Mide Akerewusi shares findings from the Fundraising While Black report and lays out a path that can pave the way to belonging culture.
The charitable sector is facing a global crisis. Nowhere is this more emphasized than in North America, where Black fundraisers in Canada and the United States report heightened concerns about racism and alienation within predominantly white charitable institutions. Could cultivating genuine belonging be the most practical path to repairing organizational dysfunction and advancing social and environmental justice?
A troubled sector where not everybody belongs
The charitable sector is an amazing ecosystem for social and environmental good, and it is also the source of great harm in our world. It solves problems that hinder human progress while creating objectified stereotypes about the people it seeks to protect. The sector’s volunteers, consultants, employees, funders, partners, and leaders are dedicated, hard workers, often enduring scarcity for a life of purpose and self-actualization. However, many of the sector’s most influential leaders are often silent on global atrocities, practising what City University of New York professor Thomas Weiss calls “anticipatory silence.” Though its work is widely replicated across national and international contexts, collaboration among competing charitable sector organizations is worryingly uncommon. In truth, the charitable sector risks losing the virtuous halo it has placed above its own head.
Since the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, Black-led, Black-serving, and Black-focused charities have seen a pendulum shift in their funding. Take, for example, a recent report by Candid and A Philanthropic Partnership for Black Communities, which indicates that in the immediate aftermath of Floyd’s murder, large Black-led non-profits in the United States saw a significant but temporary increase in foundation funding, which had receded by 2023 to near pre-2020 levels. In Canada, charities such as the Black Health Alliance witnessed a similar spike in donations, and a subsequent decline. The 2020 Unfunded report emphasized that 0.7% of foundation funding was invested in Black non-profit organizations despite Black people constituting 3.5% of the Canadian population. These are not isolated examples. They form a trend that many Black non-profit leaders know is an all-too-familiar experience of isolation and alienation within the broader landscape of philanthropy and fundraising.
Fundraising while Black
It is a warm summer afternoon. I am looking forward to the beginning of a relaxing weekend. First, I must connect with the beautiful Black faces that comprise a montage on my computer screen. These faces represent the diversity of Blackness within the charitable sector in Canada and the United States: multiple genders, ages, backgrounds, locations, cultures, and religions. It’s my fourth and final one-hour Zoom interview with Black fundraisers. I have asked them to share their personal experiences of working within predominantly white institutions.
The Black faces reveal disturbing accounts of anti-Black racism resulting in discrimination and harm. They speak about tone-deaf supervisors who undermine them; incapable human resources teams that lack accountability, ignoring acts of hate, hurt, and harm; and wealthy donors who attempt to belittle them. I feel privileged and trusted as I listen, and yet, the cumulative anecdotes create a visceral reaction within me. My thoughts border on hopelessness, frustration multiplies, anxiety grows and festers, their trauma becomes mine, especially because I have no comforting words for the storytellers, and I cannot unhear or unknow this level of workplace shame and dehumanization.
Throughout the weekend, repeated flashbacks to the Zoom conversations form circular thought patterns with no linear path or outcome. Even though storytellers’ experiences of hate were balanced with tales of happiness and healing, I feel deep melancholy.
After 30 years as an international social justice advocate, I am conscious that on a personal level the charitable sector has been both good and bad to me. Simone, one of our storytellers, puts it this way: “I’ve had a true mix of bosses that are supportive, detrimental, and ambivalent to my growth and success. I’ve had donors who were racist, insensitive, and donors who were homophobic (I’m queer) – as well as donors who have become like fans.”
How challenging can it be for predominantly white institutions to be anti-racist, or at the very least non-racist? Apparently, it’s very difficult to uphold the fundamental legal, civil, human, and employment rights of the more than 100 Black fundraisers in Canada and the United States who participated in the writing of the Fundraising While Black: Harm, Happiness, Healing report. The findings show clear and consistent patterns of alienation: while 92% enjoy the work they do, and 84% wish to influence policy or strategy within their organizations, 80% experience burnout while fundraising, 64% report racism from non-profit donors, and 63% are emotionally exhausted by their organization’s DEI efforts.
Black thought and participation are foundational components of the solutions required in addressing the world’s current problems. Our lived and storied experiences of surviving generations of enslavement, colonization, Jim Crow, civil rights, Black Lives Matter, regional conflict, and global migration can inform the future and shape the success of the charitable sector. Our aim is to bring our unique perspectives to fix the complex challenges within the sector, and also promote fundraising and philanthropy to plug the sector’s funding gaps.
From Texas to Toronto, Virginia Beach to Vancouver, Black fundraisers seek belonging within predominantly white institutions, believing that their employers offer opportunities for safety and career progression. Most accounts suggest, however, that predominantly white institutions hire Black fundraisers and then push them out or alienate them.
How alienation erodes belonging
Before there’s hate, there’s fear. Fear comes from a perceived loss of power. Power itself is built on an ability to exercise one’s choice, voice, control, and financial strength. One fear, the “great replacement theory,” portrays white people as the inevitable “victims” of a multicultural society, in which white power is threatened. In this context, who belongs is determined primarily by who must be alienated.
Anti-Black rhetoric within other settings reveals the level of its spread and normalization across the world. Witness the anti-Black racism of Donald Trump and his zoomorphism of the Obamas and Somali people. This same form of anti-Black racism recently occurred in the UEFA Champions League when Real Madrid footballer Vinícius Júnior was once again racially abused during a soccer match. At the British Academy Film Awards recently, Black movie stars Michael B. Jordan, Delroy Lindo, and audiences around the world were subjected to the airing of the N-word.
There’s a collective loss of humanity among both victims and perpetrators of injustice. Predominantly white institutions that tolerate anti-Black racism inevitably promote unfair practices toward other people, harbouring a culture where sexual harassment and discrimination, bullying, anti-2SLGBTQIA+ discrimination, and disablism, et cetera, may also become permissible. Predominantly white institutions cannot claim to be at the vanguard of social and environmental justice if they are so far behind the curve of justice principles within their own organizations.
Belonging as both a feeling and a strategic practice
Belonging arises when the need to be valued and protected is unequivocally realized. Belonging is both a feeling that stirs within us and a set of affirming actions practised by others. A belonging-seeker needs a belonging-holder, making belonging a reciprocal action. Within organizational culture, belonging can be both a felt reality and a strategic objective. In her book Belonging: A Culture of Place, bell hooks describes a culture of belonging in these visionary terms: “I dreamed about a culture of belonging. I still dream that dream. I contemplate what our lives would be like if we knew how to cultivate awareness, to live mindfully, peacefully; if we learned habits of being that would bring us closer together, that would help us build beloved community.”
Belonging practices generate feelings, cultures, and practices that cultivate the awareness of employees’ varied needs; encourage mindful and peaceful workplace routines; and create bonds that bring diverse people closer together to pursue a purpose (loving community).
I have worked extensively in and with predominantly white institutions as an employee and a consultant. The vast majority of these environments have been places where I rarely questioned my belonging, and where my belonging was continually affirmed by others. I felt safe, as did my colleagues, and I was also able to contribute to a culture of belonging. As such, these organizations excelled because they understood that belonging first needed to be practised, so it could then be felt by all. Institutions that have a belonging culture are not only diverse; they are safe, loving, and harmonious. They also achieve success because they effectively resolve issues that threaten to erode the belonging culture they have built.
Such places of work are a major contrast to the predominantly white institutions that have what I would call a belonging deficit. Within these organizations, it was unquestionably clear that as a Black employee or consultant, my opportunity for belonging was consistently limited and denied. I not only felt alienated but was subject to the same acts of anti-Black racism shared by Black fundraisers in the Fundraising While Black report.
There is a cost to presiding over spaces where people do not feel they belong. Institutions with a belonging deficit are typically toxic settings, with a poor internal culture and an inability to build trust or genuinely achieve breakthrough on the issues they represent. Most end up spinning their wheels without actually advancing social or environmental justice in an equitable or meaningful way. Within such institutions, there are many silos, where only a few privileged people enjoy or experience the practice and the feeling of belonging.
A recent Forbes article indicates that Gen Z employees are the most diverse and values-driven employees in the United States. They are also the most racially and intersectionally diverse generation. Citing research from both Deloitte and Pew, Forbes states: “This cohort tends to seek out employers whose actions reflect their ideals, from racial justice to mental health advocacy. A 2023 Pew Research study revealed that 70% of Gen Zers prioritize working for organizations with strong ethical stances, even if it means a lower salary.”
Prioritizing belonging culture enables us to fix and fund the charitable sector today, and achieve its social and environmental purpose into the future. It can also be a pathway to achieving staff retention and minimizing turnover within the sector. We can all pave the way to belonging culture. Here’s how:
P.A.V.E: The pathway to belonging culture
1. Prioritize physical and psychological safety and belonging through clear actions
Belonging begins when leaders actively create environments where employees feel safe and are protected from hurt, hate, and harm. The freedom to be one’s authentic self, without pressure or fear of alienation, is a key measure of belonging culture, as is a shared responsibility and expectation for safety among all employees.
2. Address belonging concerns through open dialogue rather than ignore or dismiss them Organizations can measure belonging by simply asking employees how they feel about and experience belonging culture. Regular anonymous staff surveys and direct conversations about belonging are in and of themselves an important part of belonging culture, especially when belonging deficits are also discussed and acted upon.
3. Value ambition and personal growth as keys to belonging
Belonging culture grows when employees are free to combine or pursue their personal and professional aspirations (vocation) at work. Leaders who foster growth and care for all employees also build trust and belonging. Belonging culture is less about leaders using power to manage staff as it is about leaders’ ability to inspire employees through power sharing.
4. Encourage open dialogue about belonging and measure shifts in attitudes
When things go wrong, belonging culture requires courageous acts of accountability and restitution. Acknowledging and addressing belonging deficits (poor behaviours leading to hate, harm, and hurt) also requires transparency. People of diverse and intersectional backgrounds should respectfully and sensitively be encouraged to speak their minds and valued as knowledge holders and contributors to belonging culture.
