Pride is always a busy day for Brenda Buenviaje — but then, so is every Sunday at the chef’s two Southern-inspired restaurants.

Every year, Buenviaje, the owner of Brenda’s French Soul Food in the Tenderloin and Brenda’s Meat and Three in the Western Addition, welcomes rainbow-clad crowds lured downtown by the Pride Parade for beignets, biscuits and fried catfish.

She put up her own rainbow flag at the beginning of June. And after all the glitter, broken beads and rainbow confetti are swept away from Market Street, it will remain.

Buenviaje is one of several lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender business owners who got their start thanks to the Opportunity Fund, a nonprofit microloan program that aims to help underserved small-business owners. Those with backgrounds underrepresented among entrepreneurs can get financing from the fund that banks and other lenders might deny them.

While LGBT people are more likely to be better educated than the general population, studies show that they make less money than their heterosexual and nontransgender counterparts.

Gay men earn up to 32 percent less than heterosexual men with similar qualifications, according to information collected by the American Psychological Association, and up to 64 percent of transgender people earn less than $25,000 per year.

LGBT people are less likely to own property than heterosexuals, and in several states, housing can be legally denied based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

In California, where LGBT people are protected by law, discrimination may be more subtle, Opportunity Fund CEO Eric Weaver said, but it exists.

“I think our transgender clients probably have it the toughest,” Weaver said. “It’s still legal to discriminate (against LGBT) in the workplace in 20 states in this country, and though it’s not legal to discriminate in terms of providing credit, I’m pretty sure that’s happening. LGBT owners are more likely to use credit cards to finance a business because that’s often the only access they have. That’s what we’re trying to change.”

Buenviaje said that in her 20 years as a working chef, she knew she was making less than men doing the same job. She had managed to buy her own condo, but had few other assets.

When she saw a run-down greasy spoon in the Tenderloin for sale in 2007, she said, she thought, this is it. This is where she would open her own restaurant.

The price was $85,000.

But finding funding proved far more challenging than she thought.

She wrote up a 10-year business plan, got her papers in order. But when Buenviaje sat down with lenders at local banks, she said, their answers were all the same: No.

“Even my parents wouldn’t lend me money,” she said. They thought it was too risky.

Buenviaje wasn’t feeling optimistic when she sat down with the Opportunity Fund. But after putting a lien on her condo and going over her business plan, she walked away with a $100,000 loan.

“It was terrifying for me to spend that much money on anything,” she said. “I told myself I’m just going to do what I can until I run out of loan money and then open the doors. Whether or not the walls are painted, as long as we pass inspection, I’m going to open the doors and see what happens.”

Because the Opportunity Fund is a nonprofit, making a return on its investment isn’t the main goal, Weaver said.

Since the fund began work in San Francisco in 1994, the organization has given financial assistance to more than 12,000 people and loaned out more than $60 million. The fund, which now serves all of California, is one of the largest microlending organizations in the country.

Its objective, Weaver said, is serving people who may otherwise be unable to start their own business due to socioeconomic barriers.

About 90 percent of the Opportunity Fund’s clients are racial and ethnic minorities, nearly 70 percent are low-income and about a third are female.

The organization doesn’t track how many of its business owners are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender because federal regulations don’t require those statistics in their annual reports and it hasn’t separately asked them to disclose that information.

Traditional lenders like banks typically decide whether to make a loan based on several factors, which include credit score, financial records and the size of the loan being sought.

If an entrepreneur has limited credit history, a low credit score or has never purchased property, they’re unlikely to be approved for a loan.

“We make our lending decisions more on cash flow than collateral,” Weaver said. “So if you can afford monthly payments or weekly payments, because we’re not in it to make a profit, we can make loans that would be a loss for a bank, but for us they’re a win because we’re helping someone create jobs and opportunity.”

Since Buenviaje took out her first loan from the Opportunity Fund, she’s renewed it to expand her first restaurant and open Brenda’s Meat and Three on Divisadero Street in 2014.

She and her business partner and wife, Libby Truesdell, have also opened a spot next to the original restaurant on Polk Street called the Libby Jane Cafe.

And every weekend, Pride or not, there’s a line spilling out the door.

Marissa Lang is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mlang@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Marissa_Jae