Promoting Programs to Help Blacks

Business entrepreneur leads a major expansion of charity’s efforts to serve needy youngsters

Since the first group calling itself 100 Black Men formed in 1963, 100 people have

multiplied into 8,000, and one small organization into 94 chapters.

Today, 100 Black Men of America, the Atlanta group that coordinates and promotes the activities of the chapters, receives millions of dollars in annual support and has done much to encourage black men to volunteer to help black youngsters.

For those accomplishments, observers inside and outside the organization credit one man above all others: Thomas W. Dortch Jr., the 51-year-old business executive and former U.S. Senate aide who chairs 100 Black Men of America.

“He is synonymous with the organization,” says George L. Garrow Jr., a lawyer who runs the National Organization of Concerned Black Men, a Philadelphia group with 22 chapters that work with youngsters who are having behavioral problems or trouble in school. “When people think of 100 Black Men of America, they think of Tommy Dortch.”

Mr. Dortch’s involvement with 100 Black Men started 16 years ago, when he helped found a chapter in Atlanta and then went on, in 1986, to help create the national organization he would one day lead. He had heard the success stories of earlier chapters and felt compelled to get involved. “It was a chance for black men to come together and say, ‘We’re focused and we’re going to make a difference,’” Mr. Dortch says, looking back, and “it was a chance for us to pass on to another generation the opportunities and the support that we had received in our lifetime.”

When Mr. Dortch assumed the organization’s top post in 1994, he set about refining the group’s agenda, limiting chapter programs to three main areas: helping children perform better in school; giving kids a clearer understanding of how the economy works, including what it means to have a career; and improving children’s health by discouraging the use of alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs, and encouraging abstinence from sex to reduce teenage pregnancy. The chapters recruit men to volunteer to counsel youngsters in each of those topics.

Linking Adults and Youngsters

Chapter members work closely with schools — often in areas with large numbers of low-income families — to recruit children who are struggling. The volunteers tutor and provide workshops on selected topics, and they take the kids on excursions outside of their neighborhoods. Many of the students are matched with their own mentors, as the members are called, in a process that Mr. Dortch outlined in The Miracles of Mentoring: The Joy of Investing in Our Future, published in 2000 by Doubleday.

The organization’s chapters were not always focused on providing positive role models for young people. Early on, some worked to provide economic and political opportunities for adults. Gradually, the groups decided to make kids their focus, and Mr. Dortch says he solidified that emphasis.

“They recognized the importance of mentoring before it became popular,” says Emmett D. Carson, the first black president of the Minneapolis Foundation and a longtime advocate for black charitable causes. “There are so many negative images about African-Americans, particularly African-American boys, about their capacity, and what 100 Black Men is able to do is to say, That’s a lie, and to say that there are a range of responsible roles that African-American men occupy that don’t require people to be an athlete or an entertainer.”

89 Chapters in the U.S.

One of the many roles Mr. Dortch plays is father. He has five children, including one young woman informally adopted by him and his wife, Carole, assistant general manager of the Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport and an avid volunteer herself.

But the role for which he is best known is chief promoter of 100 Black Men of America. In 1994, he made it his goal to put a 100 Black Men chapter in every city and town that wanted one, and the group continues to emphasize expansion, both in terms of chapters — particularly in the Northwest, where none exist — and members.

“Every day the challenges for young people become greater and greater,” Mr. Dortch says, with drugs, violence, and AIDS and other illnesses plaguing them. “We can’t afford to wait.”

The group is slowly expanding internationally — although it continues to stress its work in this country. In addition to 89 chapters in the United States, five chapters operate overseas: two in England, and one each in the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Senegal, all started by “people who were interested in being a part of what we stood for,” says Mr. Dortch.

Growing Pains

The emphasis on growth is not without its critics. “To focus so much on expansion and growth came at the expense of really working with some of the chapters that needed more hand-holding along the way,” says Paul T. Williams, president of the organization’s New York City chapter. As a result, he says, some of the programs are weaker than others and don’t fully carry out the goals of the organization.

The national office is trying to deal with those weaknesses with enhanced training programs for chapter leaders, including a beefed-up orientation, more visits from national staff members, and more sessions geared to chapter needs at 100 Black Men conferences, says Mr. Dortch. “The approach is not to be less, and be leaner and meaner in terms of numbers,” he says. “The approach is to do more in terms of training.”

Stepping Aside

Mr. Dortch travels the country attending chapter events himself, devoting about 40 percent of his time, all unpaid, to the work of 100 Black Men. But he may be ready to step back from those activities.

He says he would like more time for the five companies he owns, including TWD, which offers consulting services on business development and public relations, and he says others should have the opportunity to lead. While he says he has not made a decision, Mr. Dortch is giving serious thought to stepping down in September when his current term ends.

He would urge Albert E. Dotson Jr., the organization’s vice chairman of operations and a Miami lawyer, to run for his office, he says. But first he wants to be sure that the relationships he has forged for 100 Black Men are solidly in place, especially with the corporations he has spent much of his time wooing.

Last year, most of the group’s private contributions — close to $2-million, according to its informational tax return — came from business, and Mr. Dortch says he brought in almost all of the corporate dollars. He learned communication skills from his father, he says, who turned his experience as a mess sergeant in the military into a business opportunity in which he owned several small restaurants.

It seemed to Mr. Dortch that everybody in the north Georgia town of Toccoa, where he was raised, was friendly with his father even though he was black and most of the other residents were white. “I began at an early age understanding that while there may be differences, they should not keep us from communicating and working together,” says Mr. Dortch.

Corporations provided the bulk of 100 Black Men of America’s $3-million budget in 2000, and the federal government gave $277,375 for health and education programs. Each of the chapters also raises money on its own.

Mr. Dortch is hoping that a glossy new men’s magazine, The One Hundred, will generate more contributions from individuals. The magazine, which will have articles that promote black male responsibility to their families and to society at large, will be distributed to black fraternities and other groups of men, as well as to members and donors.

The group also plans to ask some of its celebrity volunteers for help in publicizing Friends of the 100, a fund-raising program that encourages wealthy donors to make big gifts. Members of 100 Black Men include the actors Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier and the athletes Hank Aaron and Alonzo Mourning.

Eddie Bridgeman Sr., 100 Black Men’s chief financial officer, says the group is on track to raise at least $5-million in 2002, largely from companies.

Encouraging Responsibility

William E. Simms, who works under Mr. Dortch as the group’s new president, says he hopes to use some of the money to make the organization a more visible proponent of black-male involvement in family and civic affairs. He envisions 100 Black Men of America more regularly contributing to public debates about black-male responsibility, holding workshops designed to prevent families from splitting up, and working more closely with school and criminal-justice officials to keep young people from dropping out or going to jail.

He says Mr. Dortch is “smoother” than he is, and he trusts that the chairman can cement the relationships with corporations to keep the group’s projected budget on track.

“He doesn’t really go out and raise money” blatantly, Mr. Simms says of the chairman. “He promotes the value of the partnership between the corporation and the 100.” That value rests, in large part, in members who are just the kinds of people many companies want to do more business with, Mr. Simms says. They have an average income of $75,000, 86 percent have at least a college degree, and 46 percent are business owners.

Being considered a good corporate citizen by the members of the 100, says Mr. Simms, can go a long way toward selling more products to upscale blacks. “Help us, we help you,” he says.

ING Aetna Financial Services, in Hartford, has given 100 Black Men of America about $1.5-million over the last three years. In 1997, Aetna was shopping for a nonprofit organization that could help it gain visibility among blacks. “This is not about charity,” says Willard I. Hill Jr., the company executive who made the decision to support 100 Black Men. “We made an investment out of our operating profits because I thought there would be a clear return on that money.”

Mr. Dortch has applied the same sort of business pragmatism to his decision to accept money from the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation to set up computer centers for low-income families in at least six cities, at a time when many nonprofit organizations that work with young people have rejected money from cigarette manufacturers.

“Nowhere along the way have we said to anybody, ‘Smoke, buy their product,’” he says. “They make money out of our community, and we see it as a way to reinvest their money back into our communities.”

Mr. Dortch believes in appealing to one’s self-interest, whether to convince corporations that 100 Black Men is a good investment, to justify taking tobacco money to pay for new programs, or even to recruit new members.

“To see these young people progress, to see them begin to focus on their future, and to have a different outlook and to be motivated, you cannot put a price tag on that,” he says. “If you want to enrich your life, get involved in the lives of these kids and help them.”

THOMAS W. DORTCH JR., CHAIRMAN OF 100 BLACK MEN OF AMERICA

Age: 51

Place of birth: Toccoa, Ga.

Education: Earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Fort Valley State University, in Georgia, and a master’s degree in criminal-justice administration from Atlanta University, now called Clark Atlanta University.

Employment: Owns five companies, including TWD, which offers consulting services on business development and public relations; for 16 years, was aide to then-Sen. Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia.