Who Gets the Money?

 

by Christine A. Scheller

urbanfaith.com

 

Are Christian donors less likely to write checks to minority-run ministries? Anecdotal evidence from the world of nonprofit fundraising suggests there's a race-based disparity in giving.

 

Trust is vital to any relationship, but when it comes to funding African American-led urban ministries, it can mean the difference between success and failure. At least that is what Urban Faith heard from several notable leaders who identified lack of trust as a key factor in race-based funding disparities.

Brian Jenkins is director of Entrenuity, a ministry that helps urban youth start their own businesses. Although the organization has been featured on public television and has trained more than 700 adults and 4,000 youth since 1993, Jenkins says, "What I have found is that when it comes to people saying 'we're brothers and sisters in Christ,' that's fine, but when it comes to supporting my work and me as a minister in Christ, that's where the breakdown occurs."

Jenkins (left) was honored to be a presenter at a recent urban-ministry event with an audience of 200, but disheartened to find that he was the only black speaker when every organization there was working with minority populations. He says, "I just felt like, Wow, how can I be the only one here? ... I have a directory full of people, you know, good Christian leaders, black men, black women, Latino men, Latino women, yet I was the only one there, and it was so frustrating because their stories weren't being told, relationships weren't being created, and the funding kept going to these same [white-led] organizations."

Nonprofit Funding Bias And Foundation Diversity

   

Incite! Women of Color Against Violence (Eds.) (Cambridge, MA : South End Press, 2007)

 

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded is a riveting anthology of essays written by seasoned activists, thought leaders, scholars, and nonprofit professionals working in a range of social justice fields. Inspired by a 2004 conference of the same name that was co-organized by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence and the Women of Color Collective of the University of California, Santa Barbara, the book continues the "conversation" that began at the conference. "This historic international gathering provided an opportunity for activists and organizers to share their struggles of organizing within the context of the non-profit system. While providing no simple answers, it did encourage a conversation on new ways to think about organizing and activism," writes Andrea Smith of INCITE! in her introduction to the book.

 

Smith's opening essay provides an overview of what she calls the "nonprofit industrial complex" and examines its impact on social justice movements in the United States, the role it has played in global organizing, and the prospect of re-conceptualizing the role of nonprofits in the twenty-first century. "Despite the legacy of grassroots, mass-movement building we have inherited from the '60s and '70s," she writes, "contemporary activists often experience difficulty developing or even imagining, structures for organizing outside this model. At the same time, however, social justice organizations across the country are critically re-thinking their investment in the 501(c)(3) system."

 

It is a theme, and concern, sounded throughout the collection. "We are so trapped into hierarchical, corporate, non-profit models," argues Adjoa Florencia Jones de Almeida in her essay, "Radical Social Change: Searching for a New Foundation," "that we are unable to structure ourselves differently, even when our missions advocate empowerment and self-determination for oppressed communities." And she echoes the thoughts of many when she muses, "Where are the mass movements of today in this country? The short answer - they got funded. While it may be overly simplistic to say so, it is important to recognize how limited social justice groups and organizations have become as they've been incorporated into the non-profit model."

 

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I'm very much afraid of this 'Foundation Complex.' We're getting praise from places that worry me."

  

  

... You will raise up the age-old foundations; And you will be called the repairer of the breach, The restorer of the streets in which to dwell. (Isaiah. 58:12)