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August is a month of deep spiritual power across the global Black Diaspora space-time. Despite racism’s continuing injustices, a Black August gathers us to convert our pain into collective power, fashion new visions of a better future and make them real together. “Black” becomes an almost cosmic energy to bend Dr. King’s proverbial universal arc ever closer towards justice.
With roots from the 19th century through today, Black August became an official commemorative month with 1970s protests against the over-incarceration of Black men. Also, Black Business Month, Black August has grown as a movement for African-descent people worldwide to reflect, advocate and collaborate for racial equity and justice in our local communities and globally.
August embodies our pain but strengthens us to be proactive agents of our own future, just as we have always been.
A New August Movement Is Born
In August 2011, inspired by Black August, Reunity leaders — a Black Diaspora Women’s Network I created in 2001 — and the United Nation’s International Year, and now Decade for People of African Descent, I founded Black Philanthropy Month (BPM) and its summit series at a seminal convening in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA — now ground zero for the global racial justice movement.
BPM is a global celebration and social action initiative set every August, with resulting year-round independent projects, to build our social justice giving power across the Black Diaspora. It also promotes fair access to private capital for Black communities everywhere. Recognizing that economic justice is the last frontier of Black civil rights and liberation movements globally, BPM hopes to be a force that leverages our homegrown giving to advocate for funding equity as part of a broader, global struggle against anti-Black racism.
As philanthropy’s first global Black Diaspora Movement, largely organized by Black women worldwide, the BPM 10th anniversary year offers several key lessons worth contemplating for these unique times.
Black Philanthropy rightly emphasizes that giving is not only the purview of wealthy white men. All communities, including Black ones, give. Ultimately, philanthropy — derived from the Greek word meaning “love for humanity” — is about love activated through acts of giving to improve the human condition and planet we share. Although philanthropy can be described with many terms, giving is universal throughout the global Black Diaspora and can take many different forms. Giving time, talent, treasure, voice, ties and more for social justice and other causes is a defining component of Black culture, social life and identity everywhere.
Despite these core values, Black philanthropy globally has been fragmented into differing and sometimes exclusive ethnic and national strands with occasionally competing institutions. This fragmentation diminishes our collective power to uproot the global structures that perpetuate racism in our backyards. Black women’s leadership, although ubiquitous, had not been written into the Movement’s history.
My initial aim more than 20 years ago was to break down these barriers and create an inclusive space to mutually support and empower Black Philanthropy not just in the U.S. but worldwide in respectful collaboration with Afro-descendant people of all nationalities, ethnic, gender and other backgrounds. Black Philanthropy Month is not an organization but its own kind of year-round global collective power coalition, aspiring to bring the entire global movement together to celebrate how our pooled giving can change the world — as evidenced by the many social movements, from abolition to Civil Rights and Anti-Apartheid, mostly supported by Black giving.
Through the contributions of many people over two decades, BPM has engaged 18 million across 60 countries. Now officially recognized as a commemoration every August by the United Nations and more than 30 other government or multilateral bodies, with The Covid era we have shifted from celebrating our giving to also calling for equitable private capital access through our Global Black Funding Equity Campaign.
BPM is part of a recent trend towards intersectional Black Diaspora organizing represented by entities such as Reunity, Black Lives Matters, The Women Invested to Save Earth Fund, Africa Diaspora Network, African Diaspora Group, Diaspora Rising and even Ghana’s Year of Return. All these groups foster inclusive, global, Black identities and networks for private capital exchanges through philanthropy, advocacy, business investment or commerce towards shared economic success and justice. Global racism in a global economy requires linked multilocal solutions that connect people for mutual support at local and international levels simultaneously.
There are four actions that you can take today to join the global Black funding equity community and movement with BPM.
1. Read the Global Black Funding Equity Principles and adopt them by signing the Pledge at bit.ly/BPMPledge.
2. Share your ideas for how BPM can best promote the Funding Equity Principles by answering our survey and sharing your suggestions: bit.ly/BPM2021survey.
3. Join Reunity, the final BPM 2021 social action and wellness institute, headlined by Sunny Hostin of The View fame and Rev. Naomi Tutu, by registering at bit.ly/Reunitysummit2021. Reunity is free and open to all.
4. Share the above resources frequently and widely on social media and other networks.
From Minneapolis to Port-au-Prince, Sao Paulo, Lagos and beyond, Black August 2021 is full of despair. But it also reminds us that we have been at this moment before as a people. It tells us that if we unite across our diversity to create a global community in a shared cause, we can move history to “build better” from compounding crises to uplift all. Inclusive Black Diaspora Movements like Black Philanthropy Month and others provide an infrastructure and toolkit for practical global identities that we can mobilize for local empowerment, too, in a complex, fast-changing world.
May your Black August turn agony to #BlackJoy, transform trauma to fuel your dreams and, together, create a more just future worthy of our ancestors’ sacrifice for generations to come.
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Dr. Jackie Bouvier Copeland is the Founder and Chief Architect of The WISE Fund and Black Philanthropy Month (BPM), initiatives focused on the well-being of Black people and promoting giving amongst Black communities across the globe.
