage to the Washington LGBT community since 1994, and is committed to helping businesses reach the Washington LGBT market with effective and affordable advertising strategies. The magazine is available for free at more than hundreds of locations in the D.C. metropolitan area and online at www.metroweekly.com.

The National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce: The NGLCC represents the interests of LGBT owned businesses across the nation. Through its network of dozens of locally based chambers and business organizations, the NGLCC is the largest LGBT business development and economic advocacy organization in the world.

SCORE DC: SCORE, America’s premier source of free and confidential business advice for entrepreneurs and small businesses, is a nonprofit association dedicated to entrepreneur education and the formation, growth and success of small business nationwide. Through the Greater Washington DC Chapter of SCORE, you can get confidential counseling and mentoring from over 50 successful executives, with hundreds of years of relevant business experience.

Tagg Magazine: Tagg Magazine was created by women, for everyone lesbian, queer, and under the rainbow to provide the DC Metropolitan Area queer community with a central source for lesbian/queer culture, news, and events.

Washington Blade: The Washington Blade was founded in 1969 as a black and white, one-sheet community newsletter distributed in D.C.-area bars. In October 2009, the Blade celebrated its 40th anniversary as an award-winning news source with a large following in print and online. Readers locally and around the world have come to rely on the Blade’s unmatched coverage of LGBT news, earning the paper the moniker “the newspaper of record for the LGBT community.”