Electrifying Poetry Reading at Biden Inaugural Brings Attention — and Donations — to a Small Charity

Amanda Gorman, the 22-year-old National Youth Poet Laureate, captivated viewers with her reading at President Biden’s inauguration Wednesday.

Her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” was both personal and universal. It described her background as “a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother,” painted an unvarnished picture of struggle, and offered inspiration for a better future.

“The new dawn blooms as we free it,” she read. “For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.”

Earlier that morning, across the country in Los Angeles, parents woke up a few sleepy teenagers early to log in to a watch party on Zoom with a group of volunteers, staff, and alumni of WriteGirl, a mentoring and creative writing organization that helped kickstart Gorman’s career as a poet.

“It was really emotional. I’ve cried a lot today,” Keren Taylor, the organization’s executive director, said on Wednesday afternoon. “To see one of our alums up there on the stage at 22, as a Harvard graduate, reading the poem she wrote that so amazingly encapsulated what has been going on in the world, for us and for America — it’s just an amazing thing. We’re really proud and thrilled.”

WriteGirl, which Taylor founded 20 years ago, works with around 400 girls annually through one-on-one mentoring and monthly creative-writing workshops. Professional women writers help girls explore a wide variety of writing genres in programs that inspire them to pursue careers in writing and help prepare them for college. One writing program works with youths in juvenile-detention centers. Since the pandemic began last March, all programs have taken place virtually.

The spotlight on Gorman and her words has resulted in a wave of donations to WriteGirl over the past two days. Now the small organization hopes to find ways to build on the moment.

“We’re now trying to think of how we’re going to position this as an opportunity for us,” Taylor said. “We’re excited that maybe this is a pivotal moment for us.”

‘Buoyant Energy’

Biden’s Inaugural committee contacted Gorman roughly a month ago — Jill Biden had seen her read at the Library of Congress and suggested she participate in the ceremony.

Taylor heard the news about a week ago. She was delighted but not surprised. “Amanda is a rising star,” Taylor said. “She was very determined when she was in WriteGirl and really has had a buoyant energy all the way through.”

In the days leading up to the Inauguration, WriteGirl used a newsletter, social-media posts, and individual emails to encourage people in its network to watch the reading. Aside from the donate button that’s always visible on the group’s website and in its email newsletter, “we actually didn’t put out a direct call for fundraising at all,” Taylor said.

The donations have come in organically. Taylor says she and her colleagues have been surprised at the volume of contributions. A GoFundMe campaign has raised more than $14,000 for four youth poetry groups, including WriteGirl. By midday Thursday, the organization had received direct donations totaling $8,459.

Many of those gifts have come from individual donors, many of them new to WriteGirl, Taylor said. “It definitely feels like it’s an opening to people that haven’t donated before. And I think there’ll still be some momentum beyond today.”

WriteGirl has been recognized for its work before. In 2010 the group was named California nonprofit of the year, and three years later, Michelle Obama presented the organization with the National Youth Program Award at the White House.

Still, Taylor said, “neither of those very high-profile accolades got us anything of what we’ve had today in the matter of five hours.”

Past publicity has tended to attract interest from prospective teen participants and volunteers rather than donations to support programming, she said. “Somehow this was different, that there was an acknowledgment of people wanting to support the organization.”

Oftentimes, people respond to a young person speaking by saying, “Oh, isn’t that sweet?” Talyor said. “It isn’t often taken as seriously as this was, so we’re encouraging people to really celebrate the moment and not toss it away.”

In the next few days, staff will meet with the board to strategize how to make the most of the moment. One idea is to print Gorman’s poem on papyrus and send it out to a key list of people to seek additional financial support, Taylor said.

WriteGirl, which is fiscally sponsored by the nonprofit Community Partners, has an annual budget of $600,000. “It’s quite small, and we make the most of that, but it does sometimes mean we haven’t been able to grow beyond Los Angeles,” Taylor said. As the pandemic forced programming to shift online, girls from Florida, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Mumbai, and elsewhere have expressed interested in joining.

She hopes her organization can build on the energy around Gorman’s reading to one day serve more of those young women, she said. “We would like to inspire more young people to pursue their dreams, just like Amanda has done.”