Alumni
Angels
A community of HBCU alumni working together toward one goal: unlocking $50M in community investment by 2030.
For HBCU alumni who are accredited investors — or accredited and curious about angel investing. Takes about 5 minutes. No cost to join.
What is an Accredited Investor?
A lot of people assume "accredited investor" means someone who has already made investments — it doesn't. Accreditation is about your financial profile, not your track record. You can be fully accredited and have never made a single investment.
Broadly, under SEC guidelines, you're accredited if you meet at least one of the following: individual income over $200,000 (or $300,000 combined with a spouse) in each of the last two years, with a reasonable expectation of the same this year; a net worth over $1 million, excluding your primary residence; or certain professional certifications, licenses, or knowledge-based qualifications recognized by the SEC.
This is a simplified summary, not the full legal definition, and SEC rules may change over time. For the authoritative, current definition, see investor.gov.
3 Ways We Work Toward $50M
Alumni Angels isn't just a database — it's three connected efforts, and you can participate in more than one.
Community Every alum who adds themselves — whether actively investing or accredited and just getting started — grows a network that didn't exist before. Bringing another HBCU alum who's accredited into this database is itself a direct contribution to the goal.
Events & Training We intentionally bring alumni together with professional VCs — the kind of access that surfaces deals most individual investors never see. We also help alumni understand co-investing alongside each other and institutions.
The Database We're tracking real investment activity — not just headcount — to measure the community's actual progress toward $50M. This is the proof, over time, that coordinated alumni capital is real.
Ways You Can Personally Move This Forward
A few concrete ways to actively contribute:
Bring someone else in. Know another HBCU alum who's accredited? Connecting them to this database — whether they invest actively or not yet — grows the collective count.
Set your own investment goal. Consider setting a personal target for the year, tied to what you actually care about — Black founders, women's health, fintech, climate, or whatever draws your interest.
Come to our events. We bring alumni together alongside professional VCs specifically to surface deals that are hard to find on your own.
Consider co-investing alongside institutions. When an institution is in a deal alongside you, they have their own invested interest in helping that company grow — which can be a real advantage as a co-investor.
Consider investing in emerging fund managers, not just individual startups. Rather than personally sourcing and picking every company yourself, you can invest in a fund run by an emerging fund manager — someone actively deploying capital into multiple companies on your behalf.
The Database & Directory
Every alum who adds themselves is tracked toward our collective $50M goal — investment activity, not just headcount. You choose your own visibility when you join (private, network-visible, or public), and that choice is always yours to make.
On the public directory specifically: we're building it, but we won't publicly launch it until we've reached a meaningful number of members — our internal target is 50. Until then, your information is still being counted and tracked toward the $50M goal even though the public-facing directory itself isn't live yet. This isn't about hiding anything — it's about not launching something that looks sparse before it's actually useful to browse.