Project Aims to Make Giving by Blacks More Effective and Enduring

By ELIZABETH GREENE

Many black people grow up thinking that the world of organized philanthropy is for rich

white men, not for people like themselves, say organizers of the Baltimore Giving Project, who have mounted a large-scale effort to change that perception.

While African Americans already give generously to churches, fraternities, sororities, and community groups, project organizers say they should also be developing a foundation of their own, contributing to a community foundation, or creating planned gifts — in short, acting strategically.

“Most people, when they think ‘philanthropist,’ think multimillionaire — someone who has endowed a library or a university,” says Robin Williams Wood, a black philanthropist who is helping to organize the project. “Usually there are so many needs that we’re responding to crises,” she says, “and not thinking about establishing something in perpetuity.”

With a number of programs under way or in the planning phase, the group hopes to make black philanthropy more effective by utilizing some of the tools blacks have shied away from in the past. It is working in partnership with Associated Black Charities of Maryland, which makes small grants to local charities.

Says Lea A. Gilmore, program director at the Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers: “It’s leveraging our dollars in the most productive way to give back even more.”

Housed at Ms. Gilmore’s association, the Baltimore Giving Project was started with a three-year grant of $375,000 from New Ventures in Philanthropy, a program to stimulate giving that is run by the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers.

In addition to the African American Philanthropy Initiative, the giving project works with the region’s high-technology workers, philanthropic families who are training the next generation, professional advisers, and women to try to develop new sources of money for the region.

It has attracted $615,000 in matching contributions from local donors.

Jan C. Rivitz says her fund, the Aaron Straus & Lillie Straus Foundation, in Baltimore, decided to commit $200,000 to the coalition in part because of the emphasis on increasing black participation in local philanthropy.

“Looking specifically at the urban problems in Baltimore, it would feel a lot better if we were doing it with other African Americans at the table,” says Ms. Rivitz, executive director of the Straus fund and chair of the giving project.

In addition to plans to work with predominantly black churches and Greek-letter organizations, the group has begun several projects to spread the word that organized philanthropy is not just a white person’s privilege. It started a biweekly electronic newsletter, the “E-Newsletter on African American Philanthropy,” to share trends and some of the most effective practices in black giving nationwide, and to direct readers to useful information on the Internet about financial planning and related subjects.

Created in August, the newsletter has more than 600 subscribers around the country.

An African-American Giving Tool Kit should be ready for distribution in January. It will include information about financial planning; material on how to begin a foundation, a giving circle, and a donor-advised fund; definitions of common terms used when speaking about philanthropy; lists of national and local resources on black philanthropy; and, among other things, profiles of black philanthropists from the Baltimore area.

A one-day conference on African-American philanthropy is in the works for next year, on the campus of historically black Morgan State University in Baltimore. The conference will highlight what donors are doing and how they’re doing it — their interests and the methods they have chosen.

With the view that one of the best ways to educate people about philanthropy is through their financial advisers, the project also held a breakfast last month with more than 20 black accountants, bankers, lawyers, and stockbrokers.

Ms. Gilmore says the participants were hungry for information. “There’s a mystery regarding philanthropy,” she says, “but there is an extreme wanting of more, a wanting of education about what is really out there and what is out there in a language we can convey to our clients.”