Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 4, No. 4 | African American Philanthropy, page 3

Magnanimity Enshrined
in Arts and Culture
On September 26, 2007, the Smithsonian Institution, partnering with IBM, announced the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Smithsonian’s 19th and newest museum. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the museum—in its current incarnation—is that it’s a virtual institution, existing at the moment only online, at http://nmaahc.si.edu. The physical museum—created by an Act of Congress in 2003—will be built on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. and is scheduled for completion in 2014. Its collections and educational programming will focus on slavery, post-Civil War Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Civil Rights movement, among other issues and events.

Historian, author, curator and educator, Lonnie G. Bunch, III is the founding director of the museum, and is deeply involved in developing the museum’s mission, coordinating its fundraising and membership campaigns, and establishing its collections and cultural partnerships. If Bunch feels burdened by that responsibility, he doesn’t let on in person. On a balmy September morning not too long ago, I walked across the Mall in Washington, D.C., the gravel of the wide walkways crunching noisily beneath my feet, to visit Bunch in his office near the museum. Bunch’s ever-present smile and spontaneous bear hug embodied his contagious determination. He feels confident, for example, that in support of the museum, he is about to tap into a new, younger source of African American philanthropy.

“If my parents gave to the church,” he told me, “and my wife and I give to education, then my daughters—following their own interests—will cast their net even wider.”

If that’s the case, it may signal a marked departure from the experience, for example, that independent producer Margo Lion had fifteen years ago when she tried to raise money for “Jelly’s Last Jam,” starring Gregory Hines and directed by George Wolfe of the Joseph Papp Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival. The musical brought to life the controversial turn-of-the-century New Orleans jazz musician Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton, yet Lion was able to attract very few African American investors. Seeing investment in the theater as a barometer for raising money, she told me, “I’m interested in where African American philanthropists—or perhaps I should say those in a position to be philanthropic—feel their money could best be applied. What projects are they most interested in supporting?”

We were speaking in Lion’s cozy office at the St. James Theater on New York’s Theater Row. The office overflowed with mementos of her many stage successes, among them “Hairspray,” “Elaine Stritch at Liberty,” “Angels in America,” and “The Crucible.” In her latest coup, Lion brought the August Wilson play “Radio Golf” to Broadway in May 2007.

For all her obvious éclat, Lion has found it challenging to raise large contributions from African American donors. “Broadway is always risky,” she muses, “but August Wilson was a great figure in the history of dramatic literature, and ‘Radio Golf’ had received great reviews all over the country. Wilson was writing for all America, but the fact remains that this is a play abut black Americans, and I was frustrated by the lack of support for it.” Lion acknowledges that there might not be a rich history of theatergoing among African Americans—the 2002 National Endowment for the Arts Survey of Public Participation in the Arts reported African American attendance at non-musical plays at under seven percent—but she feels that the financial barriers to that particular cultural tradition are falling. “Surely there are many African Americans who have the money, no?”

Grassroots Giving
Does all this high-profile activity mean that only well-known players are making an impact in the world of African American philanthropy? Far from it. Individual donors—including those with modest lifetime earnings—can make a difference, and often a disproportionate one. For example, there is Oseola McCarty, the 87-year-old laundress, who gave her life savings of $150,000 to the University of Mississippi for scholarships. She said of her gift, “I’m giving it away so the children won’t have to work so hard, like I did.” In many ways, McCarty reflects the bedrock role that African American women have long played in philanthropy, whether it was enacted by the Links, a membership organization of 12,000 professional women of color that also supports programs and services aimed at improving the quality of life for African Americans; the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, founded in 1913 by twenty-two collegiate women at Howard University to promote academic excellence and to provide assistance to persons in need, and which, with a current membership of over 200,000, continues to work toward advancing human welfare; or the National Council of Negro Women, “a voluntary nonprofit membership organization helping women of African descent to improve the quality of life for themselves, their families and communities.”

As Emmett Carson likes to point out, “It’s not the amount you have—it’s focusing that resource on what you care about.”

Numerous studies seem to back up that notion: low-income people tend to give a larger percentage of their disposable income to charitable organizations than do the rich. America, in particular, seems to have developed what Carnegie Corporation of New York president Vartan Gregorian has termed “a culture of giving.” A recent study by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University adds more evidence, reporting that the average American donates 2.6 percent of his or her income. When it comes to giving by blacks specifically, a Chronicle of Philanthropy report reveals that blacks give 25 percent more of their discretionary income to charity than do whites. For instance, blacks who make between $30,000 and $50,000 give an average of $528 annually, compared with $462 donated by whites in the same income range.

That model of grassroots generosity is one familiar to many African Americans. It certainly underlies the story Charlynn Goins, chairperson of the board of directors for the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, told me about her husband’s dream of attending medical school. After confiding those hopes to his own physician, Dr. Aurelious King, Warren Goins was admitted to Howard University Medical School in 1959. Goins worked his way through all four years on what he thought were academic scholarships. In his second year of medical school he found out through documents the school had sent him that Dr. King was paying those tuition bills.

That story is readily understood by Loida Lewis, who remarks that the “sub-rosa generosity” of African-Americans often renders it invisible to larger or different communities. For example, “The white community probably did not—could not—fully understand the community where my husband grew up,” she observes. “African Americans have always been giving—but not necessarily in a very public manner. They’ve sent their nieces or nephews to school, or they’ve paid the overdue rent for an uncle or aunt or best friend. There’s a similar dynamic at work in the Philippine-American community, where philanthropy is spontaneous, small-scale, and not splashily publicized. Because it takes place beneath the radar, the philanthropic associations tend to discount it. But the fact of the matter is that giving is going on in the African American community.”

Charity Begins at…College?
A more typical historical target of African-American fundraising has been the educational institution, often singled out by individual donors. At board meetings for Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans—which, among other accomplishments, is distinguished by its high number of outstanding pharmacy graduates—I listened as the college’s development officer described Xavier’s struggle to raise enough money to cover its annual budget of around $90 million. In l999-2000, the university received major grants from the Kresge and the Southern Education foundations to enhance their development program. In 2006, Xavier received a $4 million grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York to help revitalize higher education in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. (Tulane and Dillard universities received Corporation funding for the same purpose.)

In December 2006, the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the nation’s highest civilian award—was conferred on Dr. Norman C. Francis, who has served as president of Xavier for more than 40 years, for his “steadfast dedication to education, equality, and service to others,” and in recognition of his work as Chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, in which he played “a vital role in helping the people of the Gulf Coast rebuild their lives in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.”

In a wide-ranging conversation, Dr. Francis constantly touched on the moral responsibility of raising money to help the university achieve its educational mission. His face lit up as he retraced the last half-decade—banner years for Xavier University in terms of alumni giving. “My parents and the families around us had to focus their time and resources on raising children and holding down jobs,” Dr. Francis remarked. “Today’s college graduates have different priorities. A crucial dimension of their lives is to give back to the institutions that played a significant part in their growth and development. I’m thrilled to see Xavier graduates responding to our needs; [their contributions] tell me black philanthropy is flourishing.”

Making a Leap of Faith
Although a handful of naysayers continued to contend that philanthropy has yet to gain serious traction within the black community, it’s a matter of historical record that African Americans have always generously supported their churches, their schools, and their families.

“When I was growing up,” Norman Francis recalls, “I watched people with very small incomes give to their churches. Religion was close to them. If there was one sustainable part of their lives, they knew it had to be their church. ‘God will take care of you in times of need,’ they believed. ‘The bread you give up today will come back to you tomorrow.’ My Neighbor is not just that person next door—he is any human being in need.”

Indeed, writes LaTasha Chaffin in “Philanthropy and the Black Church,”* “Historically, the Black church has been a core institution for African-American philanthropy. The Black church does not only serve as a faith-based house of worship, but it facilitates organized philanthropic efforts including meeting spiritual, psychological, financial, educational and basic humanitarian needs such as food, housing, and shelter. Black churches are also involved in organizing and providing volunteers to the community and in civil and human rights activism.”

If the black church has not historically matched the endowment and special-giving levels of other faiths, Reverend Tom Watson, pastor of the Greater New Orleans Council of Black Ministers, suggests that it is only because the members of its congregations have lagged commensurately in individual wealth. “We still have a long way to go,” he notes, in terms of overall economic disparity.

Reviewing the keystone role played by black churches, Reverend Watson also notes how it has served as a path to leadership for many notable African Americans, including, of course, Dr. Martin Luther King. “We didn’t own a lot of businesses,” says Watson, “except, perhaps, for the occasional franchise, so the institution we relied on as our wedge into large-scale political participation was the black church.”

As African Americans do, increasingly, join the ranks of the American middle and upper class, the role of the black church in terms of charity and philanthropy seems to be changing as well. “The strongest black churches, “notes Watson, “are led by the black middle and upper classes, which have become larger and more educated. These institutions have strong constituencies, and their congregations understand the role played by philanthropy because the economy has allowed them to participate in it.”

^* See: http://www.learningtogive.org/papers/index.asp?bpid=47

Next page: Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint, the civil rights champion-turned-Harvard-academic (he is professor of psychiatry and faculty associate dean for student affairs at Harvard Medical School, as well as director of the Media Center of the Judge Baker Children’s Center in Boston) told me about a fundraiser given in his honor and chaired by Bill Cosby.

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