1. Build relationships, not transactions
Funders have not built sustained, trust-based relationships that would allow Black-led organizations to plan, grow, and lead from stability rather than survival. Both Candid reports point to the same underlying gap.
Through the Black Women’s Executive Directors (BWED) Program, RWJF is fostering genuine grantee engagement. Rather than discrete grant cycles, the program sustains relationships with leaders: understanding their organizational context, following their work over time, and providing flexible support that lets leaders define what success means for their communities. That is what trust-based investment makes possible.
Funders committed to building genuine relationships must move beyond proposal review cycles toward ongoing engagement with grantee leaders. That means investing time in understanding their work, community context, and long-term strategy before asking for deliverables. It means treating trust-building as part of the grant itself, not a bonus. Relationships built like this sustain the people doing it.
2. Move from one-time grants to sustained, flexible investment
From Transaction to Transformation found that even where funding to Black-led nonprofits increased after 2020, the gains were concentrated among large organizations and faded quickly. Small, community-rooted organizations doing the most proximate work saw little to no change. Sustained, flexible funding is the solution. Funders must prioritize multi-year general operating support over project-specific, short-term grants, and allow leaders to direct resources toward their organizations’ critical needs: staffing, infrastructure, rest, and leadership development. Operating support models must give leaders stability to move beyond survival mode and into the transformational work their communities need. Donors must also resist the urge to measure impact on a one-year timeline. Movement work compounds over time.
3. Protect race-explicit work. Don’t defund it.
Holding the Line documents a chilling effect: Funders are retreating from race-explicit language even as the need for race-explicit investment grows. This matters because the problems that made race-explicit investment necessary in the first place persist and, in many cases, are intensifying. Funding for race-specific solutions must address these intensifying challenges, not retreat from them.
Philanthropy cannot claim a commitment to racial equity if it pressures Black leaders to erase race from their missions. To protect this work, funders must actively signal to current and prospective grantees that race-explicit work is welcome and worth investing in. That means reviewing internal language policies and grant criteria to ensure they don't inadvertently penalize organizations that name the communities they serve. And it means using institutional voice and influence to challenge sector-wide retreats from racial equity funding. It’s important to note that half of the leaders surveyed in Holding the Line said they would not accept a grant that required them to obscure their racial focus. Funders who make that a condition for receiving a grant are not neutral. They are choosing sides.
A different kind of philanthropy is possible
A stronger relationship between funders and Black women leaders is possible. The leaders in the BWED Program have confirmed what happens when funders combine sustained financial support with leadership development, peer connection, and genuine ongoing engagement: Leaders are more effective and so are movements.
Those of us deeply committed to this work are going to serve our communities regardless of what philanthropy does or does not do. The question for funders is whether they are willing to support Black women-led organizations in a way that actually works.
To my fellow funders, I invite you to commit to implementing at least one of these three practices into your current grantmaking. That is how we begin to build the kind of philanthropy this moment requires.
