Dear ABFE Members and Friends,
A personal “happy new year” to each of you as we wind down the first month of 2022. I bring you greetings from all of us at ABFE and want to share a “look ahead” for the organization.
2021 was a year of intentional building; thanks to the early success of our 50th Anniversary Campaign, we were able to focus on infrastructure for sustainability – capacity that so many Black-led organizations need to increase impact in our community. With new staff, data management systems, business planning and key partnerships in place, I want to share five 2022 resolutions that move us towards our 2025 vision!
- We will supply more data to the field on investment patterns to Black-led organizations. This information is needed to “calibrate” the commitments made by many donors within the last two years to help increase the level of grantmaking to our community.
- We will focus energies on emerging places and regions of interest where we see a critical mass of ABFE members and/or opportunity to build collaborative funding models for Black-led and focused institutions.
- We will begin intentional outreach to bring Black philanthropy – i.e., Black donors, DAF holders and foundations into the ABFE network to provide more support to these efforts and to leverage their work with that of private philanthropies.
- Our efforts to organize and network private, family, corporate and community foundations with each other to leverage resources for people of African descent will grow with veracity and focus.
- We will continue to use our voice and advocate out loud on the ways in which philanthropy must address the issues disproportionately facing Black people in the U.S. and increasingly, around the world.
At the end of the day colleagues, 50 years won’t slow us down – this is a new beginning for ABFE. This country has huge battles to tackle – preserving our democracy; the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic; staggering inflation; ongoing denial of structural racism; and a troubling culture of government dysfunction and its’ inability to put aside partisan politics to solve some of our biggest problems.
While 2022 may be a bumpy ride, ABFE is here, and we are strong. We know the power of philanthropy and look to exercise and leverage all its resources to ensure that ALL of us win.