Philanthropy in the era of authoritarianism…do better

While I am known for my writing online (and sometimes for various publications) and for public speaking work as “Black Girl in Maine” (or BGIM) those things are not my job. They are the things I started doing over 20 years ago to keep me sane as a Black woman who had moved to a very white state and who at times felt as if I were losing my mind. They were my tools for holding onto myself; a hobby of sorts that eventually became a large part of my life. Or as I often joke, my side hustle.

My actual job that provides me with a meager biweekly paycheck and health insurance is running a small grassroots anti-racism organization that has been around since 1968. It is an organization that was started in the aftermath of the 1967 race riots and the 1968 release of the Kerner Commission report that found that the racial tensions across the country in 1967 were the direct result of unequal access to resources in Black (or “Negro” in the older parlance) communities at that time. Furthermore, the report went on to acknowledge that white folks were at the heart of that inequity. Many recommendations were made and in 2018, on the 50^th anniversary of the Kerner Commission report, which also happened to be the 50^th anniversary of my organization, a follow-up to the Commission’s report stated that very few of those recommendations from 1968 had materialized and, well, inequity still abounds.

I have been thinking about this a great deal as my organization finds itself on financial life support at a time when it is doing more work than ever before. However, our work is largely hidden from easy view because our mission statement is essentially that it is up to white people to dismantle white supremacy (something that we facilitate and foster through training and community-building efforts) and, well, that’s where our work has always collided with modern-day philanthropy.

You see, philanthropic people and organizations like to see clear metrics and goals that can be achieved in a few years. They want data and clear milestones with dates attached to them.

For the bulk of our organizational life, we kept a budget under $200,000 annually, relied heavily on volunteers and unpaid interns, and were funded by a handful of well-heeled and wealthy white folks. We held one fundraiser a year, which is when our donors came out to celebrate anti-racism work and at the end of the night, in a good year, we raised at least one-third of our budget on event night. No one bothered to think long-term about things like endowments given our age and reputation—there was the assumption that there would always be enough well-heeled patrons to support our work. (Also, with a budget as tight as ours what kind of endowment were we going to build?) Thus, we never built up a true funding strategy prior to my arrival in 2014 and aside from one New England-based foundation that funded outside of the philanthropy box, we rarely ever received any foundational support.

Fast-forward to me being hired as the first non-white person to head this organization and suddenly the board thought we should start thinking long term. Mind you, I came on board in the organization’s 46^th year of existence. The organization I head up literally predates my earthly arrival by five years, but it wasn’t until my arrival at the organization that the board or directors started thinking about growing the budget, retirement plans, and endowments. A less-cocky me might have realized that I was being given a Herculean task where the odds of success were not in my favor. My 41-year-old self wasn’t reading the room, so I jumped in head first.

In my early years at the organization, despite a rocky first year, in years 2014-2020 our budget grew from less than $200,000 to almost $600,000—primarily by using the same strategies that my predecessor had, except I recruited younger wealthier people to support our work and grew our annual events and occasionally leveraged my work as BGIM to assist our organization. We expanded our work beyond our home base of Boston into Maine, and we were on a fast track to greater growth when the pandemic threw a monkey wrench into our plans.

2020 was the year that our programmatic plans were all put on hold, though we did put together a virtual version of our annual event. It was also the year when the old guard who hired me decided to step down from the board and, well, it was also the beginning of the tumultuous years that are still plaguing my leadership.

I won’t go into the weeds but since 2021 we have had several different interim board configurations as we worked to move forward as a truly anti-racist organization, both internally and externally, with a clear sense of our values and mission.

From a programmatic perspective, we are stronger than we have ever been. We are no longer just an organization focused on awareness and advocacy, but we now understand that moving the needle on racism requires white people who move like organizers in their communities and beyond. It requires white people who understand that relational building both with white people and BIPOC folks is mandatory. Our work now also requires white people learning to divest of whiteness within themselves and learning to recognize that divesting of whiteness is an ongoing journey for life. Trust is the basis of this work for white folks, and it does take time.

As you can see, our work that I can publicly share doesn’t fit into tidy boxes on a grant application which, given the loss of long time major donors, has meant turning to foundations and grants to make up from the loss of major donors. However, grants have extreme limits because as an organization committed to dismantling structural racism, most foundations regardless of their focus areas are still committed to upholding the rules of whiteness. Foundations will invest in BIPOC leadership and initiatives but rarely seem to grasp that dismantling racism requires white folks to be involved. Or as our founder, Horace Seldon, used to say, dismantling racism is ultimately the work of white people because white people are the root of the racism. (Yeah, it may not be you personally but that doesn’t negate the historical roots of racism.)

Sure, we can create equity, but given what we are living through now, you can see that DEI initiatives alone did not save us from moving into the straight-up white supremacist wet dream and fascism we are suffering under the current administration. If white people continue to look to BIPOC people alone to save us all, no one is getting free here.

Yet trying to discuss this in today’s world with a white program officer or major donor is to not get far, because ultimately the uncomfortable part of the philanthropy world is that it maintains the status quo—the unspoken and “gentle” rules of white supremacy culture, where one must prove they are worth investing in.

Even now, as the administration makes it clear they will attack anyone who they feel like targeting, donors and foundations need us to give away far too many details of work that this administration could deem as enemy behavior, especially in light of the September 2025 order signed by Trump labeling “antifa” as a domestic terrorist group  (even though it’s just a short-form way of saying anti-fascist and not a group at all) and reports in recent weeks in Maine and Minnesota that authorities are filming protesters and possibly uploading their images to a database.

Pretty much any organization that is assisting immigrants and the undocumented is at risk of being deemed a domestic terrorist operation. Have you helped organize local ICE watches and hotlines? That could put you at risk with this administration. Which means writing detailed grants to secure funding to pay staff to create these structures to keep communities safe aren’t safe for organizations or individual staffers.

If, on the other hand, there was a more relational structure between the funding world and those doing the work, the trust would be there to just provide the funding and let the organizations do their work. Never mind that the average funding cycle means organizations and organizers that are critical to the resistance at this moment are moving light years ahead of funders. Which, personally as a nonprofit director, means pivoting staff to meet the moment and support our BIPOC leaders and community doing work that is critical but unfunded.

Which brings me to my next issue with the philanthropy world: It is not leveling up to save us at this moment. One of the realities of ICE surges in cities across the country is that many people are going into hiding to stay safe, which means loss of funds for vital things like rent. You miss two weeks of work in January, and while it is great to know you still have a job, for many who went in to hiding, that was unpaid time off. Which means on the first of February, many didn’t have the rent money, thus putting vulnerable people at risk of eviction.

Here in Maine, there are groups helping with bonds for those detained and funds for family members of those who have been detained, but an emerging gap is funds to help people who weren’t able to go to work for fear of being profiled or detained. While I chose to lay low during the active surge in Portland, Maine—because as a Black woman, despite being born and raised in this country, I knew my Blackness alone could make me a target—for me it was an inconvenience as far rescheduling meetings and appointments and even delaying my birthday celebration. My income wasn’t impacted, because I already worked mostly from home.

Yet as of this writing, it is primarily individual organizers who are connected to individuals who are crowdfunding to help people raise rent money. I know this because in the last week, several organizers have asked me to use my sizeable platform as BGIM to signal-boost and help raise funds—a task that I am happy to do, but as a career non-profit person, I am also aware that when people ask me why there isn’t more institutional support to assist people, it is because our current system of philanthropy as a whole isn’t set up to rapidly respond.

I also know that while smaller organizations like mine that, due to their size can pivot to jump in as experienced organizers, we face the unenviable task of sticking to our programmatic plans that can bring in critical revenue such as our annual symposiums and programs that appeal to donors or assisting and building on the ground.

Obviously, if you know me or know anything about me, you can guess which decision I made. That decision, however, came at a high price. We didn’t meet our year-end fundraising goals and if something doesn’t give in the next 60 days or so, this will be our farewell year. And while I could just say that after 58 years, we have had a good run, as I watch other long-time grassroots organizations close, I worry about our collective future.

Every organization that succumbs to lack of funding means a loss of trained organizers and institutional memory of struggle in this country. These organizations—my own and others—hold deep stores of racial and class analysis, and every time one of us falls, it is a loss to the movement as a whole. Especially as it becomes clear that the type of organizing we saw happen in the 2010s on social media is a thing of the past, given that we now live in a culture of surveillance. Trained organizers, particularly old heads like yours truly—who started off in the work prior to the advent of social media—know that the work can be done without Facebook. But those new to the work are still sharing way too much on unsecured channels and could benefit from the mentorship and camaraderie of those who have been in the trenches for a while—people who understand that this work requires relational building and trust, as that is what keeps us in the work.

This work and moment require financial resources and too many of our well-heeled donors and foundations are not moving with the sense of urgency that we have and that this moment requires. To be blunt, we need folks to pony up with the cash without the inane expectations that are placed on us by upholding the status quo. We can’t fight fascism with the same people passing around the same few bucks via Venmo. We also can’t just fund the more visible organizations without looking at all the groups that are working together as well. The infrastructure of resistance must be funded as well.

As authoritarianism takes a wrecking ball to our norms, we need those who care with the means to take a wrecking ball to their commitment to normal. Do more and do it now.

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