Latest / Color Commentary / Ep 30 | They Made the Promises. Here's What the Data Says They Did.

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Ep 30 | They Made the Promises. Here's What the Data Says They Did. · Color Commentary

• Charles Cole: Welcome to color commentary, a podcast where stories shaping our world are told in black and white first, and then we dig into their deeper meaning in full color. Each week I'll be bringing you the news like this. First, we'll start with what I like to call the black and white section, a clear, straight shooting rundown of the facts and the traditions of grace like Ed Bradley, Walter Cronkite, and the classic voices of journalism. Then we'll shift into the color commentary section where I have my own personal opinions and insights. Sometimes it'll just be me. Sometimes we'll have guests, but let's figure out together exactly what this show can be with your feedback shaping the journey. Let's get into it. All right, so. In 2020, after George Floyd was murdered in the streets on camera, something unusual happened in American philanthropy. Foundations that had never returned a call suddenly had some money. ⁓ Corporations that spent years ignoring Black communities wrote some pretty significant checks, and the sector made promises and wrote lot of articles and talked about it. And recently, new research just dropped from Candid. and ABFE, which is the Association of Black Foundation Executives. And it tells us what happened to those promises. ⁓ Spoiler alert, it's not really good. Now, this story is personal for me. I run a black led nonprofit. I've sat across from funders and I've heard the way relationships use as reason to keep me out of a room. And I've heard it used as a reason to let me in. I know this landscape pretty intimately ⁓ and I have varied views. I've had some really incredible ⁓ experiences in some of those instances and some not so much. Enough to say that ⁓ this story did not surprise me and I think it's interesting that it's out. So today I'm going to give you the facts and I'm gonna tell you exactly what I think about them. So here are the facts in black and white. So on April 7th, the AP, which is the Associated Press, published finance from a new report produced jointly by Candid, which is a nonprofit research organization, and ABFE, which as I said earlier, is the Association of Black Foundation Executives. It's a black philanthropy advocacy group. And the report examined funding patterns for black led nonprofits before, during, and after. the racial justice movement that followed George Floyd's murder in May, 2020. And what it found was, you know, it was a bit bold. If I say so myself, is the finance was pretty stark. A subset of larger black led nonprofits saw funding increases between 2020 and 2022. But those gains were temporary and had largely reversed by the time that the study period had ended. Smaller black led nonprofits saw no significant change at all. And in many cases, money that big, big money that was promised never reached them. The racial funding gap did not necessarily close. According to report, 70 % of white led nonprofits receive foundation grants, while only half of black led nonprofits receive the same. And when they do, the dollar amounts are significantly lower. Black led nonprofits also have significantly fewer continuing funders that their non-black counterparts. ⁓ had, right? So only one third of black led nonprofits received general operating support. It's basically an ⁓ unrestricted funding that lets an organization actually function, like hire who you need to hire, get supplies, things like that might not be tied directly to this mission or act that they're trying to accomplish. Now compare that to just over half of other nonprofits. So People were wondering like, why did that money disappear? Well, several nonprofit leaders and philanthropy professionals spoke to AP about what happened on the ground. I'm gonna share some of their stories. Kia Kroom, who runs a fundraising firm, serving nonprofits in black communities said her clients received more funding than ever from corporations in 2020 and 2021. Some hired additional development staff to meet the surge in demand. And then the money dried up and those same organizations had to conduct layoffs. She described the giving as just a very transactional gift at best. Candi Lewis, CEO of Positive Results Center, a Los Angeles nonprofit serving survivors of domestic violence, said checks arrived from new supporters she had never heard from before, but the support was almost always a one-time donation, not the start of a relationship. Whereas Jaleesa Hall, who leads Raising a village foundation in Washington, DC said foundations having really cracked how to find potential grantees outside of their existing networks. Her observation, small black led nonprofits simply aren't in the rooms to begin with. The report confirmed this. Most of the foundation grants that did reach small black led nonprofits came from first time funders with no prior relationships. And many called out the general structural problem that was going on, right? The ABFV CEO, Susan Taylor Batten, told AP that foundations largely lacked relationships with black organizations of any scale before 2020. And when protesters demanded action, that absence created a scramble. Funders didn't know who to call, so they often gave to whoever was already visible or who they had a relationship with. Philanthropy has broadly shifted in recent years toward trust-based models, longer grants. That's general operating support, fewer reporting requirements. Babadon said Black-led nonprofits have not benefited from those improvements. The sector's best practices are not reaching the organizations that need them most. T. Pring Westbrook, who's a fellow at the Urban Institute, identified the pattern as trendfunding. Her description, maybe during Black History Month there will be a funding campaign, but the thing about a campaign is a campaign doesn't build sustainability. Now let's look at the current climate. The timing of this report is pretty significant, Black led nonprofits that are already operating with fewer resources than their peers are now navigating an additional head when the Trump administration's rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion policies have further curtailed federal and corporate support for organizations serving black communities. Organizations that were already behind are now losing ground in a more hostile funding environment than at any point in recent. memory. Candid CEO Anne Mae Chang said in a report, there's a misconception that Black-led nonprofits receive a windfall of funding following the 2020 racial justice movement. Data like this enables us to demonstrate what is actually occurring in the funding landscape. So that's the news. Now let's talk about it. You're listening to Color Commentary with Dr. Co. So I have personal experience with this. I run a black led nonprofit. ⁓ And when I read this report, it confirmed a lot of what I had already known. And one of the questions as I was building this out was, was there anything there that surprised me? And I would say this. So I have a varied experience with this. ⁓ I am first off, I'm very grateful for the support that my organization had received and during that time. And there was a perfect storm and I maybe in my own naivete, I wanted to build real relationships with my funders. wanted to, I took them at their word around wanting to be a part of this change and listening and hearing this stuff and trying to change the tide. Cause all this research was out about, you know, black, black led organizations, black founded organizations. And I saw a lot of other things I saw. There was this great pass off during this time to what's that Charles sign official name is just what I call it. But there was this moment in time around that same time. And I'm terrible with dates, but I know it all happened around the same time where a lot of social justice oriented nonprofits. ⁓ that were working to fight for black people or brown people or whatever. They were led by white people. And there was this reckoning that happened where they all started to pass off their orgs to black people. But then it gets a little deeper. They wanted to pass it off specifically in many cases to black women, which on its face sounds really good, right? It sounds really positive. This is a... a group of people that are really close to the ground, are caring, are really good at what they do, but don't often get the opportunities. And what happened was, it sounded good on his face, but usually when that had happened, that handoff, a lot of the money that came with that CEO or that ED or that founder left with them. Not that they were doing anything nefarious, it's just that those funded relationships did not branch over. So you got all these new black leaders ⁓ and many, many black women that are now in the CEO position, but their funding is gone. And these organizations are subsequently shuttering, closing or significantly scaling back with them at the helm, kind of leaving them holding the bag. And from the outside, it could look a certain type of way. But if you were inside, You saw exactly what it was, because it was like, the cash cows have dried up. Now we're passing it off for these people to have to clean up. And all of this stuff was happening around the same time. So I think it's not that I heard anything new in that article. And even when I read it, I sent it out to a few people to kind of discuss it. And I knew I was going to when I did the show, I wanted to be careful in it. I didn't want to paint. this picture of the big bad wolf and all this stuff, because again, I'm very grateful for the support that I was getting in. And I saw my colleagues get in and our ability to really build agency in black people, not just for my organization, but I saw different types of causes and organizations really out in the streets doing things to kind of help their people. So what the article did for me is it was a validating point to where some of us could look crazy or angry, fall into these stereotypical tropes that people might want to put on you, like, oh, you look entitled or, or, know, you're always a victim or this and the third. The article is somewhat validating for a lot of people and a lot of my colleagues that have all since pivoted, made major pivots because they still need to do this work and they still need to. support their staff. There's a lot of layoffs, man. There was a lot of layoffs that were happening. And so. Here's what I thought and here's what I think. From that beginning, I felt like I knew that wasn't gonna last. I felt these clubs kind of growing and evolving. And so for me, my instincts are around the work that I do. I'm gonna have a conversation about instincts and following them and both the good and the bad of that. My instincts are around hustling. and serving and you know if the front door is closed finding a window or back door to go through to get to the goal that you need. Those are my instincts my instincts are not. Nonprofit you know and car industrial complex or how you know speaking with funders or ⁓ the way in which you need to say things in a report to get the funding or you know kind of fluff up your. your solutions and what you've done to look more attractive so you can attract more money. Those were not my instincts. And I say that to say I leaned on things that I knew. I leaned on the teachers of my grandmother who I had until I was nine. So it's very young teachings, but they prove valid. I, even with all of our funding, I tried to accomplish all of our goals while using not all of the money, but using enough to get those things done. not necessarily doing it on a cheap, we know how to stretch a dollar. So I utilized that so I could bank some of that for a rainy day because I did not think that this was going to be lasting. was still getting, ⁓ you know, one year ⁓ philanthropic support, you know, two year. think we might've got a three year one time, but let me tell you why the one year is so both the, it's a curse blessing. Because when you have a one year ⁓ grant, you're spending so much time of that grant, reporting on that grant, ⁓ sourcing that grant, and trying to secure another grant. When you can get at least three years or above of funding, it allows you to do some actual future planning, right? It allows you to actually invest when you don't know if you're gonna have money next year. You're trying, you're making some decisions, some pretty staunch decisions ⁓ that may not really help you fully realize the goal that you're going after. So now you're doing more of a survival play. You're not operating as the CEO that is trying to thrive in future plan, right? You're operating as a CEO of like, okay, I can keep the lights on today. I can pay the staff today. And then let me go out in month three into this grant and start working constantly to see if we can get a renewal or, or, you know, additional years. And I remember, you know, knowing of some other CEOs and we were all fighting to get this multi-year funding and partially. I go into this, again, let's talk about instincts. I have mentors in this space and their relationship with the money is, I'm kind of enviable of, right? And what I mean by that is when they're thinking about this, they are thinking about this in the sense of, I'm just that money belongs to us to do this work. These people were just holding that money and our job is to get that money and to get it over here. And they talk to those funders as such like like their entitlements the wrong way because I think entitlement has a connotation to it. I don't mean this in a bad way. It's something that I think we have to grow and get as as as leaders. It's a skill set. Right. So Entitlement is not the right word, but it's a good word because it describes what it needs to be. But there's I don't want the negative connotation of it. And I will watch those those people and that confidence that they would go and it will work. It will work. I was more just kind of grateful. Right. I was more just kind of like nobody owes me anything. Nobody has to do this for me. So let me be grateful. I have my mission. But I also want to make sure that we agree mutually on what we're going to accomplish with these funds. I want to. I want to be working in conjunction. And again, I'd take people at their word. when organizations, so when foundations would say things like, well, we want to partner with you on this or whatever, like I really wanted to have the partnership. And so I met some really, really good foundations when I was doing this stuff. The Rogers Foundation was a small family fund out of Oakland. And ⁓ I love their CEO to this day. He's one of my favorite people. He's one of the first people in my life, Renell Sotelo. He's one of the first that did everything that he said he was going to do and was truly a partner. And that was one of my early like experiences in this work. So it's not that I thought everybody was gonna be Renée Ho, but I think it made me feel like this type of partnership was possible. And we did some really great stuff together. Now here's the thing about good foundations like that. Many of them have an end date, right? Like they do this thing called sunsetting. Sunsetting, especially like in a family of Foundation fund. Like sometimes they want to spend it all down and like, you know, so they might get themselves a runway. We're going to sunset in 10 years. We're going to sunset at five. So I got to be around for Rogers Sunset and I'm so happy for that organization. But when they left, there was like a guardian angel left, right? Like somebody had to kind of bounce this stuff off of, they were helping us get this new muscle. Now there were other foundations. where they have foundation syndrome. And they might not be able to do the type of work that you do. They might not even be comfortable in the communities that you actually work in and are willing to put on a line for. But they do feel it as if because they have the money and they read studies and things like that, they are the smartest in the room about how to get this thing done. And you need to kind of fulfill and do what they need you to do. you say... And it just does not often end well. And I say this to my funded friends. I have friends that are officers in this, is that I tell them, listen, since you got this title, most of you haven't heard the truth since because everybody that talks to you is trying to get funds from you. So you are always getting information through these rose tinted glasses that kind of make you feel a bit superior at times. And you have the power of the purse. You get to kind of say money's gonna go here and not here and this, that, and the third. I know this is a very heady episode, right? But it's a personal one for me because I remember during this time, I like to stay small. I don't necessarily want to run a multimillion dollar organization. I think it comes with more headaches and small means I get to be nimble and I like to be able to be nimble. But a few of those foundations were a little worried about me. Some genuinely and some not really, but I had some partnerships and they really were pushing hire, like you need to hire hire. And I'm like, well, you know, I grew up homeless, meaning that I don't want to hire somebody or pull a good person from another job if I don't know that I have at least two years of salary for them in the bag. Like it is just. I as a child, I saw when my father lost jobs and we would end up homeless and living in a shelter like it was that. So for me, I'm very cautious. So, I also just love the work that I do. I know I work really hard and I do do 14, 15 hour days many times, but I keep it in perspective. And people don't like when I talk like this, but my grandmother, my parents, the type of work they did was manual. Like they used their hands, like they came home aching and sore. A lot of my work is having to, I get to think on this higher plane of Maslow's knees, get to work on self-actualization stuff. I get to go to different cities and I have a nice Apple MacBook that I get to do a lot of that work from. I get to use my brain a lot for work. Again, not easy and the slightest can lead to a lot of different things and a lot of CEOs are stressed out. And maybe there's some mental health things there happening at that that form up and syndromes that you get. And then when you add on the pandemic and it's all it's already. Let me just tell you, it's already a very lonely position running anything. OK, you don't have very many peers. The decisions that you make impact a lot of people. And you're going to be the bad guy at times. You just have to be because you can't keep everybody on. And let me just tell you, everybody doesn't like to work very, very hard. But you also don't want to. put your unhealthy workaholic habits on other staff. And many founders are in fact workaholics. I'm a workaholic. I love it. I like it. It's not, it's not, I'm not trying to be a martyr or I just like what I like. I enjoy feeling like I'm solving a problem and moving things forward. So you got the loneliness of that, right? Where you, you know, and then you add in the pandemic. And I just think it was a really weird time. And then on the top of that, now everybody's making news and you got, there's this money that's going to these places and it's going, you know, to these oars and these promises are made and we gonna end this, we gonna eradicate that and we're gonna do this. And I always do in the back of my mind, you will never be flavor of the, you can, that's why it's flavor of the week. It's not flavor of the lifetime. It's not flavor of the decade. It's flavor of the week, which means taste will change. Other things will happen. there would be a new spotlight shown. And I was always telling like, yo, while we have this moment, let's build, let's do something. Let's try to figure it out together so we can have a sustainable moment because when they leave, it's gonna be rough. And I had, but again, I had fun with friends that were like, no, you should hire, you should make those investments. You should have faith that these things happen. And I just was like, I don't, I sound like a Debbie Downer. I don't, I don't, I don't know what you mean. I can't count money I don't have. I can't count chickens that have not hatched. So that's what happened. About three years ago, all these foundations started to wind down. All that rhetoric around, you know, we care about black literacy, we care about this, we care about that. It started to shift as new strategic plans started to come out. And you're not part of those plans. Well, what happens now? Well, what happens is you listen to that funder that might have given you, you know, 500 grand or whatever that said expand, you know, hire more people, professionalize it, you know, scale. Scale is a word we use a lot. Scale. And you're trying to scale and then you go back and you say, cool, I've done all the things. I did what you said. I tried to bring some other founders. We've made these type of improvements. We're on track. I need another three year grant, four year grant. Well, we've gotten out all of our money, or actually we're changing that. Well, actually, wait a second, hold on. I was good as boutique. I was good at me and an assistant and some 1099s or some people that could work seasonally, but now I have, now they're staff. And when you have a staff, when you have full time people, you pay for insurance, you vest in them, there's a lot of fringe. cost and things like that. And so. A lot of organizations have shuttered and closed and a lot of people have soured on found on philanthropy. And I'll just tell you for us, we've been blessed. ⁓ A lot of the things that my grandmother told me, always be gracious, always be grateful and always save a little bit for a rainy day. It worked for us. ⁓ We tried to build up some reserves and I also wanted to pivot. And in that pivot, I think that there's a different mindset when you are asking for grants and we still need them, right? We still wanna go for them. They're still in our strategy, but you have to depend on the goodwill of others, of people seeing your vision. Whereas I like fee for service. I like, there's other relationships that I have where I am gonna deliver a product, people pay for that product, and then if they like that product, we re-up and we redo it again. And I think that that's a lane that I've been a little bit more comfortable in. I did that in my LLC business. And I think in our nonprofit business around like, hey, this is a nonprofit, this is a mission that we have, but these are the products that we're going to build based off an assessment for you. And this is how much it costs. And at the end you get to assess A, B and C. I spend a lot less time doing reports and that type of work because it's usually like what's the is in the pudding, so to speak. you really do have to build those relationships. So again, I know this is kind of a ranting, forward-facing conversation that you might feel doesn't directly speak to you if you're not a CEO or a founder, but I think there are some universal lessons here that I would have people take. One is nothing is promised or guaranteed. Nothing. Nothing. And sometimes you have to pivot and sometimes you have to lose it and have to rebuild it. I've been white hot. I've been like the innovator and people, everybody is calling you and they like you and things like that. And I've also had it go really quiet, really quiet when you're no longer the flavor of the month and you got to deal with that. And it can really chafe you. can really, if you don't check it, if you're not aware, you can grow to become very, very bitter, especially when you have to look people in the face that you made promises to, whether it's your staff, whether it's the people that you serve and these resources and you thought that they was gonna keep coming and they shifted. and you look crazy. I think the other lesson is still be grateful. Be grateful. Nobody has to do anything for you. ⁓ No one promised you, nothing is promised to you. And when I think like that, and when I think like there's, when I know I'm on my own, I'm very clear about that. I protect myself and work differently. And again, it comes with its own negative side effects. But if you're grateful and you are, and I don't know what you believe in, I do believe in God, think, but whatever you believe, if you believe in the universe, like whatever, I don't know. But there's something about gratitude. There's something about trying to be grateful through it all. ⁓ I'm a basketball fan. I don't know if people remember ⁓ the last time Kyrie Irwin was on a basketball court and I think he had just, I think it's the Sakiles, I don't know. was really bad. really, really bad injury, but he came to shoot his last free throws. He could still do that before leaving and get well soon. Kyrie, he'll be back next season. But at the free throw line, he's crying. His tears are coming down his eyes and he's just thanking God, right? As he has this potentially career altering injury. It was just a powerful moment for me because you gotta be grateful through it all. It's the humility that makes us human in this case. And with that same token, I'm gonna add the advice that I got from one of those mentors at a foundation that I do really respect and I still call all the time. Is, yeah, but you gotta know that that money belongs to you. The structure that we have in this country is that the government can do or tries to do certain things to help society, but they've also built a structure of giving and tax breaks. if you are doing some type of charity or charitable work. So it's not that these foundations are just doing all this stuff out of kindness at their hearts, is that they would have to pay massive taxes otherwise, and this is a way that they can at least have some of those funds that might be going towards taxes go to things that they do actually somewhat care about or things that would improve our world. But the relationship is much more symbiotic than what you might think. And when you come from where I come from, you don't believe that you deserve good things. And sometimes you have to break through that. And I'm not trying to talk out both sides of my mouth. I think there's a yin and yang here, but you have to be able to hold gratitude. And also, you ain't just doing me a favor. There is a symbiotic relationship here. And again, regardless of where you are in your life, whether you run a company or not, I think that those, that dynamic is important ⁓ for you as an adult. And that's trying to accomplish goals and is gonna walk through life and have wins and losses. It's a really big goal. I think that there were a lot of promises broken. And There's no way. And sometimes you just got to take the L. And I think a lot of black led nonprofits took the L. And I gotta be honest about some of the other stuff. I am a huge, I was on the front lines when Black Lives Matter was happening. I was out there, I was marching. I've been pepper sprayed. I've been handcuffed. I've been, you know, when you start talking about George Floyd or it started earlier for me, I mean. like Oscar Grant years and years before that, or Trayvon Martin, like this was the time. This was the time. And it called for a lot of things during that time. And there were promises made and there were, and hands were shook and a lot of money passed through hands. And then when Black Lives Matter hit the scene, was such a thud. And everybody was so excited. And I love, I have so much love for those smaller Black Lives Matter organizations that's stationed in this city, this city, city. But I did have trepidation about the larger organization. And I remember having conversations, because you couldn't speak it loudly at this point, because you would kind of be seen as a pariah if you had any type of criticism. there was some really, really, really big checks given to the really, really big organization that didn't always make its way down to those smaller groups that were actually on the ground doing the work. And I knew it don't take a lot to ruin it for the whole bunch. And what I think should have probably been different is that black leaders should have been the ones that kind of tried to curb that or or or stomp that out. And to be honest with you, some did. Some did. I remember speaking up about it. I remember we had eight black hands and we debated having a conversation about it. And I remember that I have a really good friend, Toron Walker, who got to talk to one of those people on a very popular show and he called it out. He's a journalist. He asked what happened to this money. you know, and he basically got threatened on camera. It was wild. And at that point, that's when you knew this shit's about to come crumbling down. And so. This episode, man, again, there's nuance in life and there's nuance in all things. I don't really believe in heroes and villains. I just believe in people and sometimes you do heroic shit and sometimes you do villainous shit. I think that it's complicated for multitude of people. And I've also been a homeless kid that needed resources that never made his way there to those people. This stuff is tough, but this article coming out is validation for a lot of people. A lot of people that probably got a name called about them. A lot of people that were probably told that they seemed angry. It's so funny that how racist tropes return and stereotypes return with a different mask on. because it's like, well, this person is really intense. Well, they were intense when they were doing great work. They had to be intense to make an impact on the South side of Chicago or in Detroit or, you know, when they're getting kids off the streets in Brooklyn. You know, listen, I say all of this humbly. ⁓ And I know this episode was a little different. know sometimes I have these more personal things. And like I said, where we are now is we still trying to make it happen. We still trying to make things pop. We still trying to go out for funding. We just have our model is a little different. We still take in philanthropic dollars and we love to have that for infrastructure needs. And we are just trying to have products and services. that people are paying just, they're just paying for outright, ⁓ as opposed to just solely depending on, you know, multi-year foundational funding. It's still there. I still believe in philanthropy. I think it's really important. I think it's an anchor ⁓ to America in a lot of different ways, because there's just certain things that the government can't, or you probably don't want doing, or having, you know, having power over. So I get it. I get it. I get it, this is not complaining, but it's, I think you should go read the article. We'll make sure that the article is linked. ⁓ This episode probably would have been good with a lot of other CEOs, but I didn't want to put them in precarious situations because people have relationships. ⁓ And look, and sometimes things just don't last or you have to pivot. It's an important and important and important skill. So. With that being said, thank you for listening to Color Commentary. We'd love to hear from you. So drop us an email at colorcommentarypod at gmail.com. And if you like what you hear, please subscribe to the show, leave us a five star rating, share it on social media and join us every Thursday for more Color Commentary with Dr. Cole and go to charlescoleii.com. That's charlescoleii.com. If you want some of our merch, we appreciate you and we will see you next episode. Peace out.