BOMESI opened applications for the fifth cohort of its accelerator on September 12, and the structure changed. For the first time in the program's run, creators can apply alongside independent publishers.
Eleven spots: five publishers, five creators, and one creator-in-residence. Each company selected gets $25,000 in total support, split between a $10,000 cash grant and $15,000 in services. BOMESI takes no equity through this program.
What BOMESI actually is
The Black Owned Media Equity and Sustainability Institute was founded in 2020 by DéVon Christopher Johnson, who built Bleu Magazine into a global multimedia brand, and Rhonesha Byng, founder and CEO of Her Agenda. It now connects more than 400 Black-owned media companies and 2,500 diverse-owned media companies overall.
The accelerator is its flagship program, powered by GM (General Motors), and it's run four cohorts so far with 32 companies graduated. The stated mission is narrower and more useful than most diversity-in-media language: getting independent publishers positioned to do sustainable business with the nation's top advertisers.
That distinction shows up in what participants get. Alongside the cash, the $15,000 in services covers travel, access to a financial advisor, and marketing support, plus masterclasses, working sessions with industry experts, and direct access to advertisers, investors, and brand partners. A media founder's real bottleneck is usually the media buyer who won't take the meeting.
The eligibility line
To qualify you need a legally formed media business making between $50,000 and $1 million a year, fewer than 20 employees, and a demonstrated owned audience, whether that's an email list, site traffic, or app users.
Individual influencer accounts with no business entity behind them are not eligible. Worth naming clearly, because the addition of creator slots is going to read to a lot of people as an open call, and it isn't. The through line is ownership. You need an audience that belongs to you rather than to a platform's recommendation algorithm, and a company structure underneath it.
Which is a reasonable bar, and also a quietly pointed one. A creator with 400,000 followers and no email list is in a weaker position than a publisher with 8,000 subscribers who open every week, and BOMESI is writing checks based on the second thing.
Applications close October 1. Review is rolling, so applying in week one beats applying in week three.
The creator-in-residence slot is brand new with no precedent from the previous four cohorts, which means nobody applying for it has a template to copy. That usually favors whoever moves first.
Applications are open here: https://apply.younoodle.com/showcase/competition/the_bomesi_accelerator_cohort_5
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