An Activist for a Young Generation

As a teenager, Rashad Robinson marshaled his schoolmates and his passion for justice to win his first battle: keeping a drugstore near his Long Island high school open to students. Though he didn’t know it then, Robinson was creating a template for his career as an influential activist who is seen by many as a prototype for how to appeal to a young generation of black Americans.

Robinson thought his fellow students in his hometown of Riverhead, N.Y., were experiencing discrimination. Signs on the store’s front doors told them they weren’t welcome. There were accusations of teenagers shoplifting that proved to be untrue.

After informing the store’s management it was illegal to shut students out, Robinson became the face of a bitter fight, deploying what would become signature strategies. He organized a boycott, called other groups (in this case, the ACLU and the NAACP) for help, led the students in walkouts and protests, and built a campaign to keep the news media aware of developments.

And in another sign of things to come, the movement he built won. After a week and a half of determined action, the local Rite Aid relented, allowing students to browse or shop during lunch and after school.

“I had figured out how to get on the 11 o’clock news and get people to show up,” he says with a laugh. In addition to winning the battle, he also earned an award from the local NAACP.

Now, as president of Color of Change, the 40-year-old Robinson is a veteran of campaigns designed to expand power for black people.

The organization added another weapon — the internet — to Robinson’s arsenal. Under his leadership, Color of Change has become the nation’s largest online racial-justice group.

Though its focus is on building a movement from the grassroots up, its targets are often powerful institutions. Color of Change has led boycotts and other campaigns that have played major roles in shelving Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, throwing hard-line prosecutors out of office in favor of progressive candidates, holding Facebook to account for its treatment of black activists, and forcing credit-card companies to stop processing donations to white hate groups.

Money and Influence

Color of Change offers a fresh approach to amassing black political strength. It shapes email messages that encourage African Americans to take direct action, such as by voting, organizing people to advocate on issues that matter to them, and contacting companies or government officials. It also works to influence powerful players in the media or in politics to take up its policy arguments.

“We want to dictate the terms on what the criminal-justice and economic issues are,” says Robinson, seated in his office on the 31st floor of a Financial District high-rise, where photo portraits of Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, and civil-rights legend Bayard Rustin line the walls. “When we see the New York Times or politicians repeating our lines, we know we’re making an impact.”

Robinson, who joined the group in 2011, has greatly enhanced its profile. Color of Change has burgeoned from a $700,000-a-year operation during Robinson’s first year to one that now brings in $21 million. As its membership numbers have ballooned from around 650,000 to 1.7 million, its staff has grown from a half-dozen people to 90.

Matt Rourke/AP Images

Support From Big Foundations

To expand its reach, Color of Change has won the support of major foundations and wealthy donors. It hasn’t always been easy.

“We spent years trying to persuade funders that black people use the internet,” Robinson says. “Now we rely on rich people who care about civil rights and racial justice.”

Color of Change gets major support from the Ford Foundation, which awarded it a five-year, $9.25 million grant in 2016, and receives sizable grants from other progressive foundations, including the Open Philanthropy Project and Open Society Foundations, which keep the group on the upswing during a time of intensifying political crises.

Even with a charismatic and well-regarded leader, the organization has faced challenges to growth. Its members, many of them poor, account for less than 10 percent of its donations. And to maintain its independence, Color of Change accepts no corporate donations.

“A lot of corporations likely wish that they could deal with us by giving us a donation or holding a gala where they could say nice things about us,” says Robinson. “We don’t want to be bought off.”

That a black organization sometimes struggles to find funding is hardly news.

“The sad, secret truth is that it is hard to raise money as a black male leader — even when you are generating fantastic results,” says Van Jones, a co-founder of Dream Corps, a social-enterprise incubator, and the host of a show on CNN. Jones also co-founded Color of Change in 2005 with James Rucker, who now serves on the group’s board, after witnessing the federal government’s ineffectual response to the plight of black New Orleanians after Hurricane Katrina.

Robinson’s appeal and the effectiveness of his group’s campaigns make Color of Change a desirable nonprofit to support, say donors.

“Rashad has a deep understanding of how systems need to change,” says Chloe Cockburn, a program officer at the Open Philanthropy Project, which has awarded $3.2 million in grants to the organization during the past four years. “He’s a thought leader and a visionary who invites other voices into discussions.”

Not in It for Clicks

Color of Change crafts its online appeals in ways that most groups can’t match, she adds: “They have a strategy of picking interventions over time that create the right narrative and move the needle.”

Color of Change works to make its email blasts fresh and instigating, with a goal of persuading more and more of the 5 million people on its email list to protest discrimination. It also encourages them to demand changes in political and economic systems that the group believes are hard-wired to harm black people, or at least deny them the full rights of citizenship.

The group creates a dozen or so email blasts monthly. Each aims to clearly explain the need for change. Color of Change will create a specific black frame of reference for issues, such as abortion, that affect people of all colors.

The nonprofit sends a small batch of emails to a random sample of members to see how or if people respond. Subject lines and images are tested for effect. As they measure levels of response, Color of Change campaign leaders tweak the message’s language.

Sometimes they do even more after it’s clear organizing tacks don’t work. For example, after the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012, Color of Change sent messages encouraging members to support laws that would limit gun rights. “But we learned that a lot of our members weren’t with us,” Robinson says. The group changed course, asking members to advocate for changes in Florida’s Stand Your Ground gun laws.

The organization eschews “clicktivism” — the building of an online membership list for the sake of fundraising — while avoiding the temptation to reflexively react to the utterances of President Trump or mimic other activist groups. “The last thing we want to do is become an echo chamber for the Democratic Party,” says Arisha Hatch, the organization’s managing director of campaigns.

The group’s focus is on impact.

“We aren’t in this for the clicks but to build a movement,” Robinson says. “You’ll never see a campaign from us that has no theory of change around it or that asks our members to do something ridiculous. You’ll never see us say, ‘Call Mitch McConnell to encourage him to embrace affirmative action.’”

Instead, Color of Change’s campaigns stress the opportunities people have to become involved.

“We’re all about moving people up the ladder of engagement,” Robinson says, adding that the group works especially hard trying to reach black people who rarely vote. “If we can bring regular black voters and irregular ones together, we can build a community and create an agenda.”

People who came to the group online have gone on to attend its live events, such as regular brunches for black women that Color of Change started running three years ago in key cities. Event participants have gone on to organize campaigns that call attention to the water crisis in Flint, Mich., and a drive to get voting rights for ex-convicts in Florida, among other causes.

Campaigns and Countercampaigns

Predictably, Color of Change has antagonistic relationships with people in power. The group can be confrontational. Its boycotts threaten corporate profits and the stature of prominent people. Many of them fight back.

Robinson has been the target of countercampaigns. After Color of Change persuaded Amazon to drop its membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a powerful conservative advocacy group funded by Charles Koch, head of Koch Industries, Robinson became a marked man.

“ALEC hired a PR firm to make me out to be an angry black man,” says Robinson. “It didn’t work.”

When Color of Change took on Facebook over its harsh labeling of black activists who use the platform, the company hired another firm to paint Color of Change as a puppet organization backed by George Soros, the billionaire financier and philanthropist. “They used Soros to vilify us,” Robinson says.

Revelations last November about Facebook’s campaign led Color of Change to demand meetings with its leaders, who later agreed to perform a “civil-rights audit” that would examine its racial practices.

White nationalists represent another problem — one that is sometimes more immediate. Robinson and some employees have been stalked by people who have threatened them and their families, forcing the organization to beef up its security nationwide. Robinson recently moved into a new place with security cameras and a doorman. Security at Color of Change outposts around the nation has been bolstered.

“A couple of years ago, you could have walked right into our offices,” he says.

Balanced Response

His ability to respond to such threats with both ardor and a level head keeps Color of Change in balance, observers say. Previously the senior director of media programs at Glaad, a gay advocacy group, Robinson is telegenic and savvy in front of a camera or microphone, and he is accommodating but firm when speaking to groups. Those around him say he is invariably genuine and always prepared — qualities that make people take his calls for societal change seriously.

“Rashad has a way of criticizing you without humiliating you,” says Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation. “He’s always constructive. It’s about how to problem-solve. He’s actually very pragmatic.”

A small, dapper man who often wears a fedora or trilby hat on television and elsewhere, Robinson reacts daily to news and events that all too often mean trouble for black people. Observers note that he does so without dramatics or demonizing.

“Rashad understands there is a difference between having presence and having power — that there’s a difference between being disproportionately present on Twitter and having the power to rewrite the rules that shape our lives,” says Heather McGhee, a board member at Color of Change and a distinguished senior fellow at Demos, a think tank that advocates for racial equality. “He is always thinking multiple steps ahead, he rarely sleeps, and doesn’t drink coffee. He’s a wonder.”

Sharing the Stage

Others see Robinson as a trailblazer among black leaders, one who offers newer organizations a fresh path forward at a time when some legacy black groups struggle to maintain their influence. Color of Change views itself as a unicorn. It is young and diverse, with a management structure that is dominated by women and an executive who is gay.

“Traditionally, black folks grab onto one or two big heterosexual male leaders — from Frederick Douglass to Martin to Malcolm to Obama — who meet the typical requirements. But in comes Rashad, shattering the old model,” says Van Jones.

Robinson has adopted strategies based on the struggles of others, including the LGBTQ and feminist movements, to broaden the organization’s reach and appeal, Jones adds.

During a recent conference in Washington on the problems people of color face, including high rates of incarceration and prosecution, Robinson offered comments to set the stage, moderated questions so they didn’t get out of hand, and otherwise allowed other speakers to hold forth. His colleagues in the activism world say it is typical for him to convene a meeting and then step back to listen.

“Rashad doesn’t use his big-tech platform to get people to stand behind him,” Jones says. “He uses it to give voice to others — to let a million-plus people speak for themselves.”

When he does talk, he wants people to know where he’s coming from.

“A big part of my job is to be honest about who I am,” says Robinson. “I started as an activist at an early age. I also came out of the closet early. There are things that embarrass other people that don’t embarrass me. And I’m an activist who is also a happy, well-adjusted person.”

Still, his job offers plenty of reasons for fear and — given the pace of today’s news — anxiety. For respite, Robinson spends his little free time cooking. He’ll spend a week or more preparing sauces and rubs for a big bash he holds each year for friends and colleagues in Riverhead. It’s the only way he can break the ever-present tension, he says, which can snowball.

“I know I’m in trouble when I’m trying to solve all the world’s troubles in my head at the same time,” Robinson says. “There are times when I go onstage and I’m feeling that fear. I use this mantra — ‘Even when I’m afraid, I choose to face the challenges with the fullness of who I am’ — to get me through.”

In addition to continuing the fight for bail reform, more inclusion of black faces and voices in Hollywood, and net neutrality, Color of Change continues to monitor even scarier threats, including the federal government. In recent years, the FBI has been investigating black activist groups, labeling some as “black extremists,” despite the protests of Robinson and others. White hate groups still spread their views virally online. And blacks disproportionately experience police violence.

Given all that, it’s hard for Robinson to escape becoming overwhelmed, he admits.

“The best perspective you can have,” he says, “is that you’ll never catch up.”