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While over the past two decades, philanthropic giving overall has skyrocketed by nearly 400% – only about 10% of those dollars have gone to organizations led by people of color.
Even while we watch COVID-19 ravage Black communities’ health and economic well-being, experience a long overdue moment of national reckoning on anti-Black racism incited by the murder of George Floyd and read headlines like “US Companies Flood Civil Rights Groups with Donations,” we still see nonprofits led by Black leaders at the helm struggling for investment. In fact, as captured in a new report released just this month from the Building Movements Project, this year nearly half of the Black-led nonprofits interviewed across the country reported a loss in grant revenue.
This is not only yet another example of how anti-Black racism plagues every aspect of American life — it is also downright nonsensical. In the absence of a federal relief package, philanthropy is one of the few resources left for nonprofits to turn to in order to help solve under resourced, disenfranchised, long overlooked communities’ most pressing problems — poverty, lack of educational access, health challenges. Philanthropists are supposed to be problem solvers, yet in a year when epic commitments to racial equity are being promised by the philanthropic sector, Black led organizations are being shortchanged.
If you’ve lived it, you know it. As a recent Echoing Green and Bridgespan Group study showed, leaders of color are a critical piece of the puzzle of combatting racial injustice because they “bring strategies that intimately understand the racialized experiences of communities of color and the issues these communities face.” And it is leaders who are reflective of those communities that know which solutions will work, and will stick.
The effort to address racial inequity is not just a question of ends, it’s about the means as well. How we address these problems is dependent on who has a seat at the table. Instead of creating a place at the table, philanthropy needs to invest in leaders of color to build their own tables.
But right now, there’s barely enough funding for a leg.
And even this slice of funding is not evenly distributed: organizations led by women of color receive even less support, accounting for less than 1% of foundation giving in recent years. Nonprofits echo trends seen in the for-profit sector, where only 2% of entrepreneurs backed by VC firms are women, and less than 5% are Black or Latin — but even more troubling because of the goals and intentions of the nonprofit sector.
It’s time for a change.
This is why we launched the Power Fund at Robin Hood. The fund seeks to break down barriers that leaders of color consistently face, lift up effective solutions and invest in leaders with the racialized know-how to drive mobility from poverty — an objective of critical importance as we recover and rebuild from COVID. To that end, we just announced six Black or Latinx leaders — five of whom are women — as our inaugural grantees.
Among our initial grantees is LaRay Brown, President and CEO of One Brooklyn Health System, who as the first Black woman to lead a private hospital in New York City, is leading the charge to address New York’s glaring maternal mortality gap. Black women in New York City are eight times more likely to die in childbirth and Black infants are three times more likely to die before their first birthday compared to their white counterparts.
Likewise, as the Bronx continues to experience some of the highest rates of unemployment in the country, Jerelyn Rodriguez as Executive Director of The Knowledge House is working to provide low-income youth and young adults free technical training and professional development services to break into the tech industry.
It’s local leaders and organizations like these that are the key to addressing racial and economic inequity. For the inaugural group, the Power Fund offers more than access to capital. It will serve as an institutional incubator to foster growth. It will also invest in the leaders themselves, through self-directed leadership elevation and capacity-building to help their organizations and programs grow, thrive and succeed.
We are watching Black communities across our country slide deeper into poverty and face deepening health and economic obstacles. We need effective solutions, and we need them now. To find these solutions we need to invest in leaders best positioned to identify the needs in their own communities and shape a culturally competent response.
This is where philanthropies can play a critical role. Like we’ve done with the Power Fund, we hope other philanthropies and funders can examine how their own systems exacerbate the philanthropic race gap and take concrete steps to invest in a more just future.
