Year Up, an antipoverty organization that provides career training and support to young adults, is a rising star. Founded in 2000, it raced from start-up to large organization in just a few years and now raises more than $80 million a year from donors and an additional $80 million in fees from corporate partners that host Year Up interns.
But the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and subsequent protests brought the organization up short. Leaders and staff considered whether the group was in some ways inadvertently perpetuating the very inequities that it aims to eliminate.
Its fundraising team wrestled with questions that face many social-service and education groups working with families who are predominantly people of color. Says Susan Murray, national director of development: “We asked ourselves: Why is it that our donor base is mostly white people, and how could we deepen our connection to our African American donors?”
From these conversations emerged the group’s Black Opportunity Alliance, an affinity group of donors that has the feel of both a college alumni group and a giving society. Members include graduates of Year Up’s training program but also mentors, coaches, and volunteers from communities nationwide, as well as employees from companies that provide internships to Year Up participants. The alliance was a “way for us to very intentionally talk to people who loved us already and draw them into the family” as donors, says Brenda Johnson, regional director of development. Johnson started the alliance with Janice Lindsey, who leads alumni engagement for the organization.
For a minimum $250 donation, members can attend happy hours and networking events and take advantage of professional-development opportunities. Bigger gifts unlock other perks such as site tours with students or speaking roles at national events.
The goal is not to raise money, Year Up says, but to build a tight community among those who share the same passion: the advancement of young Black adults.
Shift From Big Donations
The alliance is the first donor-affinity group of any kind for the nonprofit — and a collective approach that’s new for an organization fueled almost exclusively by big donations from individuals and corporations. When soliciting campaign gifts, for instance, Year Up assembles Wall Street-like investor prospectuses that detail how gifts will drive expansion of the group’s work.
“We’re really centered on meeting our revenue goals, and some of the other things that we also care about can get lost in translation,” Johnson says.
At the outset, Johnson and others researched the giving priorities of Black households, which typically include family, education, and houses of worship. It also introduced race and ethnicity as descriptors in donor profiles in the group’s database. Previously, Year Up did not systematically track the race or ethnicity of its donors and knew of fewer than 40 Black professionals who supported the organization. But surveys and research revealed there were 10 times as many — a number from which a good network could be built.
The alliance launched with a virtual event for Atlanta supporters featuring David Moody, the CEO of a construction-management company that he started in 1988 and ran out of his bedroom. It’s now one of the largest Black-owned businesses in America and has worked on such landmarks as the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta and stadiums for the city’s professional football and baseball teams.
Moody, 65, and his wife, Karla — whose income as a nurse carried the family in the company’s early years — are significant education philanthropists. They began supporting Year Up about five years ago and have endowed scholarships at Morehouse, Georgia State, and other colleges. They have two children: Karla, 35, and Charles III, 37.
At the event, billed as a “fireside chat,” Charles interviewed David about his philanthropy and its roots in the generosity of David’s ancestors, including his maternal grandfather, who came to the United States from British Honduras in the early 1900s.
About 30 individuals have joined the alliance so far. Year Up is planning additional launch events focused on the theme of intergenerational philanthropy, likely in Washington, D.C., and Boston.
Other events that focus on professional development and early-career coaching feel like college networking sessions. Johnson invited several Year Up alumni to a meeting with a Black employees’ group at a company that hosts interns. One of the alumni had just lost his job in pandemic-related layoffs, but by the end of the call, he had offers of help from three of the employees.
Rethinking Top 10 Donors
Benefits of the alliance have spilled over to the entire fundraising team, Johnson says. Before launching the effort, she talked with each of the organization’s three dozen frontline fundraisers about engaging with Black donors. “I got some really honest feedback, like: ‘Well, Brenda, I’ve never worked with a Black donor, and I’m a little bit nervous.’”
Johnson, who is Black, says the effort has changed her own fundraising. In the past, when asked to identify her top 10 donor prospects, she never picked a person of color. “Why is that?” she says. “If we have people volunteering and mentoring, why have we not worked with them as donors? I think we have made assumptions about their giving capacity without ever talking to them.”
“It’s really freeing for me,” she adds, “to go back to think again about my strategy of relationship development. Who am I picking to call? And why am I calling them?”
Donors seem to appreciate the new approach. When Year Up started to spread word of the new alliance, a former board member stepped up with her first gift in many years.
Moody, the construction CEO, says he has gotten to know young alumni through the alliance, which has inspired his giving. The group also gives him the chance to help these men and women in tangible and more satisfying ways.
“We get in the habit of just stroking a check. But if you never see and touch what you’re doing, you miss the benefit. When you can give of yourself and see the results of your volunteer work, it impacts you in ways you may never know.”
