Black Facades Harm: A Case for Trust-building 

 by

Several years ago, I took a job as the CEO of a small nonprofit corporation that represented itself as a Black philanthropic organization. That agency had existed for 21-years, had a budget of $250.000, and had no assets. That budget was hardly enough to pay its few staff. 

So tragic and flawed was this reputed effort at philanthropy that the one year I was there, this agency (as was its custom) hosted an annual "fundraiser." That agency spent $57,000+ on that one night, black tie event, at a very expensive San Francisco hotel. 

That may not have been an irresponsible action if the fundraiser had captured its costs and raised additional moneys. But that annual event raised approximately $27,000, if it raised that from that shindig/swindle-dig. And although it spent some $57,000+ on a one-night event that its Board members enjoyed too thoroughly, it gave less than $40,000 to the community it supposedly served.

Disgusted with that facade as a Black  philanthropic agency and my name being associated with this fraud upon the community, I quit shortly thereafter. But not before  that Board, in an unofficial meeting, killed a very fruitful $60-million effort I had open the door to. At that action I was outraged and realized that the Board was intent on crippling  and neutering  that agency's ability to help the Black Community.

This agency still exists today, and after nearly 30-years of its existence, it still functions primarily to support itself and its staff. Some schools of thought hold that the ability of a system to survive is intelligence.(1) But there is no intelligence in a fraudulent existence. That agency is like too many agencies in our community. They represent themselves as helping the community, but in truth, they only associate themselves with the Black Community  as a cover and rationale for their own existence and continuity. This is fraudulent behavior and a major mockery that must be acknowledged openly and eradicated from our community before trust can be established in the vast majority of the Black Community.(2)  

In building community foundations in the Black  community, there must be credibility of the builders, transparency of their administration, boards that oversee and not administer the corporation,  fairness in grants to agencies, funding based on need and capability to deliver services, careful monitoring to ensure goals are met and money is spent appropriately, there must be an absence of nepotism and bias in funding, etc. 

If a community, indeed the African American community, will not discipline and control itself and the agencies that operate in its name, there will never be sufficient trust in the Black populace to allow that community to fund and support its own philanthropic foundations. 

One way of doing that is by publicly identifying offending agencies in open discussions and putting them out of business. But in so doing this, Gibbs Magazine has heard from some readers, as we  openly discuss sensitive Black issues that certainly need discussion and airing. These readers have complained about our discussions, arguing that because whites read us, we should not discuss these sensitive matters. Although this is a Black-focused magazine, I am aware of our many white readers. (3) But that fact will not preclude Gibbs from freely discussing the fragile and painful issues peculiar to our community. 

The reality of current America is that there are few all-black anything anymore, even as there are few all-white anything anymore;  whether we like it or not, Blacks and whites are an intertwined people as a matter of history, culture, marriage, and many other factors. So those who write expressing sensitivity to Gibbs's public discussions of painful Black issues will just have grit their teeth and endure those discussions. Our need is too great to allow our supposed sensitivity to overtake us and gulp us down  into inaction and dishonesty. Many of the issues some want kept secret often harm and may even kill our development as a people. The dirty secret of our community's short-sightedness in not developing philanthropic foundations has not been discussed enough. It needs discussing continuously, until our community rises to creative actions to remedy this embarrassment! As a Black intellectual, I am pained by this short-sightedness, but I will acknowledge it, and I will work to change it.

Agencies operating in the Black Community's name but working toward their own end have done and will continue to do harm to the community as long as they exist; that is why free, open, and intelligent discussions must clear the air, identify facades, and get about building responsible and financially significant philanthropic infrastructure in our community.

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1.) The Generalist System Theorists School of  Psychology. 
                      
2.) I was informed of a large grant to a number of community agencies similarly functioning just last year. And because they were not truly assisting the community, although they represented that they were, the grant was withdrawn from most of them--they attempted to take the money and run, as the expression is; they served themselves, not the community; yet in the name of the community they took the money. This is a blight on our integrity and intelligence.

3.) Gibbs encourages our white readers to continue reading us; even those who are racist and mean us harm--and we certainly have a number of them.

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