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A call to invest more in Black-led social change
Amid today's public discourse on racial equity and justice and related mass action, philanthropic organizations that proclaim commitment to the Black community are being called upon to put their support where their mouths are. The Black Social Change Funders Network, a project of the Association of Black Foundation Executives, and the HillSnowdon Foundation are challenging the country's large foundations, socialchange grant makers and Black charitable organizations to bump up the level of their resources to Black-led, socialchange groups by at least 25 percent over the next five years. The challenge was high on the agenda of ABFE's annual conference in Memphis, Tennessee, in April. Held under the theme "The Fierce Urgency of Now," the conference provided "a vigorous agenda" for increasing public and private investments in Black communities and bringing attention to investment strategies "that build and protect Black institutional, political and economic power."
Arguing their case in a February 2017 statement, "The Case for Funding Black-led Social Change," the authors, ABFE president and CEO Susan Taylor Batten and Hill-Snowdon executive director Nat Chioke Williams, address three key...