June 3, 1999 | Read Time: 11 minutes
CONFERENCE NOTEBOOK
Black fund raisers and other professionals, years after first taking positions at predominantly white charities, are still a scarce commodity in philanthropic circles, according to Frances K. Moseley, who gave a presentation here at the second National Conference on Black Philanthropy.
“Twenty years later, we’re still hearing it: ‘We don’t know where they are,’” Ms. Moseley stated. As the first black member of the board at the Boys & Girls Club of Boston, she later served as that charity’s executive director.
Ms. Moseley said she believed that predominantly white institutions had not looked hard enough for qualified black development officers and have too often worried that their donors would be put off by black fund raisers. But she said blacks themselves were also at fault. She said too few have sought out jobs in fund raising, particularly high-profile positions.
Fund raising is a profession that large numbers of whites have used as a stepping stone to leadership positions, she said. “We should, too.”
Now a senior vice-president at State Street Global Advisors, a Boston investment-management firm, Ms. Moseley led a discussion here about the challenges facing black fund raisers and other black professionals in the charity world.
Sponsored by the Ford, W. K. Kellogg, and David and Lucile Packard Foundations, the conference drew 500 participants who discussed topics ranging from building endowments at black institutions to giving in Africa to new ways of promoting philanthropy among American blacks.
Many participants in Ms. Moseley’s session on fund raising said that it was not just a scarcity of minorities in the field that bothered them: Many blacks, they said, found it difficult to be part of solicitation teams at elite organizations where most donors are white — and wealthy. While white fund raisers often have opportunities to rub shoulders with white donors by golfing or frequenting the symphony, opera, or country club where the wealthy congregate, Ms. Moseley said, black fund raisers’ access to them may not be as easy.
“You can put yourself in a position to meet potential donors without putting a lot of money out,” said Ms. Moseley. Black fund raisers are often asked to serve on charity boards and they can use such volunteer activity, she said, as a way to meet the wealthiest and most influential people in their communities. On the board, Ms. Moseley said, “you’re rubbing shoulders with C.E.O.’s, and it’s a level playing field.”
Many white business leaders, she noted, are interested in diversifying their work forces and attracting minorities as customers. Their black colleagues on the board, she said, can help by introducing them to black leaders. “Remember,” she said, “you’re bringing just as much to the table as they are.”
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Fund raisers at charities that serve blacks said they face continuing challenges in raising money. Some black institutions have tried to build endowments to insure financial stability, but few have access to the kinds of big gifts that are usually sought in endowment campaigns.
The small number of black charities that have endowments was illustrated by the results of a new study financed by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. Out of 54 social-service groups that mainly serve black clients, only 10 had endowments, the survey found. The smallest endowment was $10,000 and the largest was $4.5-million. All but four of the charities in the survey were more than a decade old, and three had been in existence for more than 100 years.
Many conference participants said they fear some such charities will not survive if they do not start endowments or expand the ones that now exist.
“We’re in good economic times that can support many non-profit organizations, but what about bad times?” declared Donna Jones Stanley, executive director of Associated Black Charities, in Baltimore. “African-American organizations will be the first to go under.”
Julian Johnson, executive director of Associated Black Charities, in New York, said the reason for the lack of endowments is that “we do not have concentrations of wealth.” He added: “Endowments don’t come from $10 donors.”
While blacks have gained economic ground since 1967, and their household income has grown at a faster rate than that of whites, there is still a significant income gap between the races, according to the Census Bureau. Black households have a median income of $25,050 — meaning that half make less and half more. The median figure for white households is $38,972. Only 2.7 per cent of black households have incomes of $100,000 or more, compared to 8.9 per cent of white households.
Mr. Johnson and others said that the money gap pointed to a need for black groups to take new approaches to building endowments. Among the ideas speakers discussed:
* Combining several small endowment funds into a fund big enough to attract skilled investment managers. Coppin State College, a historically black college in Baltimore, added its endowment to those of 11 other institutions in the University of Maryland system. As a result, the college’s endowment has grown from $1.2-million to $4-million in four years.
* Letting donors make monthly payments in campaigns to raise endowment dollars. That strategy, which has been used by some women’s funds to build assets, could work well for black institutions, speakers said.
* Encouraging black donors to set up endowments at community foundations, which raise money and distribute it in a specific region or to a particular cause, or at funds like Associated Black Charities that sometimes allow individuals to establish an endowment by making payments over a period of years. Another fund that may appeal to black donors is the Twenty-First Century Foundation, in New York, which operates like a community foundation but makes grants to minority causes.
While such approaches may have potential, conference speakers pointed out some potential pitfalls.
Mary-Frances Winters, a Rochester, N.Y., consultant who conducted detailed interviews with 30 wealthy blacks as part of W. K. Kellogg-financed research, said blacks might balk at the idea of combining their funds with those maintained by predominantly white institutions.
She said she found a great deal of mistrust about charitable institutions dominated by whites.
“The feeling was ‘They were never interested in us before, why are they interested now? Aha. They think we have a little money now, and here they come.’”
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In building endowments and cash reserves for black charities, Ms. Winters and other speakers said, black fund raisers need to become more experienced in seeking big cash donations and deferred gifts such as bequests.
Ms. Winters said that black fund raisers are more comfortable asking people to buy a ticket to a special event than in asking for a sizeable gift. She said few of the wealthy blacks she interviewed has been asked to make large cash donations.
One reason that fund raisers for black charities tend to ask largely for special-event donations, speakers said, is that few of them have a good understanding of estate planning and planned gifts. Blacks are rarely found among the ranks of professional financial advisers or among the members of organizations like the National Committee on Planned Giving, they said.
Anita Brower, assistant director of development at the College of Medicine at Howard University, said that, four years ago, when she began attending meetings of N.C.P.G.’s chapter in Washington, a predominantly black city, she was the only black person there.
Some organizations have begun to make inroads, however. The African American Legacy Program, a project by the Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan, has identified hundreds of black attorneys, estate planners, financial advisers, and other professionals in the Detroit area and invited them to meetings to learn more about charitable gift planning. Pat Solomon, a board member at the foundation, said that the professionals are also urged to discuss charity matters with their clients.
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Raising money through family reunions is a good way to increase blacks’ participation in organized philanthropy, said Ione D. Vargus, a former dean at Temple University, in Philadelphia.
Ms. Vargus, who created the Family Reunion Institute at Temple in 1990 to help black families strengthen their ties through reunions, described a new project she is working on with Jean Fairfax, a philanthropist who has also worked on several projects to promote giving by blacks.
The two women have secured a $27,000 grant to pay for research on the philanthropic activities of 600 or more black families who currently hold reunions.
In addition, Ms. Vargus said she and Ms. Fairfax will recruit several black families to work with them to establish systematic giving through their reunions. Using those families as models, she said, they will then create educational tools to help other families start a reunion-giving program.
Many black reunions, Ms. Vargus said, have developed into sophisticated organizations, with boards of directors, year-long fund-raising efforts, and educational programs about black history.
“Many of these family reunions now do give,” she said. “They’ll pass the hat and give the money to a particular organization, usually something related to scholarship or education, but it’s not that systematic. They may not do it every year, but the wish is there to do it.”
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As meeting participants discussed ways to encourage black philanthropy, conference organizers challenged them to be sure their own giving was strong. They announced a campaign to persuade everyone at the meeting to pledge at least 1 per cent of their gross income to a charity of their choice by March 4 of next year.
Organizers passed out pledge forms and buttons bearing the slogan “3/4=1%,” which is the rallying call for the campaign. “That’s 3/4 as in March 4th, or as in ‘marching forth,’” said William Pickens, president of the Paul Robeson Foundation, in New York.
Rodney Jackson, director of the conference, said that organizers of the new drive are seeking additional funds to promote the campaign. He said that if the campaign succeeds, organizers hope to push the 1-per-cent idea as a nationwide effort to spur black philanthropy.
In coming up with the campaign, Mr. Pickens said that conference planners had first tried the idea out in a city-wide drive held last year by the African American Federation of Greater Boston, which raises money for several black social-service groups. Called “Each One Give One,” the goal in Boston was to raise $1 or more from large numbers of people and convince them that, whatever their income, they too could afford to give. The campaign raised $8,500.
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While much of the conference focused on philanthropy in America, participants also spent time discussing efforts by charities and foundations to help people in Africa. Many said that such efforts face numerous obstacles.
Charles Clay, a philanthropist who recently spent a month in South Africa, says the problems in some African countries are more severe than many may realize.
The worst ghettos in the United States “are like ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’ to Africans,” said Mr. Clay, who has spent time encouraging black fraternities and sororities in America, as well as other groups, to support efforts to help the poor in southern Africa.
Other meeting participants said they worried that the economies of many African countries are so unstable that monies used to establish philanthropic funds could drop sharply in value overnight.
Some participants said they were concerned that political instability and a hostility toward democracy could cause major problems for foundation and charity efforts to improve the lot of Africans.
Emmett Carson, president of the Minneapolis Foundation, said, “We often romanticize Africa, but many regions there are male-dominated societies that have practiced genocide.” He said: “We need to look for areas where they are attempting to establish democratic governments and a political situation of equality. If you don’t find that, you often see tragedy. So a democratic framework is an important building block.”
Mr. Carson, who previously worked for the Ford Foundation on efforts to strengthen non-profit groups overseas, said people in philanthropy need to keep in mind that “there are really two Africas: an Africa that’s working in countries like South Africa, Ghana, and Tanzania, and another Africa that’s not working in places like Somalia and Nigeria.”
He also suggested that American foundations that make grants in Africa need to start hiring Africans to run programs on the continent, instead of the more common practice of hiring black Americans and other outsiders.
“We’d not look kindly in this country on foundations who want to work through the black church that would hire a white female to run the program,” he said.
“There are enough qualified Africans, but our institutions have not hired them,” he added. “If we want to make an investment, Africans are far more able than people here, even those with the best intentions and training.”
But another speaker disagreed. “What the staff looks like is of secondary importance,” said Yolanda Richardson, senior vice-president of Africare, a Washington charity.
Ms. Richardson said that foundations have often been slow to respond to black and international causes, and could be even less responsive to indigenous Africans. If they are hardly responsive to black issues now, she said, “I’m not sure that hiring Africans is the best way to get the dollars flowing.”
Ms. Richardson, who spent a decade overseeing grants to Africa in her previous job at the Carnegie Corporation, in New York, said she attended the annual meeting of the Council on Foundations in April, when hundreds of foundation officials were called on to consider what role their institutions should play in the crisis in Kosovo.
“We were never asked that about Africa: The genocide there is on a much larger scale, but it never made it onto their radar screen.”
