Philanthropy needs to do more to help Black-led and Black-serving organizations survive and fulfill their missions, finds a new report from the Young Black and Giving Back Institute. Among the report’s recommendations: Donors should provide more multiyear grants and fundraising and leadership training.
“This report is for those who are thinking about how can we best utilize our funds, how can we best make sure that our funds are supporting the work that’s being done,” says Ebonie Johnson Cooper, founder and executive director of YBGB. “If their work is truly focused on the challenges that exist within the Black community, then this report should be a resource and a tool.”
Timed to coincide with the close of Black Philanthropy Month, the report surveyed 227 leaders of Black-serving and Black-led organizations about their challenges and offers recommendations to the philanthropic sector on how to help the organizations that are closest to the communities they serve so they can continue to do important work.
The report, “Grassroots, Black & Giving: How Philanthropy Can Better Support Black-led and Black-Benefiting Nonprofits,” was paid for by the Nielsen Foundation’s Data for Good grant program. The study found that Black-led and Black-benefiting organizations tend to have extremely small budgets (most are less than $500,000 and some as small as $30,000), to be deeply rooted in the communities they serve, and to have leaders who say their organization needs more training in fundraising, leadership, and financial management.
These organizations are struggling to raise money, according to the report. More than 86 percent said they often have trouble accessing a large number of diverse funding sources. Nearly 73 percent always or often struggle to identify or cultivate new funders. Roughly 53 percent said their organization would shut down if they lost key donors, and about 70 percent believe grant makers never or rarely help other funders recognize the value of Black-led, Black-serving organizations and encourage them to support these organizations.
Razor-Thin Margins
The report comes at a challenging moment for black-serving and black-led organizations. It’s been three years since the death of George Floyd brought an influx of donations. But, as the Chronicle reported in June, much of that money has dried up. Many organizations find themselves back to pre-pandemic levels of support, notes Rebecca Darwent, senior adviser of collaboratives at Philanthropy Together.
“Unfortunately, we are all going ‘back to normal,’” she says. “‘Normal’ did not serve Black communities well, didn’t serve Black nonprofits or Black leadership well.”
Darwent is not surprised at the report’s finding that leaders want more training on how to navigate philanthropy.
“Philanthropy is a little opaque,” she says. “It’s not very transparent. It’s not very easy to see what the application processes are like or how to get connected to program officers. And without that relationship, to pick up the phone and ask your questions, it’s kind of like starting with a broken telephone.”
The influx of funding in 2020 created a troubling dynamic for organizations serving Black communities, says Tynesha McHarris, co-founder of the Black Feminist Fund. The rush of donations established a pattern that philanthropic support, perversely, only occurs when Black bodies are brutalized.
“That becomes not just a complicated relationship but a really harmful one,” McHarris says. “I’m not saying that folks should not be resourcing movements and organizations in the face of harm, tragedy, or death. But that can’t be the only thing that sparks urgency for resourcing. You also need to fund long-term organizing. You need to fund leadership for rest and restoration.”
Johnson Cooper, the YBGB leader, notes that organizations are doing work that deeply benefits Black communities on razor-thin margins, and if they go under due to lack of funding and assistance, their communities suffer the most. “If an organization has to shut down, the danger is that the child who is relying on that service isn’t going to get the services they need,” she says.
Unwritten Rules
The report makes several recommendations for grant makers, including:
- Create funding streams that specifically target Black-led nonprofits supporting Black communities.
- Prioritize the long-term sustainability of organizations by creating funding opportunities that include long-term, multi-year grants, and additional support.
- Provide fundraising assistance and training on how to cultivate individual donors, retain supporters, and diversify an organization’s sources of revenue.
- Hold regular and consistent feedback sessions with Black-led and Black-benefiting nonprofits to understand their needs.
McHarris, with the Black Feminist Fund, thinks the recommendations encourage grant makers to break some of what she calls the unwritten rules in philanthropy.
“There are lots of rules in philanthropy and lots of rules around fundraising that actually don’t work and don’t serve the broader goals that the folks who give the money say they want,” she says. She describes these rules as limits on how much money grant makers will give to small nonprofits believing incorrectly that they aren’t able to manage grants well and refusing to give smaller groups multi-year grants. McHarris says adopting the report’s recommendations would make a big difference. “It would give them a level of funding that looks like we want them to win.”
Johnson Cooper hopes more donors will partner with educational institutions to provide training within the grants they give to organizations. Primarily her hope is that the report is of use to grant makers.
“This problem was not created overnight so it won’t be solved overnight,” Johnson Cooper says. “My hope in six months to year is that at least one or two handfuls of funders can say, ‘This has really helped open my eyes. We are a community foundation, and we are going to be intentional about outreach to the Black-led, Black-benefiting organizations right here in our area.”
Darwent, at Philanthropy Together, recommends that Black-serving organizations use the data when they reach out for funding support.
“This is an opportunity for Black-led organizations to take the report and to attach it to their funding applications and to really name the discriminatory practices that they face,” she says. “It’s no longer the case where we can hide behind not having the data. We have the data. Use it to show the gap and then reach out to a collaborative or other funders in your issue area and start building relationships.”
