Giving is an important part of Black culture, says longtime nonprofit leader Ebonie Johnson Cooper. “It’s always been a part of who we are.” But nonprofits don’t always know how to connect with young Black donors, she says.
Having more diverse nonprofit decision makers may help with that challenge. But for leaders like Johnson Cooper, who are working to champion Black giving and leadership, the structures of the nonprofit world can often feel exclusive. “It can feel very siloed to be a Black person” navigating the world of institutional philanthropy or trying to make it as a leader of a small nonprofit, she says.
Johnson Cooper has spent years working at nonprofits and consulting with other organizations on their work with donors and board members of color. She wanted to make sure that young Black professionals, advocates, grass-roots organizers, and emerging philanthropists have opportunities to get the training they need in a space that feels comfortable.
Her solution: In 2014, Johnson Cooper founded the Young, Black and Giving Back Institute to empower her peers to change their communities through philanthropy. Since then, the nonprofit has evolved from offering educational programs to launching a giving day to spotlight Black-led and Black-serving organizations, to now raising money for a fund to support those groups directly. With her passion for the power of Black philanthropy, Johnson Cooper is inspiring and opening doors for other leaders.
Career Catapult
Johnson Cooper, who is 37, has worked at nonprofits including the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Washington and Reid Temple AME Church in Glenn Dale, Md., where she now serves as executive assistant to the pastor.
She learned about fundraising while serving on the boards of organizations in Washington and New York. She’s a part of Black Benefactors, a Washington giving circle, and also teaches an undergraduate course on nonprofit leadership and social innovation in action at the University of Maryland.
That’s all in addition to the work she’s done through the Young, Black and Giving Back Institute, removing barriers for other young Black professionals doing social impact work and helping them make connections and catapult their own careers.
Attending a conference organized by the Young, Black and Giving Back Institute changed the course of Rachel Latimore’s career.
Latimore has known Johnson Cooper since their undergraduate years at the University of North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University, a historically Black university in Greensboro. Even back in the early 2000s, Johnson Cooper had a blog and was starting conversations about young Black people and philanthropy.
Latimore had worked in the nonprofit field for a decade before attending the Changing the Face of Philanthropy Summit in 2018. Before attending that event in Washington, she hadn’t seen many Black people with decision-making power at the organizations where she worked.
She saw nonprofit leaders who were far removed from the people their organizations served. “The higher that you went up in terms of responsibility, in terms of thought leadership and influence, you didn’t see a lot of Black people,” she says.
But at the institute’s event, she saw Black people who were leaders and decision makers. “It was really encouraging,” she says. “It said to me that there are people who have these opportunities and are creating more space for more people to be able to influence through leadership.”
At that conference, she met people working in social investing. “I got this renewed sense of purpose around where I wanted my career to go,” she says.
She met someone who worked at Echoing Green who told her about a job opening there. And she decided to pursue a master’s degree in public administration with a focus in social investing from New York University. Latimore is now a global portfolio manager at Echoing Green.
“The summit gave me a lens into how I could create a larger impact with what I am passionate about and open up more doors for others, just the same way that Ebonie and her work did for me,” Latimore says. “She found a unique niche around catapulting folks into a greater understanding of how they can show up in this work.”
Growing a Giving Day
Early on, the Young, Black and Giving Back Institute typically raised money at year’s end and during Black Philanthropy Month in August.
But three years ago, a volunteer fundraising team suggested focusing the institute’s summer efforts on August 28. It’s a date on which many significant events in Black history took place, Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have a Dream” speech, the murder of Emmett Till, and Barack Obama’s acceptance of the Democratic nomination for president.
Johnson and her board members and volunteers hosted a happy hour and promoted the institute online. Those efforts raised a little more than $4,000 in one day — a significant sum for an organization largely supported by friends and family. The success inspired Johnson to create a giving day for other small Black-led and Black-benefiting nonprofits.
“Something just dropped in my spirit,” says Johnson Cooper. “I knew that if we could do it, then we could again help educate other organizations, small ones like ours, to fundraise on their own and also to really to shine a light on what these organizations are doing.”
That was important for several reasons, she says. During big giving days like GivingTuesday, the largest charities — the Red Crosses and the St. Judes of the world — tend to get the most attention. “Race aside, smaller organizations get kind of swept under the rug,” she says. “The energy and the light is on these big organizations, and they’re raising millions and millions of dollars.”
It’s also important, she says, to spotlight the work being done by Black-led and Black-serving charities, to “help our organizations to get some shine.”
To participate in the August giving day, at least 50 percent of an organization’s board members and 50 percent of its staff must be Black. “What that looks like in a practical sense is that the power dynamic and the service dynamic of what you’re doing is fully serving that Black community because there is equity.”
Many organizations that participate haven’t done much fundraising before. The Young, Black and Giving Back Institute put together a tool kit to help groups with the basics. Participating in a giving day helps some organizations take that leap into asking for support. “Why not fundraise with a whole bunch of people that look like us?” she says. “We’re in good company.”
“We knew that there was no shortage of Black nonprofits,” Johnson says. The challenge was getting the word out so that small nonprofits “knew that this was a day for them.”
In 2018, 114 nonprofits raised $12,700. In 2019, the institute partnered with the fundraising platform Mightycause, and 174 organizations raised more than $34,000. More sponsors came on board, and Mightycause introduced Johnson to staff at GivingTuesday, which has since championed the giving day by helping raise awareness and point donors to the platform.
Johnson Cooper hit a rough spot in 2019 when an affinity group called New England Blacks in Philanthropy sent a cease-and-desist letter just ahead the scheduled giving day, then called Giving Black Day. The group said it had trademarked the name Giving Black and any variant of it and demanded a percentage of Young, Black and Giving Back’s fundraising haul on the giving day. The skirmish left a bad taste, but Johnson Cooper has moved on. Giving Black Day is now Give 8/28, and this year’s event was the biggest yet.
The 2020 giving day came at a moment when national attention was focused on racial justice and supporting Black organizations. More than twice as many nonprofits participated — 474 in all — raising more than $254,000 collectively. They included causes like midwife organizations, education nonprofits, groups serving Black boys and girls, and a group raising funds for a portable shower for people without homes.
“People realized that there needed to be a serious investment in these organizations to make sure that their essential work continues,” Johnson Cooper says of this year’s growth in giving. “That just speaks to the belief in the work that’s happening and the recognition of what the Black community has always done.”
Most participating groups, including Young, Black and Giving Back itself, have received minimal support from institutional philanthropies. But Johnson Cooper hopes that will change — and that supporting these organizations will continue to be a priority for individual donors.
“The work that’s being done on the ground by these nonprofits, this doesn’t turn off when the clock strikes 2021,” she says. The Give 8/28 website serves as a directory for donors who want to contribute to these groups beyond the giving day. “It’s important that the same support that all of these organizations got this year, that we can continue to duplicate that in years to come and more.”
Hustle and Commitment
Conversations about racial justice in the nonprofit sector sparked by a summer of strife are leading to some of the concerns Johnson Cooper has focused on for years, says Tonia Wellons, CEO of the Greater Washington Community Foundation. Especially her efforts to promote Black philanthropy and Black-led nonprofits.
“All the stories about the underfunding in Black communities,” Wellons says, “these were the kinds of things that Ebonie has been trying to bring attention to for many, many years.”
Running and sustaining small nonprofits is not easy work, Wellons says. It often takes the hustle and commitment of a founder like Johnson Cooper to keep it going.
Young, Black and Giving Back had a special goal for the money it raised during Give 8/28 this year: creating a new fund to support Black-led grassroots nonprofits. The organization raised more than $6,000 that day and has since brought in a total of $10,000 in seed funding. Johnson Cooper hopes to start making grants in 2021.
Wellons, whom Johnson Cooper considers a mentor, says a lot of their conversations have been about challenges and opportunities in the nonprofit sector and really wanting to see deeper investment in communities of color and leaders of color.
“Typically, philanthropy is targeted at much older people with higher net worths than her target audience,” Wellons says. “But her positioning was, we give already and can give at any stage in our life.”
Even though giving is an important part of a Black culture, she’s championing a space that many people of color feel like they don’t know much about, Wellons says. “I really just appreciated how Ebonie was trying to bring so many people along with her.”
