Leadership In Color

PART I: WHAT LEADERSHIP LOOKS LIKE IN COLOR

By Starsha Valentine
Partner and Mid-Atlantic Managing Director

We’ve all seen the headlines across numerous journals: Black-led nonprofit organizations receive less funding, grow at a slower pace, and are under-resourced compared to their white-led peers. 

As recently as 2019, Echoing Green and Bridgespan’s Racial Equity and Philanthropy report found that “...on average the revenues of the Black-led organizations are 24 percent smaller than the revenues of their white-led counterparts. When it comes to the holy grail of financial support— unrestricted funding—the picture is even bleaker. The unrestricted net assets of the Black-led organizations are 76 percent smaller than their white-led counterparts. The stark disparity in unrestricted assets is particularly startling as such funding often represents a proxy for trust.”

But the disparity goes beyond just dollars and cents. Despite concerted efforts to shift power….