‘Shell-Shocked Into Action’

Black groups, critical of slow response to Katrina, vow to strengthen their own charitable efforts

The wrenching images of Hurricane Katrina’s black victims — stranded on roofs, trapped in the New Orleans

Superdome without food or water, separated from family members — spurred a massive mobilization of African-American philanthropy. As the devastation wracked the Gulf Coast, black churches, charities, advocacy groups, foundations, and celebrities across the country raised money and organized rescue missions.

“Many of us have been shell-shocked into action,” says Jacqueline Copeland-Carson, a senior fellow at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute’s Public and Nonprofit Leadership Center at the University of Minnesota. “We have not had that kind of disaster since slavery and Jim Crow.”

In one sense, the response was nothing new, philanthropy experts say. Blacks have always rallied to help each other in times of crisis. But this effort, some say, was tinged with anger and a sense of abandonment that could change the way blacks direct their charitable dollars.

The government’s slow response to the hurricane and floods — which had a disproportionate impact on poor and black residents — has been widely criticized. But some black leaders also fault private relief organizations, including the American Red Cross, and say blacks must strengthen their own “self-help” groups.

“You’re going to see more philanthropic African-American organizations pop up,” says Joe Leonard, executive director of the Black Leadership Forum, a coalition of civil-rights groups. Mr. Leonard, who visited hurricane-damaged areas in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi this month, says, “We became dependent on the Red Cross and other philanthropic organizations. I believe this experience will cause African Americans specifically to re-evaluate where they put their money.”

After the storm hit, the leadership forum and the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, both in Washington, created the Rebuild Hope Now Campaign in partnership with dozens of other black and labor organizations. The campaign is helping to get donated goods directly to organizations that serve blacks. “We reached out to people who we knew would respond on the ground,” Mr. Leonard says.

Marsha J. Evans, president of the Red Cross, concedes that the organization was slow to reach some rural areas in Alabama and Mississippi, but says it was hindered by impassable roads, gas shortages, and communications breakdowns. “It’s the worst destruction I’ve ever seen in my life, and it goes on for extensive, extended areas,” she says. “It’s just very hard to get back into some of the areas.”

BET Telethon

In the storm’s immediate wake, many black organizations and individuals started to raise money. One of the most successful efforts was a telethon sponsored by the BET television network featuring black musicians, entertainers, and politicians. It raised more than $11-million for the American Red Cross, including $1-million from Bob Johnson, the founder of BET.

The network’s president, Debra Lee, explained on the BET Web site that it had selected the Red Cross because the group had relief operations already in the works and had promised that 91 percent of the money raised from the telethon would help the hurricane victims.

But other donors preferred to support groups that specifically help blacks. The NAACP, in Baltimore, set up a disaster-relief plan involving all of its chapters nationwide and appointed one of its board members — Adora Obi Nweze, who has worked on hurricane-relief efforts in her home state of Florida — to lead it. With little solicitation, it has raised more than $1-million, says Georgia Noone, the group’s chief administrative officer.

“People are looking at alternative ways of giving other than the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency],” she says. “They’re looking at television, seeing that a large majority of people affected are African American.” She says her group is working with the Red Cross to reach people who need help. “They have distribution already set up,” she says. “We have the volunteers on the ground.”

The Twenty-First Century Foundation, in New York, which provides grants to black community groups, has raised $210,000 for a Hurricane Katrina Recovery Fund, which it will give to charities that work in the hurricane-ravaged regions. “We did not want to give to some of the traditional organizations because we felt we wanted some confidence it was getting to the communities we really cared about,” said the Rev. John Vaughn, the foundation’s program director.

The foundation made that decision after hearing from people like LaTosha Brown, director of the Alabama Coalition on Black Civic Participation. Ms. Brown, alarmed by reports that neither the government nor the Red Cross had reached some communities in Alabama and Mississippi, helped to create an emergency coalition to distribute food, clothing, and personal-hygiene products to hurricane victims there. The coalition, Saving Our Selves, grew to include dozens of religious, voting-rights, civil-rights, and community-development groups across the country.

“Had it not been for some of those churches and community organizations, many people would have dehydrated or starved,” Ms. Brown says.

Stories like that have prompted some black organizations to discuss ways to ensure that the Red Cross improves its disaster planning. “What’s going to come out of this is there’s going to be a new partnership with the Red Cross,” says Ms. Noone. “They’re going to have to consider doing things differently.”

Rep. William Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana and chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, says the relief charities that get the lion’s share of donations — including the Red Cross, Salvation Army, and United Ways — must ensure that money raised to help “African-Americans in distress” gets to the intended recipients, and work with groups that understand the needs of black communities.

He said several Black Caucus members had discussed those issues with Red Cross officials. “I think they [the Red Cross] got the message and they’re getting the message,” he says. “We’re going to make progress on this.”

Ms. Evans says the Red Cross has made an effort to increase the diversity of its staff and volunteers, and to work with businesses owned by minority-group members.

“That’s been one of our goals, and since the hurricane, I have had pretty significant contacts with both national, and some local, African American church leaders, for example,” she says. “This is a great opportunity to further the efforts that had been happening prior, and really ramp up, based on the new collaborations and partnerships.”

In addition to responding to the immediate needs of Katrina victims, some groups say they will use the money they raise to ensure that blacks, other minority-group members, and poor people have a say in how the Gulf is reconstructed. “There’s going to be so much money now that begins to be at stake,” says Mr. Vaughn of the Twenty-First Century Foundation. “How open are the folks that are going to be controlling the resources to looking at a population that is not as profitable to work with?”

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People says some of the money it raises will support programs to fight for “the equitable reconstruction” of the hurricane regions. “There is a market of people that is traditionally underserved, the poor,” says Ms. Noone. “Their needs have to be considered here.”

Future Plans

Looking beyond the hurricane, some black leaders are hoping the Katrina disaster will persuade blacks to take a more strategic approach to charitable giving.

Gary Officer, president of Associated Black Charities of Maryland, which provides grants to African-American community organizations, says black charities must find a way to reach out to more donors and strengthen “organized philanthropy.”

“I was driving to work one morning, I’m hearing about all these celebrity and entertainment Katrina-related events,” he says. “To me that all seemed very one-off.

“I don’t want the relief effort, recovery effort, reconstruction effort to be lost in this reactive mode of how do we save New Orleans now?” he adds.

Associated Black Charities is a member of the Joint Dialogue on Black Philanthropy, a new group that was set up with a $150,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to develop ways to attract donations from wealthy African Americans. Other members are the Association of Black Foundation Executives, the National Black United Fund, the National Center for Black Philanthropy, and the Twenty-First Century Foundation. The group plans to meet with prominent black entertainers, athletes, and religious and civic leaders to discuss ways to help build a steady stream of income for African-American community organizations.

A Chronicle of Philanthropy study in 2003 found that black Americans gave 25 percent more of their discretionary income to charity than whites, but directed 90 percent of the dollars to churches or other religious organizations — compared with 75 percent of the dollars from whites.

The Katrina disaster showed that blacks must broaden their giving beyond the church and stop spending so much money on “conspicuous consumption,” says Frank Jones, chief executive of the Gibbs Community Foundation, in Oakland, Calif. He has spearheaded a project in the Oakland area to explore ways to create strong black foundations — that is, with endowments of $50- million to $100-million.

“Had black America been endowed with financially significant black foundations before the hurricane struck,” he wrote in his online publication, Gibbs Magazine, “we could have been on the scene in the nick of time with a pool of resources as we saw Hurricane Katrina configuring itself to devastate our people.”

He says he has been meeting with local leaders about the project and has commissioned some scholars to develop ways to educate African Americans about the need for foundations with large endowments. The hurricane could help him sell his case, he says. “Katrina is the best argument for building philanthropic foundations we’re ever going to find.”

Nicole Wallace contributed to this article.