What philanthropy can learn from Black women-led and community-centered funding

The economic challenges and disproportionate impact of job losses Black women faced in 2025 exposed deep structural inequities shaping employment, income, and access to opportunity. Data shows more than 600,000 Black women have been pushed out of the workforce this past year. Beyond an employment crisis, this is a leadership and community stability crisis. As data from the Women’s Foundation shows, Black women and gender-expansive leaders face unique barriers to funding, from burdensome applications and reporting requirements for the need to prove they are worthy stewards of funders’ resources.

The Black Equity Collective (BEC) surveyed nearly 220 Black-led organizations across California, two-thirds of which are led by Black women. The survey shows that about two-thirds of these nonprofits are led by Black women, and together the leaders we surveyed support over 4,000 jobs and hundreds of millions in wages and taxes, and investing in local and Black-owned businesses and emerging Black leaders. So, when Black women’s leadership is underfunded, those jobs, incomes, and public dollars are put at risk. Yet, the reality is that most of these nonprofits operate with small, stagnant budgets and cannot consistently offer living wages or core benefits. That also means investing in Black women’s leadership helps prevent widespread economic loss in their communities while strengthening organizations committed to social good.

What is community-centered funding?

What’s needed to ensure California’s Black-led and Black-empowering nonprofits can realize their full impact is large-scale, more flexible public and philanthropic funding. At Social Good Solutions (SGS), a Black woman-led and majority Black women-operated organization, we have mobilized more than $86 million in funding for Black-led initiatives in California. We’ve built community-led funding models that operationalize equity, offering a practical blueprint for funders and nonprofit leaders who are ready to move beyond performative equity. Structural changes require more than value statements. They require a change in who makes decisions, how power is shared, and what counts as success.

Here’s what community-centered funding looks like in practice, structured around two core pillars: external co-governance and internal culture transformation.

Community-centered funding: Co-design and co-governance

In a community-centered funding model, funders move from gatekeepers to facilitators as community members determine strategy, select grantees, and define success metrics based on their lived expertise.

What does community-centered funding look like in practice?

The AAIMM VillageFund, for example, demonstrates how decision-making power can be structurally shifted. While funding comes entirely from philanthropic and public sources, all grantmaking decisions rest with Black women working directly in maternal health and community members. Since 2020, they have allocated resources to more than 30 organizations.

A case study evaluation conducted in late 2025 found that this model supports long-term community sustainability in ways traditional funding cannot replicate. The Black Equity Fund, housed at the Inland Empire Community Foundation, operates on similar principles by ceding decision-making power for both grantmaking and core programming to community leaders. These models prove that full decision-making authority in community hands can be replicated across geographic regions and issue areas.

The Black Freedom Fund demonstrates how co-design drives sustainable scale. I co-created this power-sharing and power-building model with funders as one of three community architects, and that model continues to thrive, now serving as the first and only Black community foundation in California. Beyond individual grantmaking, it now connects five Black-led networks across the state. Establishing shared power at the start creates both trust and momentum for lasting change rather than temporary projects.

What does community-centered funding make possible?

When Black-led organizations, and organizations led by Black women in particular, receive flexible funding, they often innovate in unexpected ways. For example, Youth with a Purpose created a mommy mentor network to support teenage mothers that provided both culturally relevant and generationally connected support.

In our survey, we found leaders used unrestricted support to document the economic contributions of Black-led organizations, unearthing narratives that reshape how we understand and approach this work. This narrative work extends to defining success itself. The Principles of Black Equity, co-designed by 15 Black-led and Black-serving organizations including A New Way of Life Re-Entry Project and Black Women for Wellness, outline the principles needed to advance equity and racial justice for Black people. These principles redefine what constitutes effectiveness in Black-specific work, moving philanthropy beyond narrow metrics to recognize cultural preservation, community self-determination, long-term power building, and yes, even love, as legitimate measures of impact. Evaluating an organization’s effectiveness through metrics like truth, strength, strategic disruption, and love reimagines success through the lens of community impact.

Culture and practices that sustain Black women- and community-led work

External transformation to center community requires internal alignment to support Black women-led nonprofits. At SGS, we integrate our humanity into everything we do. Our bereavement policy and Quiet Time practices honor the truth that our humanity fuels our work. We authentically center well-being internally to prevent burnout with structured rest and by operationalizing joy, so we can center community care externally.

At SGS, we operate from an ethos that we don’t ask Black people to work for free. We name and celebrate the brilliance of Black women in our communications and partnerships. We take a “yes first” approach to engaging Black-led organizations, while most in philanthropy default to “no.” This choice builds trust and shows funders what reciprocity means in practice.

Philanthropy stands at a pivotal crossroads. Institutions are being forced to decide who they are in a landscape that often punishes those who dare to disrupt it. It’s one thing to champion equity when it’s fashionable; it’s another to sustain that stance when the environment becomes antagonistic.

Black women’s leadership offers both internal accountability and external models for how to confront racial antagonism with strength, radical love, and unwavering resolve. The philanthropic sector can strengthen its work by centering Black women’s experiences and leadership. This is a strategic choice that can help protect community economies, deepen trust, and ensure philanthropy evolves in meaningful ways.

Photo credit: Kara Franklin