Tag Archives: HBCU alumni giving

HBCU Alumni Have a Profound Reason to Support Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library — and It Isn’t Charity

Posted on August 28, 2026 by | Leave a comment

 “If I’m remembered 100 years from now, I hope it will be not for looks but for books.” – Ms. Dolly Parton

Every homecoming, a knot of alumni takes the same walk back onto campus past the same block, the same porches, the same children playing in yards a few hundred feet from the gates they once walked through themselves. Most years they don’t really see them. They’re thinking about the game, the cookout, the faces they haven’t seen since spring. But those children live only steps from the campus that shaped them, closer than any of them ever stopped to notice while they were students there. Their future and the institution’s are already tangled together whether anyone admits it or not. Some of them will never walk through those gates themselves — not for lack of promise, but because no one made sure they could read well before they turned six, and by the time it shows up as a problem, everyone treats it as someone else’s failure to fix. A fence line, or sometimes just a street, is all that separates the campus that made them from the community raising the children who could be next. This year, walking that same route, one of them finally says it out loud. By Monday, the group has pulled the zip code. It’s already moving through the group chat; who’s in, who’s giving what, who’s setting up the recurring charge tonight. Each of them commits to a standing monthly gift, on their own, no chapter paperwork needed. By next year’s homecoming, they’re not just showing up, they’re telling everyone else in that same group chat’s orbit to do the same.

That is the structural story hiding inside a straightforward piece of philanthropic news. On August 25, Dolly Parton died at 80 after a battle with cancer, and within hours her Imagination Library, the nonprofit that has mailed more than 300 million free books to children from birth to age five since 1995, pledged to continue operating without her. It has strong reason to reassure the public. In the months before her death, Indiana and Missouri, two of the program’s largest state partners, cut a combined $10 million in public funding, and the effects were immediate: Missouri froze new enrollment on July 1 after lawmakers cut its allocation from roughly $6 million to $2 million, and Indiana dropped a $6 million two-year commitment that had reached more than 152,000 children, about 37 percent of the state’s under-five population, leaving a private fundraising campaign to close the gap.

It is worth being precise about why this particular loss registers differently across Black America than the death of most entertainers would. Parton’s standing in Black communities was not incidental goodwill; it was built through specific, repeated decisions over four decades. When Whitney Houston’s 1992 cover of “I Will Always Love You” generated an estimated $10 million in royalties for Parton, she used part of that windfall to purchase a commercial complex in a predominantly Black Nashville neighborhood, a property she later called, in her own words, “the house that Whitney built.” She was among the first public figures to advocate openly for people living with HIV and AIDS in the 1980s, when the subject carried real professional risk. In 2020 she voiced unambiguous support for the principle behind Black Lives Matter, and that same year donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center toward coronavirus research that fed into the Moderna vaccine, a contribution not framed as racial-justice philanthropy but one that mattered disproportionately to Black communities carrying a disproportionate share of COVID-19’s toll. When Beyoncé reworked “Jolene” on Cowboy Carter in 2024, Parton publicly welcomed it rather than guarding the song as untouchable. Her death drew tributes from Black cultural and political figures across generations, including the nation’s first Black president. None of that history makes the Imagination Library a Black institution, and this publication has no interest in overstating it. But it explains why the erosion of one of her signature programs is being felt in Black America as something closer to institutional loss than celebrity news and why the ecosystem she consistently, unsentimentally invested in is well positioned to be the one that protects what she built.

The Imagination Library’s funding architecture is worth understanding before arguing that HBCU alumni should engage with it. The Dollywood Foundation covers national administrative overhead; local partners; usually a nonprofit, library system, or community foundation, fund the actual books and postage for their coverage area; and in many states, a public appropriation matches what the local partner raises, typically on a fifty-fifty basis. This is a genuinely decentralized model, closer in structure to a franchise network than a single national charity, and it is precisely because of that structure that state-level political decisions can gut service in one place while leaving it untouched in another. Missouri’s cut is the sharper illustration: in 2024 the state became the first in the country to fully fund the program, delivering 1.9 million books in a single year, and this year’s reduction converted a national model program into a waitlist. Indiana’s cut removed the largest state contribution the program had, and while the governor’s wife has since run a private campaign that had reached roughly 90 percent of its two-year replacement goal by March, the shortfall illustrates a pattern this publication has tracked in other contexts: public commitments to Black and working-class communities are frequently the first line item removed when budgets tighten, and private philanthropy is expected to backfill on short notice with no guarantee of permanence.

This is where the moral case for giving; that literacy is good, that children deserve books, that Parton’s legacy is worth honoring should give way to a structural case, because the moral case, while true, does nothing to explain why HBCU alumni specifically should act, or why they should act through this program rather than any other worthy cause competing for the same dollar. The structural case is that early childhood reading proficiency is the first stage of the same talent pipeline that HBCU admissions offices, endowments, and surrounding local economies depend on decades later. The Annie E. Casey Foundation has found that students who are not reading proficiently by the end of third grade are four times more likely to leave high school without a diploma than proficient readers, and shared reading in the earliest years has been identified in the pediatric research literature as one of the most effective levers for building the school-readiness skills that predict later outcomes. Every child in a majority-Black zip code who fails to reach third-grade proficiency is a young person the institutional ecosystem has effectively lost before that child ever applies anywhere; not lost to a rival university, but lost to a structural gap that formed a decade earlier and was never someone’s assigned responsibility to close. HBCUs sit inside this pipeline whether their leadership treats it that way or not. A campus’s long-run enrollment base, its local labor pool, its alumni base twenty years out, and the tax and consumer base of the surrounding Black community are not separable from the reading outcomes of five-year-olds currently living within a few miles of the quad.

Framed this way, the Imagination Library’s donation mechanics stop being incidental and start being a genuine instrument of capital retention. The donation platform allows a donor to designate a gift to a specific Local Program Partner, either by selecting one directly or by entering a zip code or postal code, which routes the contribution to the affiliate serving that address rather than into an undifferentiated national pool. An alumnus of Fisk can direct dollars into Nashville. An alumnus of Grambling State can direct dollars into Lincoln Parish. An alumnus of Alcorn State, Fort Valley State, or Cheyney can direct dollars into Lorman, Fort Valley, or the Brandywine Valley rather than into whichever state happens to have the most visible fundraising campaign that year. This matters because the HBCU ecosystem’s chronic capital-retention problem is not only about tuition dollars or philanthropic gifts leaving the ecosystem for PWIs it is also about diffuse, well-intentioned giving that never lands in the specific towns and neighborhoods that make up the extended HBCU footprint. A general donation to a national children’s literacy charity is a fine act of citizenship. A designated donation, tied to the zip code of one’s own institution and repeated as a recurring monthly gift, is an act of institutional infrastructure-building indistinguishable in kind, if not in scale, from an endowment gift or a scholarship fund. It should be treated by advancement offices the same way: as a designated giving category, marketed alongside scholarships and building funds, not left to individual alumni to discover on their own.

Before any of this can be marketed with confidence, it needs verification, because the network’s coverage is uneven by design. Not every zip code has an active Local Program Partner (check with Imagination Library), and a well-intentioned designated gift to an HBCU’s host community will simply fail to route if no affiliate exists there yet. Alumni associations and institutional advancement offices should check availability for their specific campus community before building a giving campaign around it, and where no local affiliate exists, the more consequential action may be organizing one; approaching a local library system, community foundation, or the institution itself about becoming a Local Program Partner, which would let the university’s home community capture matching state or philanthropic dollars rather than simply mailing checks into someone else’s affiliate. That is a heavier lift than a donation button, but it is the difference between renting a spot in someone else’s infrastructure and building a permanent piece of one’s own, a distinction the HBCU ecosystem has learned to care about in banking, in real estate, and in research capacity, and should extend to children’s literacy as well.

There is a natural, if imperfect, partner already sitting inside the ecosystem for this work: the HBCU Library Alliance, a membership consortium of HBCU academic libraries built around preserving Black historical and cultural collections, developing library leadership, and building digital archives, with active Mellon Foundation support for financial capacity-building and NEH backing for humanities collections work. Its formal mandate is academic library infrastructure, not early-childhood book distribution, and this publication has been consistently corrected on the danger of assigning capabilities to institutions that do not actually have them so it would be inaccurate to describe the Alliance as an operator of childhood literacy programs or a grantor with authority over Imagination Library funding decisions. What it plausibly can do, sitting where it does inside the ecosystem, is convene. Its member libraries are physically embedded in or near the same host communities alumni would be donating into, and a consortium built around expanding access to books and preserving Black intellectual life is a natural venue for publicizing zip-code-designated giving campaigns to alumni networks, tracking which member institutions’ communities have active local affiliates and which have coverage gaps, and lending its existing credibility with member library directors to conversations with local governments and foundations about establishing new affiliates in underserved HBCU towns. None of that requires new statutory authority or grant capacity the Alliance does not have. It requires treating the organization as what it already is: a coordination point for the library infrastructure of the HBCU ecosystem, extended one step further to include the earliest readers who will eventually walk into those same libraries as students.

The broader pattern here is not new, even if the specific instance is. Public commitments to reading infrastructure in under-resourced and disproportionately Black communities have proven, across states and across administrations, to be among the more fragile line items in a state budget — vulnerable to a single legislative session in a way that private, community-anchored infrastructure is not. Books and reading are not merely contested terrain nationally; they are an active battlefield, fought out in school and library book removals, in funding fights over public library systems, and now in the quiet defunding of a program that puts a single free book in a child’s hands each month. The casualties of that fight are not abstract. A child who does not encounter books in the first five years of life does not get those years reissued at eight or twelve; the window for building early reading skill closes on a biological, not a legislative, schedule, and every budget cycle that treats early literacy funding as negotiable is making that closure permanent for some number of real children, disproportionately in the communities already carrying the least institutional cushion to absorb it. The lesson the HBCU ecosystem has already learned from its own experience with federal and state funding volatility that institutions dependent entirely on public appropriation are institutions one legislative session away from crisis applies with equal force here. The strategic response is the same in both cases: build parallel, community-owned capacity that does not evaporate when a state’s budget priorities shift.

None of this requires alumni to feel sentimental to justify participating, even if the sentiment is real and, in this case, well earned. It requires recognizing that a five-year-old in Lorman, Daytona Beach, or Dover who receives a free book every month for five years is a more literate ten-year-old, a more prepared seventeen-year-old, and, a decade or two on, a more plausible applicant, employee, or neighbor of the institution down the road and that the zip code field on a donation form is, in this narrow but real sense, an instrument of institutional strategy. The Imagination Library will likely survive the loss of its founder; whether the specific communities that surround Black colleges and universities keep receiving it is a separate question, one that now depends on whether the institutions with the clearest long-run interest in the answer choose to treat it as their responsibility.

There is also a simpler way to say all of this. Dolly Parton spent four decades showing up for Black America without asking anything of it in return and not always loudly, rarely as spectacle, usually in the form of money quietly redirected toward a Black neighborhood, a vaccine trial, an artist reworking her song, a stance taken when it would have been easier not to. The obligation that creates is not sentimental; it is the same obligation that governs any relationship built on reciprocity rather than charity. An institution she built and unsentimentally invested in is now vulnerable and not only in Indiana and Missouri, but as one casualty inside a far broader, ongoing national contest over whether children retain unencumbered access to books at all, playing out simultaneously in book removals from school and library shelves and in funding fights over public library systems nationwide. She never framed that fight as her own. But a free book mailed to a five-year-old every month for five years was always, structurally, a stake in it. Showing up for that institution the way she showed up for Black America; consistently, structurally, without waiting to be asked twice is simply the other half of the exchange she started. That is what protecting her legacy actually looks like: not a tribute, but a continuation.

How to do this, starting today:

  1. Get your HBCU’s zip code. Not your alma mater’s mailing address — the zip code of the actual community around the campus, where the children you’d be reaching live.
  2. Confirm a Local Program Partner is active there. Go to imaginationlibrary.com/check-availability and enter the zip code before donating. Coverage isn’t universal — some HBCU communities don’t have an affiliate yet, which is its own problem worth knowing about.
  3. Go to donate.imaginationlibrary.com and designate your gift. Select your country, check the box to designate the donation to a specific Local Program Partner, and enter the zip code so it routes to that community rather than into the general fund.
  4. Set it to recur monthly, not once. A one-time gift helps a handful of children for a few months. A standing monthly gift is what keeps a child enrolled from birth through age five — pick an amount you can sustain, not one that feels good today and stops in March.
  5. Pull someone else in before you close the tab. Text the group chat, post it to your chapter’s page, bring the zip code to next year’s homecoming. This works at scale only if it becomes a habit alumni pass to each other, not an individual good deed.
  6. If there’s no local partner yet, say so out loud. Flag it to your alumni association or your institution’s advancement office. A missing affiliate in an HBCU’s own community is a gap someone with standing needs to raise with a local library system or community foundation — not just wait out.

Disclaimer: This article was assisted by ClaudeAI.

Leave a comment

Posted in Philanthropy

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The $10 Solution: Why Small, Recurring Gifts Are the Missing Pillar of Black Institutional Finance

Posted on July 3, 2026 by | Leave a comment

The African American institutional ecosystem—comprising HBCUs, Black-led nonprofits, community health organizations, and civic associations—faces a structural financing problem that no single grant cycle, federal appropriation, or celebrity donation can solve on its own. The challenge is not a shortage of Black generosity. It is a shortage of organized, recurring, and institutionally directed Black generosity. The $10 monthly donation—modest by any individual measure—represents, in aggregate, one of the most underutilized instruments of capital formation available to African American institutions today.

This is not an argument for charity. It is an argument for institutional finance through democratized recurring revenue.

Before prescribing solutions, the data demands a reckoning with the scale of the funding disparity confronting African American-led institutions. According to research compiled by the Bridgespan Group and Echoing Green, the revenues of Black-led organizations are 24 percent smaller than the revenues of their white-led counterparts. When it comes to unrestricted funding—the holy grail of financial support—the picture is even bleaker: the unrestricted net assets of Black-led organizations are 76 percent smaller than their white-led counterparts. That disparity in unrestricted assets is not a footnote. It is the operating condition under which virtually every Black-led institution functions daily.

The revenue figures are equally sobering in aggregate. In terms of total sector-wide revenue, majority Black-led organizations receive less than $3 billion, compared with majority white-led organizations that receive about $85 billion. The ratio of roughly 28 to 1 reflects decades of what practitioners in the sector have termed “philanthropic redlining,” a structural pattern in which institutional funders extend trust, operating support, and scale capital disproportionately to white-led organizations. The organizational profile of the sector makes this crisis especially acute. Majority Black-led nonprofits tend to be smaller, with 61 percent operating with budgets under $100,000 and only 2 percent with budgets over $10 million. The median annual revenue of majority Black-led nonprofits is $302,000, compared with $908,000 for majority white-led nonprofits. An organization operating at $302,000 in annual revenue has little margin for program investment, staff development, or reserve accumulation. It is, by any financial standard, an institution surviving rather than building.

The Association of Black Foundation Executives found that 60 percent of Black-led organizations surveyed had budgets of $500,000 or less, and just 23 percent had reserves of three months or more. A three-month operating reserve is considered the absolute minimum threshold for organizational resilience. The fact that more than three-quarters of Black-led nonprofits fall below that floor means that any disruption to funding—a grant not renewed, a donor who lapses, a federal program curtailed—can be existential. HBCUs face a structurally analogous problem in higher education finance. The PWI-HBCU NACUBO Top 10 Endowment Gap for 2024 stands at $129.2 to $1. HBCUs comprised 1.5 percent of NACUBO’s reporting institutions and 0.3 percent of the reporting endowment assets, while PWI endowments with assets over $5 billion hold 58.5 percent of the $884.3 billion in total reporting endowment assets. Even Howard University, which became the first HBCU to cross the $1 billion endowment threshold, a genuine milestone, remains an order of magnitude behind flagship PWIs whose endowments measure in the tens of billions.

These figures, taken together, describe an ecosystem that is generationally undercapitalized. The structural solution requires multiple interventions: federal policy reform, corporate accountability, philanthropic sector reorientation, and enhanced major gift cultivation. But each of those levers operates on a long timeline and with significant uncertainty. What African American households, alumni chapters, and giving groups can control today is the flow of their own recurring dollars into the institutions that serve them.

African Americans are among the most generous donors in the United States, a fact that is consistently underappreciated in both mainstream philanthropic discourse and internal community conversations. Nearly two-thirds of Black households donate to community-based organizations and causes, totaling $11 billion each year. Black households on average give away 25 percent more of their income per year than white households, and of all racial or ethnic groups, Black families have contributed the largest proportion of their wealth to charity since 2010. High-net-worth Black families are reportedly more likely to have family traditions around giving than their white counterparts and report more fulfillment from their charitable giving. Research by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy documents that Black Americans donated 3 to 4 percent of their income to charity on average across the years studied, a rate that outpaces other demographic groups relative to income.

The generosity is not in question. What is in question is the institutional destination of that generosity and the form it takes. A community that donates $11 billion annually but whose primary institutional ecosystem of HBCUs, Black-led nonprofits, Black hospitals, Black media operates on poverty-level budgets has a capital distribution problem, not a giving problem. The money is there. The institutional routing is not. A significant portion of that giving flows to religious congregations, mutual aid to extended family networks, and causes with no institutional anchor in the African American ecosystem. None of those giving patterns are illegitimate. But they do not build endowments. They do not fund operating reserves. They do not provide the recurring, unrestricted revenue that allows a Black-led nonprofit to hire a development officer, invest in data infrastructure, or weather a single major donor’s departure.

The $10 monthly donation ($120 annually) is not a symbolic gesture. At scale, it is a recapitalization strategy. There are approximately 47 million African Americans in the United States. If only 5 percent of Black households which is roughly 2.5 million households out of an estimated 17 million committed $10 per month to a Black-led institution, the aggregate annual flow would reach $300 million. Directed strategically across HBCUs, Black-led nonprofits, and community health institutions, that represents more than 10 percent of the current total revenue flowing to the majority Black-led nonprofit sector.

The power of recurring giving extends beyond the dollar amount. Industry data confirms that monthly donors give 42 percent more than one-time givers on an annualized basis, driven by the cumulative effect of consistent contributions and the reduced likelihood of lapsing. For nonprofits, recurring revenue is categorically different from episodic revenue: it is predictable, plannable, and bankable in ways that grant income and campaign proceeds are not. An organization with 500 monthly donors at $10 each has a guaranteed $60,000 annual baseline; modest but stable enough to justify hiring, to secure a line of credit, or to launch a matching gift campaign. Unrestricted monthly giving is also the form of philanthropy most urgently needed by Black-led institutions. The systemic deficiency in unrestricted funding, that 76 percent gap compared to white-led peers, reflects a structural pattern in which Black organizations receive grants with narrow programmatic restrictions that prevent investment in the internal capacity required for organizational growth. A $10 monthly donation from an HBCU alumnus to their alma mater’s annual fund, or from a community member to a local Black-led nonprofit, is by definition unrestricted. The institution decides how to deploy it: toward a staff position, a technology upgrade, an emergency reserve, or a matching gift that unlocks foundation dollars.

The most efficient mechanism for scaling these commitments into institutional capital is not individual action—it is collective action through organizational infrastructure. HBCU alumni chapters and African American giving groups represent an underutilized distribution network for democratized recurring philanthropy. An alumni chapter with 200 active members in which 60 percent commit to $10 monthly generates $14,400 annually—directed, unrestricted, recurring. A national HBCU alumni association with 50 chapters operating at that participation rate generates $720,000 annually for institutional endowment or operating support. Multiply that across the more than 100 HBCUs, many of which have alumni association networks across dozens of cities, and the aggregate potential is measured in the tens of millions of dollars per year, capital that currently does not exist on HBCU balance sheets.

Giving groups offer a parallel vehicle. Giving circles like the New Generation of African American Philanthropists, which began as a 15-person circle in Charlotte, have grown into significant collective giving entities committed to disrupting conventional philanthropy. These structures are particularly well-suited to the $10 monthly model because they combine the social accountability of a group commitment with the financial efficiency of pooled, recurring capital. A giving group that aggregates 100 members at $10 monthly generates $12,000 annually in deployable grants, small enough to be accessible to any working professional, large enough to meaningfully support a Black-led organization’s operating budget. The alumni chapter as a philanthropic vehicle is also strategically superior to individual giving in one critical respect: it creates an institutional relationship between the donor and the institution that survives any individual’s personal financial fluctuation. When the chapter commits, the institution can plan around that commitment. When an individual donor commits in isolation, attrition erodes the revenue base unpredictably.

The compounding returns of this approach are significant. An HBCU with 10,000 alumni in which 15 percent participate at $10 monthly generates $1.8 million annually. Invested at a conservative 5 percent return, sustained over ten years with reinvestment, that giving program alone produces an endowment contribution of more than $22 million, enough to fund two endowed faculty chairs or establish a meaningful scholarship fund. The compounding logic of recurring philanthropy, applied to institutional endowment-building, is the same logic that has built the multibillion-dollar endowments of elite PWIs over generations: not a handful of transformative gifts alone, but a consistent culture of giving across a broad alumni base, sustained over decades. For Black-led nonprofits, the calculus is more immediate. More than half of Black-led nonprofit leaders report that their organization would shut down if they lost one or two key funders. An organization that replaces that concentration risk with 300 monthly donors at $10 each has effectively immunized itself against the collapse of any single funding relationship. Donor diversification, the standard recommendation of every organizational capacity consultant in the sector, is operationally achieved through the accumulation of recurring small donors, not through the pursuit of larger restricted grants. According to the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, funding to Black communities accounts for only 1 percent of all community foundation funding, resulting in an underfunding of Black communities of $2 billion. Community philanthropy from within the ecosystem is not a substitute for external institutional accountability but it is the only source of capital over which African American institutions have direct and immediate control.

Recommendations for Institutional Action

For HBCU Development Offices: The immediate priority is building and marketing a monthly giving program with a specific $10 entry point. The language should be explicit: this is not charity; it is institutional investment. Alumni who would not write a $120 check will often commit to $10 monthly if the onboarding is frictionless and the institutional communication is consistent and strategic. Technology infrastructure for recurring giving is low-cost and widely available. The barrier is not technical it is a development culture that has historically prioritized major gift cultivation at the expense of broad-base annual fund growth.

For Alumni Chapters: Chapters should establish a formal monthly giving commitment as a condition of active chapter membership or officer eligibility not as a financial barrier, but as a cultural signal that institutional support is a baseline expectation of HBCU alumni engagement, not an exceptional act. Chapters with robust monthly giving programs should publicize their aggregate contribution totals, creating competitive social proof across the alumni network.

For African American Giving Groups: Existing giving circles and collective philanthropy organizations should formally adopt Black-led nonprofits and HBCU foundations as priority beneficiaries and structure their pooled contributions as recurring monthly flows rather than single annual grants. The stability value of a twelve-month recurring commitment to a recipient organization exceeds the programmatic value of a larger, one-time check.

For Individual Households: The allocation question is straightforward. African American households already give. The strategic question is whether a portion of that existing generosity is directed toward institutions with the capacity to aggregate capital, build reserves, and generate long-term community returns. Setting up one $10 monthly recurring gift to an HBCU foundation or Black-led nonprofit requires less than ten minutes and commits less than the cost of two streaming subscriptions per month.

The structural underfunding of African American institutions is not primarily a story of insufficient generosity—it is a story of insufficient institutional routing. Black households give $11 billion annually. Black-led institutions capture a fraction of that flow. The gap between those two figures is the organizing challenge of African American institutional philanthropy.

The $10 monthly commitment is not the complete answer. It does not replace federal investment, it does not substitute for corporate accountability in philanthropic grantmaking, and it does not eliminate the need for transformative major gifts to HBCU endowments. But it is the instrument most immediately available, most broadly accessible, and most structurally valuable to the organizations that need stable, unrestricted, recurring revenue to survive and eventually to scale.

Communities are built by institutions. Institutions are built by capital. Capital, in the absence of inherited wealth and equitable access to external philanthropy, must be built from within—one recurring commitment at a time.

Disclaimer: This article was assisted by ClaudeAI.

Leave a comment

Posted in Philanthropy

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Price of a Statue: A’ja Wilson’s Bronze and the Billion-Dollar Theft (from HBCUs) Disguised as Progress

Posted on May 29, 2026 by | Leave a comment

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land. – Desmond Tutu

The image is powerful: A’ja Wilson, WNBA superstar and Olympic gold medalist, immortalized in bronze on the grounds of the University of South Carolina. Wilson herself captured the poignancy of the moment in a quote that went viral: “When my grandmother was a child, she could not even walk on the grounds of the University of South Carolina… Now the same grounds houses a statue of her granddaughter.”

It’s the kind of story that gets shared across social media, celebrated in sports columns, and held up as evidence of how far we’ve come as a nation. But is it? Is this progress, or is this something else entirely? Is this the culmination of the civil rights movement, or is it the very thing that movement warned us about—the integration of individuals while the institutions built to serve the community crumble?

There’s another story here, one that rarely gets told in the celebratory press releases and ESPN features. It’s a story about institutional theft, strategic underfunding, and the systematic gutting of Black educational institutions that continues to this day. Because while A’ja Wilson’s grandmother couldn’t walk on USC’s campus due to segregation, the institution that would have educated her, South Carolina State University has been financially starved for generations to help build the very programs that now celebrate diversity milestones.

Before we dive deeper into the numbers, we must ask a fundamental question: Who determines what progress looks like for the African American community? This question cuts to the heart of the paradox surrounding A’ja Wilson’s statue and the underfunding of HBCUs. African America has long suffered from a destructive pincer movement between two ideological forces, both claiming to know what’s best for Black communities, neither actually serving those communities’ interests. On one side sits conservative ideology, committed to choking resources from Black institutions through “fiscal responsibility” rhetoric and states’ rights arguments that echo the same justifications used to maintain segregation. This path leads to institutions like South Carolina State University being denied half a billion dollars while legislatures claim budgets are tight and everyone must sacrifice equally ignoring that the sacrifices are never equal.

On the other side sits liberal ideology that views the disappearance of distinctly African American institutions not as a tragedy but as the ultimate goal. In this worldview, true progress means Black students dispersed throughout predominantly white institutions, Black neighborhoods giving way to “diverse” communities, and HBCUs eventually becoming obsolete historical footnotes and relics of a segregated past we’ve happily moved beyond. Both roads lead to the same destination: the destruction of Black institutional power, Black economic infrastructure, and Black self-determination. One just has sugar on top.

The conservative approach is at least honest in its hostility. Budget cuts, funding formulas that disadvantage HBCUs, and legislative indifference make their intentions clear. But the liberal approach is perhaps more insidious because it wraps institutional decimation in the language of progress, integration, and opportunity. It celebrates the statue while ignoring the $500 million debt. It applauds diversity in predominantly white spaces while shrugging at the decline of Black spaces. This false choice between resource starvation and institutional disappearance has been forced upon African American communities for six decades. Meanwhile, no one asked whether the Jewish community should close Yeshiva University to prove they’ve integrated. No one suggests that Catholic universities are relics of discrimination that should fade away. No one celebrates the closing of women’s colleges as a victory for gender equality. Yet HBCUs are expected to gracefully accept their decline as the price of progress. And when they struggle due to systematic underfunding, that struggle is presented as evidence that they’re no longer necessary rather than proof that they’ve been deliberately undermined.

Real progress would mean African American communities having the power to determine their own institutional futures. It would mean robust, well-funded HBCUs and access to all institutions. It would mean integration as addition, not subtraction and expanding opportunities without destroying the institutions that served the community when no one else would.

According to Forbes reporting, South Carolina State University has been underfunded by nearly $500 million over the years. This isn’t an accident or an oversight it’s a pattern repeated across the nation. Much of that funding that should have gone to SC State was instead redirected to predominantly white institutions like USC, enabling them to build state-of-the-art facilities, offer competitive scholarships, and recruit top talent like A’ja Wilson. The results speak for themselves: USC now boasts a $1.1 billion endowment as of 2025, while South Carolina State struggles with just $17.2 million. That’s not a typo—USC’s endowment is more than 60 times larger than the institution that was created specifically to serve Black students when USC wouldn’t admit them. Let that sink in for a moment. The money that could have made SC State a powerhouse institution offering world-class facilities, attracting premier faculty, and providing transformational opportunities for thousands of Black students was instead funneled to USC. And now we’re supposed to celebrate that USC has become diverse enough to recruit and celebrate Black athletes while the institution that was built specifically to serve Black students struggles with inadequate funding, aging infrastructure, and an endowment that wouldn’t cover the cost of a single building on USC’s campus. This is not progress. This is resource extraction disguised as inclusion.

The cruel irony of school integration is rarely discussed in polite company. Yes, it was necessary. Yes, it broke down legal barriers that should never have existed. But it also created an economic hemorrhaging from Black institutions that has never been addressed or remedied. Today, less than 10% of African American tuition revenue flows into Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Read that statistic again. Despite making up over 13% of the U.S. population and a significant portion of college students, the institutions built specifically to serve the Black community receive less than a tenth of the tuition dollars spent by Black families on higher education. Where does the other 90% go? Largely to predominantly white institutions that, for decades or even centuries, excluded Black students entirely. Institutions that built their endowments, their reputations, and their infrastructure without ever having to serve Black communities—until it became politically and economically advantageous to do so.

The financial disparity tells only part of the story. HBCUs have experienced a devastating brain drain over the past six decades, a loss of intellectual capital, leadership talent, and institutional knowledge that would be considered catastrophic in any other context. The nation’s brightest Black students, who once had little choice but to attend HBCUs, now have the option to attend any institution. On its face, this seems like unqualified good news. But when those predominantly white institutions actively recruit Black talent while simultaneously supporting state funding mechanisms that starve HBCUs, the result is predictable: HBCUs lose both the students and the resources, creating a vicious cycle of decline.

This brain drain extends beyond students. Faculty members, seeing better funding and facilities elsewhere, often make the rational choice to leave. Donors, wanting to support institutions perceived as prestigious or on the rise, redirect their giving. Athletes, artists, and future leaders choose schools with newer facilities and bigger budgets. And with each departure, the HBCU left behind grows weaker, making it harder to compete for the next generation of talent. The students who remain at HBCUs often from lower-income backgrounds, first-generation college students, or those specifically committed to the HBCU mission deserve the same quality of education and resources as their peers at heavily-funded state flagships. Instead, they attend institutions forced to do more with less, year after year, generation after generation.

State governments have become expert at justifying HBCU underfunding through seemingly neutral “funding formulas” based on enrollment numbers, research output, and facility utilization. This is where conservative fiscal ideology and liberal integrationist ideology converge into a unified assault on Black institutional sustainability. These formulas ignore the historical context that created the disparities in the first place. How can an HBCU compete on research output when it’s been denied the laboratory facilities, equipment, and graduate programs that enable such research? How can it boost enrollment when prospective students see crumbling buildings next to a predominantly white institution’s gleaming new science complex—built partially with funds diverted from the HBCU’s budget? How can it improve facility utilization when it doesn’t have the capital to build new facilities in the first place?

Conservative legislators champion these “neutral” formulas as fiscally responsible governance, conveniently ignoring that the formulas are designed to perpetuate historical inequity while providing political cover for continued discrimination. Meanwhile, liberal voices remain largely silent about these formulas because they don’t fundamentally object to HBCU decline, they’ve happily accepted the premise that integration means these institutions should eventually fade away. Arguably, many liberals quietly support conservatives as a means to an end of their agenda. The result is the same regardless of which party controls the statehouse: HBCUs lose funding, infrastructure deteriorates, and the institutional capacity of the Black community diminishes. The conservative approach does it through direct budget cuts and “objective” formulas. The liberal approach does it through purposeful neglect and celebrating individual success stories at PWIs as proof that separate institutions are no longer needed. Both roads, sugar-coated or not, lead to the same hell.

South Carolina State University’s $500 million funding gap didn’t happen overnight. It’s the accumulated result of decades of choices—choices to prioritize USC over SC State, to invest in predominantly white institutions while allowing the HBCU to make do with aging infrastructure and limited resources. The numbers tell a devastating story. As of June 2024, the University of South Carolina’s endowment reached $1.044 billion, a figure that crossed the billion-dollar threshold for the first time in the institution’s history. By October 2025, it had grown to $1.1 billion with a 12.8% return that exceeded median returns for similar institutions. This massive war chest funds scholarships, faculty recruitment, research initiatives, and state-of-the-art facilities. Meanwhile, South Carolina State University’s endowment stood at approximately $17.2 million as of 2023. Let that disparity sink in: $1.1 billion versus $17.2 million. USC’s endowment is more than 60 times larger than SC State’s. USC can establish endowed faculty chairs for $1.5 million, name entire departments for $3 million, and fund comprehensive scholarship programs all from investment returns alone. SC State struggles to fund basic operations.

This isn’t coincidence. This is the direct result of systematic resource allocation that has funneled state support, donor dollars, and institutional advantages to USC while SC State has been left to survive on scraps. When the state underfunds SC State by $500 million over the years and redirects those resources to USC, this is the inevitable outcome: one institution accumulates generational wealth while the other fights for survival. USC used this enormous financial advantage to build a basketball program capable of recruiting a generational talent like A’ja Wilson. It constructed state-of-the-art training facilities, hired top-tier coaches with competitive salaries, and created an environment where champions could be developed. The USC Foundations managed portfolio supports permanent, invested funds that ensure long-term financial stability, the kind of stability that allows an institution to compete for the best students, faculty, and athletes. All admirable goals except when achieved partially through funds that should have gone to the state’s HBCU, and when celebrated as “progress” while the disparity grows ever wider.

To SC State’s credit, it is fighting back. The university raised over $6 million in the 2024-25 fiscal year and achieved a 15.2% alumni giving rate as of July 2025, a remarkable achievement given the economic challenges many HBCU alumni face. But even record-breaking fundraising cannot overcome a 60-to-1 endowment disadvantage created by generations of state-sanctioned discrimination. This isn’t ancient history. Forbes reported on this ongoing underfunding in recent years, documenting a pattern of systematic disinvestment that continues today. While we celebrate milestones like statues on integrated campuses and billion-dollar endowments at predominantly white institutions, the institutions that educated Black students when no one else would continue to be starved of resources, their endowments a fraction of what they should be, their futures perpetually uncertain.

True progress would be A’ja Wilson’s statue at USC and South Carolina State University receiving its full $500 million in owed funding (plus interest). Progress would be that less-than-10% of Black tuition dollars flowing to HBCUs becoming 70%, 80%, or 90%. Progress would be state legislatures across the nation acknowledging decades of discriminatory funding and implementing genuine remedies, not just apologies. Progress would look like HBCUs having facilities that rival their state flagship counterparts. It would mean competitive faculty salaries that stop the brain drain. It would mean endowments built through equitable state funding and private investment that reflect the institutions’ importance to American education. Instead, we get symbolic victories while the infrastructure crumbles. We celebrate individual Black excellence at predominantly white institutions while the institutions built to serve Black communities struggle to keep the lights on.

Acknowledging this reality doesn’t require diminishing A’ja Wilson’s achievements. She is an extraordinary athlete and role model who has earned every accolade. The issue isn’t her success or where she chose to attend college, the issue is a system that presents her individual achievement as collective progress while systematically defunding Black institutions and using integration as justification for that defunding. Fixing this requires several concrete steps. State legislatures must conduct honest audits of HBCU funding over the past 60 years and develop remediation plans to address documented underfunding. South Carolina owes SC State $500 million and that debt should be acknowledged and paid. This isn’t charity; it’s restitution for documented, systematic discrimination. Endowment equity must be addressed directly. When USC holds $1.1 billion while SC State holds $17.2 million—a 60-to-1 disparity—that gap didn’t emerge from market forces or donor preferences alone. It resulted from decades of state policy that enriched one institution while impoverishing the other. South Carolina should establish a dedicated endowment equalization fund, potentially matching private donations to SC State dollar-for-dollar until the disparity is meaningfully reduced.

Federal policy (one day) must address the structural disadvantages HBCUs face in funding formulas, perhaps through direct appropriations that account for historical discrimination. The current system perpetuates inequality under the guise of neutrality. Alumni of all institutions, but particularly successful HBCU graduates at predominantly white institutions, must direct resources back to HBCUs to help stop the financial bleeding. Every major gift to a PWI with a billion-dollar endowment is a choice not to support an HBCU fighting to survive. And perhaps most importantly, we must change the narrative. We must stop treating the closure or decline of HBCUs as inevitable or even acceptable. These institutions represent irreplaceable cultural and educational resources that deserve investment, not managed decline. A $17.2 million endowment for an institution serving thousands of students is a scandal that should generate the same outrage as crumbling infrastructure or contaminated water supplies.

A’ja Wilson’s grandmother couldn’t walk on USC’s campus as a child. That was wrong, and it’s right that those barriers no longer exist. But her grandmother could have attended South Carolina State University, an institution that has been systematically underfunded for generations, partially to build up institutions like USC. That underfunding continues today, as true now as it was decades ago. So when we celebrate the statue, what exactly are we celebrating? The opening of doors, or the closing of others? Individual achievement, or institutional destruction?

The question of whose version of progress we accept matters deeply. The conservative approach would deny South Carolina State its $500 million and call it fiscal responsibility. The liberal approach celebrates the statue as proof we’ve moved beyond needing institutions like SC State. Both ideologies, whether through resource starvation or purposeful neglect disguised as integration, arrive at the same endpoint: weakened Black institutions and diminished Black institutional power. But there’s a third path, one that rejects this false choice entirely. It’s a vision of progress defined by and for the African American community—one that says we can have A’ja Wilson’s statue at USC and a fully-funded South Carolina State University with facilities that rival any institution in the nation. One that recognizes robust HBCUs as evidence of progress, not obstacles to it.

We can hold all these truths simultaneously. We can celebrate individual achievements while demanding that the institutions built to serve Black students receive the funding and support they deserve. We can acknowledge barriers broken while refusing to accept that the gutting of Black institutions is an acceptable price for that change whether that gutting comes from conservative budget cuts or liberal narratives that view HBCU decline as inevitable evolution. Until we do, stories like A’ja Wilson’s statue will remain bittersweet moments of individual triumph shadowed by institutional injustice, symbols that raise more questions than they answer about what progress actually means and who gets to define it. And the power to define what progress means will remain in the hands of those who have never had to worry about the survival of their own institutions.

The question isn’t whether A’ja Wilson deserves her statue. She absolutely does. The question is whether South Carolina State University deserves its $500 million. It absolutely does, too. And until that debt is paid, we haven’t truly addressed what integration cost or what real progress requires. More importantly, until African American communities have the power to define progress for themselves to build and sustain their own institutions without being forced to choose between resource starvation and institutional disappearance we’re still living with the consequences of other people’s definitions, other people’s choices, and other people’s versions of what our future should look like. Both roads of conservative resource choking and liberal institutional disappearance lead to the same hell. One just comes with celebration, statues, and sugar on top. Real progress would mean building a new road entirely.

Disclaimer: This article was assisted by ClaudeAI.

Leave a comment

Posted in Editorial

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

HBCU Money’s 2025 Top 10 HBCU Endowments

Posted on February 17, 2026 by | 1 comment

Note: These data are based on colleges, universities, affiliated foundations, and related nonprofit organizations that volunteered to participate in NACUBO’s endowment study series.

A year after Howard University became the first HBCU to break the $1 billion endowment value mark, four other HBCUs have reached the $100 million mark. It is a complicated celebration when the NACUBO report shows 89 PWIs who have at least $2 billion in endowment value. A few notable HBCUs who reported last year like Morehouse College, North Carolina A&T and Meharry Medical College who have been regular NACUBO participants, are all absent from this year’s list. An HBCU favorite, the University of Virgin Islands returned after an absence in 2024. The reality on the ground with the looming crisis in admissions is for most HBCUs, $500 million is the endowment floor and only two HBCUs (Howard and Spelman) are above that mark. With not as many students graduating K-12, that means HBCUs who are heavily reliant on tuition revenue will see acute strains in the coming decade. It is not a matter of if, but when. Strong endowments are often the only thing that can see institutions through times of stress. That currently includes political stress that all colleges and universities are facing as it relates to state and federal funding. The lack of urgency among HBCU alumni continues to be concerning. Many HBCU alumni think their institution is in better financial shape than it is with no real landscape of higher education economics and the factors that create vulnerability. Using HBCU Alumni Associations and Chapters as more aggressive investment vehicles that can benefit an HBCU’s foundation and endowment are paramount to long-term stability. But this means seeing them as more than social clubs. HBCUs like all African American institutions are in perilous times and continued reliance on lottery philanthropy that may or may not come from non-alumni driven philanthropy (see Mackenzie Scott, Michael Bloomberg, etc.) is as dangerous as hoping to pay your bills every month with scratch off lottery tickets.

NACUBO Press Release:

“This year’s report shows how important well-managed endowments are to colleges and universities,” said Kara D. Freeman, NACUBO President and CEO. “Endowments help fuel innovation and serve as a stable foundation for institutions. Because of challenges in the economy, some institutions relied more heavily on their endowments—but that additional spending benefited students, faculty, staff, research, operations, and more. Endowments make college possible and more affordable, and contribute to better lives for all.”

NACUBO HIGHLIGHTS:

  • Top 10 HBCU Endowment Total – $2.4 billion*
  • Top 10 PWI Endowment Total – $340.0 billion
  • Number of PWIs Above $2 billion – 89
  • Number of PWIs Above $1 billion – 169
  • Number of HBCUs Above $1 billion – 1
  • Number of HBCUs Above $100 million – 4*
  • 678 colleges, universities, and education-related foundations completed NACUBO’s FY25 survey and those institutions hold $953.7 billion of endowment assets with an average endowment of $1.4 billion and median endowment of $259.9 million.
  • HBCUs comprised 1.4 percent of NACUBO’s reporting institutions and 0.3 percent of the reporting endowment assets.
  • PWI endowments (32) with endowments over $5 billion hold 57.4 percent of the $953.7 billion in endowment assets.

**The change in market value does NOT represent the rate of return for the institution’s investments. Rather, the change in the market value of an endowment from FY24 to FY25 reflects the net impact of:
1) withdrawals to fund institutional operations and capital expenses;
2) the payment of endowment management and investment fees;
3) additions from donor gifts and other contributions; and
4) investment gains or losses.

SOURCE: NACUBO

Take a look at how an endowment works. Not only scholarships to reduce the student debt burden but research, recruiting talented faculty & students, faculty salaries, and a host of other things can be paid for through a strong endowment. It ultimately is the lifeblood of a college or university to ensure its success generation after generation.

1 Comment

Posted in Lists

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Pan-African Donor-Advised Funds: A Blueprint For African American Financial Institutions

Posted on January 30, 2026 by | Leave a comment

“To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.” — W.E.B. Du Bois

Philanthropy, at its best, is not only about generosity but also about power. For African America and the broader African Diaspora, philanthropy has too often been reduced to the goodwill of outsider corporations, foundations, and billionaires whose dollars arrive with priorities and strings attached. If African American financial institutions are to play a central role in reshaping the destiny of our people, they must learn to wield the tools of modern philanthropy at scale. Chief among these tools is the donor-advised fund.

A donor-advised fund, or DAF, is a charitable giving vehicle hosted by a sponsoring public charity. Donors contribute assets such as cash, securities, or real estate, receive an immediate tax deduction, and then recommend grants to nonprofit organizations over time. These funds are often described as “charitable investment accounts,” because once assets are placed inside them they can be invested for tax-free growth, providing donors the flexibility to make grants years or even decades later. Unlike private foundations, DAFs do not carry heavy administrative costs, reporting requirements, or annual payout mandates. That combination of flexibility, efficiency, and tax benefit has made them the fastest-growing vehicle in philanthropy, with more than $229 billion in assets managed in the United States by 2022.

The technical mechanics are straightforward, but the implications for African American institutional power are profound. When majority institutions host DAFs, they not only manage the assets and collect the fees but also strengthen their institutional position in the broader philanthropic ecosystem. If African American banks, credit unions, and HBCUs were to host their own DAF platforms, they would retain both the capital and the influence. They would also ensure that those assets circulate internally, building the capacity of Black institutions rather than reinforcing external ones.

The Pan-African case for donor-advised funds grows out of both history and strategy. The African Diaspora is scattered across North America, the Caribbean, South America, Europe, and Africa. Despite cultural variations, there is a shared experience of enslavement, colonization, and systemic exclusion that has left us fragmented and underdeveloped institutionally. A Pan-African DAF would allow African America’s wealth to pool with Diasporic wealth, creating a philanthropic capital base that could fund initiatives from Harlem to Havana, from Lagos to London. Imagine a Spelman alumna in Atlanta, a banker in Kingston, and a tech entrepreneur in Nairobi all contributing to the same Pan-African DAF. The fund’s assets grow through coordinated investment, and the grants sustain HBCUs, African universities, Diaspora think tanks, hospitals, and cooperative businesses. Philanthropy would move beyond sporadic generosity into a coordinated, long-term Diasporic strategy.

African American financial institutions are uniquely positioned to lead in building these vehicles. Black-owned banks could create DAF platforms, allowing depositors and wealthier clients to establish accounts, with the bank managing the assets and directing grants into curated pools of African American and Diaspora institutions. HBCUs could build DAFs under their endowment arms, offering alumni the chance to contribute not just to individual schools but to collective vehicles that support Black higher education broadly. Credit unions, already rooted in cooperative traditions, could create member-based DAFs that channel contributions into scholarships, healthcare clinics, or Diaspora research projects. A Pan-African exchange could even emerge, allowing African American donors to support African institutions and African donors to support African American initiatives, breaking down silos and creating reciprocity.

The impact on philanthropy would be transformative. Pooling resources through Pan-African DAFs would reduce fragmentation and administrative waste. A single DAF with $1 billion in assets could deploy $50 million in annual grants while continuing to grow its capital base. Instead of thousands of scattered donations, these funds would strategically target long-term capacity-building institutions like universities, hospitals, and think tanks. They would also allow families to pass advisory privileges to children and grandchildren, embedding intergenerational philanthropy into family legacies. By linking U.S. tax benefits with Diaspora impact, Pan-African DAFs would connect global Black institutions across borders in ways never before achieved.

More than philanthropy, DAFs are about institutional power. Hosting our own funds would allow African America to retain capital that otherwise circulates through majority institutions. The act of managing billions in philanthropic assets would increase the legitimacy, visibility, and bargaining power of African American banks and credit unions in the national financial system. Control over DAFs also allows agenda-setting: funding HBCU graduate schools, African healthcare systems, Diaspora media, or land ownership initiatives. With sufficient scale, Pan-African DAFs would fund the think tanks, advocacy networks, and policy shops that shape legislation and strategy across the Diaspora. They would also strengthen interdependence between Black banks, universities, and cooperatives, weaving a tighter institutional ecosystem. And globally, they would reframe African American philanthropy as not merely domestic but as a force shaping development across Africa, the Caribbean, and beyond.

Mainstream philanthropic firms offer lessons. Fidelity Charitable, Schwab Charitable, and Vanguard Charitable collectively manage tens of billions in DAF assets, attracting donors with ease of use, professional management, and trusted brands. But they also embody the critique that DAFs can warehouse wealth indefinitely, giving donors immediate tax deductions without ensuring timely disbursement to communities. A Pan-African DAF must avoid this trap by committing to clear disbursement expectations, perhaps requiring annual grantmaking of 7 to 10 percent of assets. It must also invest in building trust and branding. Fidelity and Schwab are household names; African American financial institutions must cultivate similar reputations for professionalism, security, and vision if they are to attract donors at scale.

The roadmap to implementation is straightforward. Institutions must establish DAFs under existing nonprofit or financial arms with full compliance to IRS rules. They must develop Pan-African investment strategies that allocate assets into African American-owned funds, African sovereign bonds, and Diasporic infrastructure projects. They need technology platforms that allow donors to open accounts, contribute assets, recommend grants, and track impact with ease. Partnerships with vetted institutions across the Diaspora are essential, ensuring that grants reach trusted universities, hospitals, and cooperatives. Above all, a compelling public narrative must frame participation in Pan-African DAFs as not just philanthropy but as an act of liberation and institution building. Families should be encouraged to use DAFs to teach the next generation about philanthropy and responsibility, embedding giving as a permanent part of Diasporic culture.

The vision for the future is clear. By 2045, African American banks could be managing $100 billion in Pan-African DAFs, with $7–10 billion flowing annually into HBCUs, African universities, hospitals, and think tanks. Fee revenues from managing these assets would sustain our financial institutions, while the grants would expand the capacity of Diasporic institutions. The Pan-African DAF could become one of the most powerful philanthropic vehicles in the world, rivaling Gates, Ford, and Rockefeller. But unlike those entities, it would not be rooted in charity; it would be rooted in sovereignty. It would represent a Diaspora using philanthropy to build freedom, not dependency.

Donor-advised funds are not new, but their potential for African American and Pan-African institutions has yet to be realized. For too long, our wealth has flowed outward, strengthening others’ institutions while leaving ours fragile. By developing Pan-African DAFs, African American banks, credit unions, and HBCUs can capture that wealth, grow it, and deploy it across the Diaspora to increase our power. This is not simply about philanthropy; it is about sovereignty, agenda-setting, and survival. The next century will not be decided by who receives charity but by who controls the institutions that give it.

Disclaimer: This article was assisted by ChatGPT

Leave a comment

Posted in Philanthropy

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,