An obvious question naturally arises with respect to the feasibility of a large-scale national resource-pooling effort: Will a large enough number of blacks contribute significant amounts to make the fund sizable enough to have the desired transformational impact?
The BlackProgress.com article, Financing Black Progress, Part 2: A Self-Reliance “Marshall Plan”: Creating a National Resource-Pooling Fund, optimistically asserts:
“[T]here is strong reason to believe that there is a significant proportion of African Americans that constitutes a large enough base that would be willing to make at least modest contributions to jump-start the Fund and ensure its success. There is a strong tradition and long history of philanthropy and “giving back” in the black community, such as financial contributions to churches, charity and community organizations, etc. Of course, a crucial prerequisite is that potential investors must be confident that the Fund has the potential to successfully address the plight of those, especially children, who, sadly, remain trapped in distressed communities without much hope.”
The following excerpts (emphases added) from various sources support this assertion:
The African American Financial Experience (April 2011). Results of a Prudential Financial survey conducted in November 2010.
Solidarity and concern for the financial health and wellbeing of the community is very strong among African American decision makers….
…To a greater extent than other groups, the financial goals of African Americans reflect a strong focus on the well-being of the family. African Americans rated issues like educating children about debt avoidance, providing college tuition, and passing money on to heirs as very important significantly more often than did the general population. This family-centric concern is also expressed in concern for the broader community. For example, African Americans are significantly more likely than the general population to cite charitable donations as an important financial goal (68% vs. 55%).…
…The emphasis on community support in order to gain trust permeates all income groups, and is actually highest among African Americans in the $100,000+ income group. In fact, community issues permeate the study—57% feel that it is very important for financial companies to “support local charities and educational and religious organizations in the community.”
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Communities of color are giving at increasing rates and levels. Almost across the board, communities of color are intensifying their charitable giving. Sixty-three percent of Latino households now make charitable donations. Nearly two-thirds of African American households donate to organizations and causes, to the tune of $11 billion each year…. Indeed, aggregate charitable giving by African Americans is increasing at a faster rate than either their aggregate income or aggregate wealth…. On average, Asian American households give away a larger percentage of their income per year than whites…. So do African Americans—25 percent more…. And this doesn’t even account for the ample contributions of time and know-how being poured back into communities of color, which can’t be monetized but are often more valuable than dollars.
Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America (Doubleday, 2010). Eugene Robinson (Washington Post columnist and MSNBC commentator)
“Among African Americans, the successful have always evinced a determination to reach back and bring along the less fortunate. I have met very few black professionals who did not feel it was their duty to mentor young African Americans and help advance their careers. I have met few African American professionals who do not try in some way to encourage and uplift the Abandoned, perhaps through mentoring programs at their churches, perhaps through volunteer organizations such as Concerned Black Men or the National Council of Negro Women, perhaps through fraternities or sororities. There is a long tradition in black communities of taking in, and caring for, children whose parents are unable to do so. Before disintegration, these organic, informal efforts might have been enough. But no more–not, at least, for the Abandoned.”
“…There is no longer one black America, no longer a complete sense of racial solidarity based on clearly defined common interests. But there remains one black racial identity that the majority of African Americans–Mainstream, Abandoned, Transcendent, and Emergent–still share. As long as the Abandoned remain buried in both society’s and their own dysfunction, with diminishing hope of ever being able to escape, the rest of us cannot feel that we have truly escaped, either. We cannot begin to un-hyphenate ourselves…”
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Where Wealthy Blacks Give…And How the Rest of Us Can Give, Too. Kevin Chappell. Ebony. August 2011.
“…A strong culture of philanthropy exists among African-Americans across all income levels—and that practice dates back generations. Through churches and fraternal organizations such as the Masons and Greek-letter groups, Blacks have long given toward self-help and humanitarian efforts.
Among the rich, a national survey released earlier showed that, within households with incomes of at least $250,000 (or a minimum of $1 million in investable assets), affluent Blacks donated an average of $30,350 to charitable causes in 2009.
…The study also found that older affluent Blacks are more likely to donate money and time to religious and human-services organizations; younger affluent Blacks tend to donate to educational institutions.
…An increasingly popular way for people without thousands of dollars to give to have a philanthropic impact is to join a “giving circle.”…Giving circles with a focus on the Black community, or that are composed mostly of African-American members, are on the rise….”
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Entrepreneurial Mindset Initiative – OIC of America
“The Entrepreneurial Mindset Initiative is a contemporary re-birth of a proven legacy for success. OIC of America has trained over 2 million people nationwide since its origin. OICA’s founder, Rev. Leon Sullivan was a force in African American entrepreneurship and self-help when, in 1968, he built Progress Plaza in North Philadelphia–the first black owned shopping center in America. The project was funded by Philadelphia citizens, who invested in Rev. Sullivan’s 10/36 Plan. The plan involved thousands of individuals and families regularly contributing small sums of money to accomplish a shared goal for the benefit of the community.”
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African American Giving Comes of Age. Lauren Gard. Business Week. November 29, 2004. The black community’s large amount of philanthropy isn’t new. But new wealth, education, and strategy are creating more impact
When New York financier Alphonse Fletcher pledged $50 million to educational reform and fellowships on the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision in May, he was just putting a face to the facts: A new kind of African American philanthropy is on the rise.
The African American community has a long history of civic-minded charitable giving, with churches at the core. But now, community and private foundations are stepping up efforts to harness the $11.2 billion that blacks donate each year so that this money can have an even greater impact.
The issue, says Clint Mabie, director of donor services at The Chicago Community Trust, which has recently adopted an African American Legacy Initiative, is that there has never been an organized, overarching effort to mobilize the African American community nationwide. “You look at the Jewish community, and other groups that have done philanthropy as a community… there was nothing in the African American community that said ‘we can do this as a community.’ Giving has been segmented by where you live geographically, by your church, by your college.”
“A LOT OF GIVING”. “In some ways, nonprofits and philanthropy, in general, are late to discover what some consumer organizations have long known — which is that communities of color have money,” says Erica Hunt, executive director of the Twenty-First Century Foundation…“We want to make our philanthropy visible to ourselves — as black people we’re often not even aware that our giving is philanthropic,” says Hunt. “We often think of ourselves as being supplicants, but in fact, there’s a lot of giving going on in our community.”
…The African American community doesn’t just participate in philanthropy — according to recent studies, it trumps other major racial and ethnic groups in its generosity. A 2003 study reported in the Chronicle of Philanthropy that African Americans who give to charity donate 25% more of their discretionary income than whites. And a study of affluent people of color making donations in the New York region, released in October, found that African Americans gave more money annually than either Latino or Asian Americans, according to the Coalition for New Philanthropy.
In response to increasing wealth within the African American community, churches — which receive more than two-thirds of all African American charitable dollars — are creating more sophisticated giving programs, with some even establishing nonprofit arms. …But it’s not just celebrities who are making a big impact. The Twenty-First Century Foundation’s Hunt points to African American business owners with advanced degrees as leaders in the field.
“These are independently minded people who understand the significance of investing in the black community,” she says. Take Chicago investment guru John Rogers, who founded Ariel Capital Management in 1983 and built it into a $3.5 million firm. In 1996, he spearheaded something quite different: Ariel Community School, where 407 students in grades K-8 are schooled in reading, writing, and not merely arithmetic, but investment.
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