Entrepreneurial Appetite
Entrepreneurial Appetite
Social Entrepreneurship and the Power of Black Philanthropy: An Interview with Dr. Jackie Copeland
Have you ever considered the interplay between philanthropy and social entrepreneurship and its power in shaping Black communities globally? Brace yourself for an eye-opening journey into the heart of the Black philanthropy movement, guided by none other than Dr. Jackie Bouvier Copeland, the brilliant founder of Black Philanthropy Month. We explore her inspiring journey from her roots in a Black community of the '60s and '70s to her groundbreaking initiatives that are now transforming lives in over 60 countries.
Discover how passion, resilience, and an unshakeable belief in human potential led to the creation of the Women Invested to Save Earth (WISE) Fund. Dr. Copeland highlights the myriad forms of social finance and how the WISE Fund is championing change by supporting businesses and nonprofits in Black and Indigenous communities. But that’s not all. We delve into the nuances of the multi-trillion-dollar social finance industry and how the People's Impact Fund aims to democratize investing, making it accessible to the average person.
In the spirit of this year's Black Philanthropy Month, we also immerse ourselves in the deeper currents of love and collective giving. Learn from Dr. Copeland as she elucidates on the transformative power of giving back, creating sustainable change, and investing in our own institutions. As we celebrate Black Philanthropy, we also acknowledge its role in fostering social entrepreneurship and community empowerment. So tune in, get inspired, and discover how to participate in this remarkable movement.
Hello everybody, welcome to another Entrepreneurial Appetite , a series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectualism and supporting Black businesses. And today we have a very special guest, Dr Jackie, Bouvier Copeland, I know. I know I said that right.
Dr. Copeland:I'm impressed, thank you.
Langston Clark :She is the founder of black philanthropy month, and I believe this is special because those of you who followed our special series in August about black philanthropists we had an opportunity to actually meet the founder of this whole idea, this whole concept of black philanthropy month, and so she's going to be part of our special series on black social entrepreneurs and I wanted you all to get an opportunity to hear from the founder herself. And so, as we always begin, dr Copeland, if you could just provide us a little bit of your history, right? What is, what is your history as a social entrepreneur and and as a philanthropist?
Dr. Copeland:Well, first of all, thanks for having me. I think this is a very inventive show. Happy to be introduced to it and even more delighted to be a part of it, and happy black philanthropy month 365. So I grew up in a black community in the 60s and the 70s and I have basically succeeded in life, largely on my own terms, because of the giving of time, talent, treasure, voice and much more in my community. And that community included a mother and grandparents who migrated integrate migration from a very severely Jim Crow town in South Carolina who were gula geeching, imparted a lot of values and it wasn't even a name for it. We just we just gave that was the way we made it as a family a very modest means. If you want me to get real, deep and autobiographical, I have mentioned before the Elb.
Dr. Copeland:My eldest cousin, who's the only cousin who actually grew up in the south. At least part of her childhood, was a very successful entrepreneur in the health field and the construction field and when I want to, I knew I wanted to go to college. I knew I wanted to work on economic empowerment of our people, not just in the US but everywhere, and for a variety of reasons I simply refused to be relegated only to my neighborhood. I always felt my soul, that I was a. I was raised to understand that I was a child of God. My mother would say and no matter who doesn't like you because of your skin color, your zip code, I remember that and that Trump's everything. So I always had the sense that I was supposed to be wherever I was supposed to be, wherever I dreamed of being, and was very curious, given some very serious racism. And color is in my face. What was you know? What was Africa? What was this all about? So a real global citizen in my mindset from an early age, combining that with a really. I just didn't want anyone to be as poor as my family, was it? I felt like a regular kid and there were all these barriers and I was always asking why and what can I do to make sure other people coming behind me don't face this? And if I ever have children, I don't want them to face this. And so that morphed into my first like.
Dr. Copeland:The first time I actually thought about our giving as philanthropists, philanthropy was when my cousin told me about scholarships, because I was very concerned about how I would afford to go to college and she actually said now, rest your soul. Her exact quote was if you keep working hard, you get good grades. Absolute strangers will give you money to go to college. And I said, huh, you said strangers, people who don't know me would do that for me. And that was my outside of my family's tithing at church, which was critical.
Dr. Copeland:I had one aunt who had been a member of the NAACP since she was a teenager and died in her 90s engaged, maintained her membership every year. So I knew that kind of giving. But the whole notion that you could have a dream and engage other people to fund it was something my cousin introduced me to and so I just had this notion that I needed to pay it for it. I never thought about a career in philanthropy until I was in graduate school and I worked with a think tank at the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania when I was working on my anthropology doctorate and my two masters and our clients were foundations all over the US that were and I was designing programs and doing evaluations for them, and that was my official entree in about 1985 into the world of philanthropy.
Dr. Copeland:So I knew then that I existed to make things better, not just for my people but for also other people who were disadvantaged and I've always seen as as human rights work and that the full humanity of black people needed to be accepted and supported just like everyone else's.
Langston Clark :And so talk about. So philanthropy is one piece right Of your story, but you're also a founder of a philanthropic organization or organizations, and so what does it mean for you to be a social entrepreneur and a philanthropist?
Dr. Copeland:That is a very intriguing question. From as long as I can remember, even before I was formally trained to do a social analysis, my idea of my thinking of myself and our community was if there was something that needed to exist that didn't exist, we could create it. And so I always had the mindset and this is part of the genesis of black philanthropy I talked about working in formal this call it institutional philanthropy, starting in the 19, early 1980s, and I was struck and annoyed by the fact that many of my colleagues, including some black ones, would say you know, black communities don't have philanthropy, and it was. It was puzzling. And it was puzzling, annoying and insulting. And people spoke this, made this claim like it was some kind of historical or social fact, and I saw philanthropy everywhere in my community. And so that that led to two, two thoughts.
Dr. Copeland:As the scholar side of me needed to document the glasses have full for black people. Okay, when I started graduate school, which was about the same time I started working with these philanthropy institutions, I was struck that most of the literature was about our problems and I wanted to talk about how we survived and thrive Despite the amazing terror, trauma and oppression we faced as an African and black diaspora, african people in black diaspora, I mean it was amazing to me and say how are any of us even left? What were we doing? How can we modernize, understand those traditional techniques and modernize them and use them all over the world for our empowerment and liberation? And then, secondly, I had this notion that I knew enough about our history everywhere to know that, like all human beings, we are very creative, resilient and particularly nimble. And I knew that I had inherited those traits from my family. So I don't spend a whole. I mean, I try to shine a light on injustices, but as soon as I see the injustice and I understand the system, I'm trying to create something to make it better with other people to fix it. I just though we don't have time. There were so many times that I didn't make it. I could have not made it on my mother or my grandmother. We all know the stories from our own family experience. And so what can we create in our time that will pay it forward and make it better now and in the future? That's what I'm all about.
Dr. Copeland:When I saw, when I heard people just making this untrue statement, the conceptual side of my brain said OK, we need to have a definition of philanthropy that's cross, cultural enough to incorporate what we do as black people across the world. It's the term that's maybe off. It's not that we lack something, that we're somehow the supplicants of the planet. And then we I need to put in action frameworks and models so that people never forget that we give, that people never forget, and it's part of social finance. It's not just giving. It's how we have always raised money for our own businesses and actually we're successful until we have a backlash from society, and we can get into that a little bit if you want to, but we all know about the Black Wall streets.
Dr. Copeland:The playing field is level, and when we are left to our own devices all over the planet, we create models that not only better our community, but the broader community, the nation and the world. And so that's what I'm about Cogent social analysis based on, if I can use the lingo, what's right. An asset based model was right about Black people as human beings. Not always was wrong with us and then paying it forward with creativity, community collaboration to always envision and make real new approaches to make it better, because part of racism says that we're the people who always get it wrong. We're intellectually inferior, we don't work as hard, and that is not racism. It's some kind of innate lack that Black people have. But I've worked across the world so much now, including white communities, I simply know that's not true and I'm going to do my part and urge everybody else to do their part, so we can continue to put our best foot forward for the sake of our community and the planet.
Langston Clark :And so I think, as you mentioned before, that this is a really good segue into you telling the story of Black philanthropy month and even the wise fun. And so tell us the story of how you, as a philanthropist, and you, as a social entrepreneur, came together to start both of these initiatives.
Dr. Copeland:So I was working for. It really started when I was vice president of programs at the Philadelphia Foundation and I talked a little bit about the long ago prehistory, of realizing that institutional philanthropy actually didn't see a place for Black philanthropy. And there was all this research coming out in the 80s documenting that at least African Americans not only had philanthropy. We tended to give a higher proportion, the highest proportion of our usually of our income in philanthropy in the US. So I am, I am a global citizen and a pan Africans. I know that's the old term for some people, but my advocacy has always been global, I just see. I mean transatlantic slavery was global, and so the condition we're in today has a global economy, dynamic, and I'm always interested in building the Black global economy, affinity and identity for mutual support, because society in general does not provide us with the funding and support that we need to take our rightful place. And so I I've done a lot of sort of different projects and worked on different dreams in tandem. So it just so happens that I was doing research for my anthropology doctorate At the same time I was working for all these foundations as an executive, and I don't necessarily advise it for the faint of heart, but what it did is. It ensured that I kept one foot in the global black world because I was researching issues of changing black identity as more black immigrants came to the US and I had, in the 80s, done quite a bit of research in Nigeria, which is actually where I started my philanthropy career, and I had a lot of exposure to how giving was done in Africa in particular, not just in the United States, and I had a feeling that quote the black philanthropy field as it was emerging did not incorporate the diversity of black people. Even in the US. It was mostly looking and that documentation needed to be done, but it was focused primarily on US born African Americans and what I wanted to do is to add that global dimension, that deep historical dimension that allowed both the knowledge and a space for us to exchange ideas about how to build economy and giving in conditions where we may not have fair access to capital, and that really started to take shape at the Philly Foundation. We did things like help mother Bethel AME church, build this first endowment, worked with all kinds of diverse immigrant communities, including black ones, in Philadelphia I then in Minneapolis, I finished my doctorate partly looking at some of these diverse black giving traditions and how they were being used to promote economic empowerment of Somali, liberian and Kenyan Ethiopian immigrants in the Twin Cities.
Dr. Copeland:Somehow in the 1990s the Twin Cities had the most ethnically diverse black population in the US, according to the census, and you'd be living and shopping and see the Somalis, who basically had not even been in the city for 10 years, had pulled together enough capital to build a Somali mall. Most of them were unbanked, and so part of my research was learning how are you doing that? How are you getting capital? And you just got here, and what can we learn as black people from each other so that we don't have to rely on a system often built to undermine us to promote our own economic empowerment? And so I ended up collaborating with Africans, people from the Caribbean it's pretty early on, this is still in the 1990s to document the richness and diversity of black giving and social finance worldwide. Us but and a lot of that US work had been done, but there was only a small group of us documenting this from a global black perspective. And that actually was the genesis of what morphed into Black Philanthropy Month, because in the Twin Cities that got together the often invisible black women African-American, but also Somali, liberian, ethiopian, senegalese black women from about 20 different countries and we began.
Dr. Copeland:We called ourselves the Pan-African Women's Philanthropy Network. It was the year 2000. And we just began supporting each other's projects. I was like the pro bono consultant around fundraising in the US and these brilliant women were creating nonprofits that were based in both the US and their countries of origin, and I just felt that it was the perfect answer to the claim that we don't have philanthropy. It's like not only do we have philanthropy, it is a core component of every black culture since ancient times that exists on the planet. And here are people who were contemporary black immigrants bringing those ancient traditions to the US. How powerful can we be if we're learning from each other and actually supporting each other's projects and teaching each other like an international academy, with evidence and documentation of how you do this Black philanthropy, even if you're coming from a refugee camp in Kenya, which was true for a lot of the women who were part of this Pan-African Women's Philanthropy Network. It's now called Reunity and they're giving inspired me to envision what I now call Black Philanthropy Month. We organized our first summit actually in 2003, another one, 2006, but then a seminal one in 2011, when the UN declared that year the international year for people of African descent. That quickly became an international decade, but that was a perfect context to launch this global pan African documented movement as it's now become to collaborate around or giving, accept our place as philanthropists whatever word our language uses and to put to bed the whole notion that we don't give in fact are giving.
Dr. Copeland:As I always say, is what powered every single liberation movement that black people have ever had, everywhere, from abolition in the US and Brazil in the UK, even the women's movements in those countries, although we're not necessarily written into the history books, certainly the civil rights movement, the African and Caribbean and South American black liberation movements. Now black lives matters. It is our giving, it is pulling our time, talent and treasure. Voice in many, many different, diverse ways is not just about what African Americans do. So that's the story of how it was born and there always want to acknowledge those original women in Minneapolis, the men who supported us, but also there were about 40 different leaders over this 22 year period.
Dr. Copeland:I've always been a volunteer, never been paid for this. In fact, most of my personal philanthropy goes to black philanthropy month Now the wise one was created in 2020 because a lot of people was upended by the triple whammy. First we realized that COVID was real and that people of color, including black people, were facing the highest rates of infection and death, if you remember that first quarter of 2020. I was living in California. California had its worst fire year. Our family had to actually evacuate our home due to the fires. Then, of course, it was I don't remember the order, but all my Auburn, yeah, roy, rihanna, taylor and as someone who had been in the social justice, racial justice, economic justice movement at that point for maybe 39 years now 42, I left my job in tech and I decided to really focus on black philanthropy month full time. I created the Women Invested to Save Earth Fund as a US-based public charity to fund for focus on. I think of it as a funding equity enterprise. We raise money in the US to support nonprofits and companies with some of the most compelling approaches to addressing social and environmental problems in black and indigenous communities, with a focus on women.
Dr. Copeland:Black philanthropy month is a program of the WISE Fund. We also have funded entrepreneurs in the US all black and an indigenous and women in the US, africa, australia, brazil, as well as now India, mexico and the Caribbean. That's the Genesis story and a little bit of the evolution. There are a lot of stories within stories, but still we are organizing this black philanthropy movement. The UK and Colombia and South America have just joined. I'm very delighted and proud of that. Also, we just continue to expand. 20 million people have now celebrated black philanthropy in 60 countries. That's more countries than have some form of black history month. This is all driven by the people, for the people. There is no black philanthropy month nonprofit. It's housed within the WISE Fund. We're a catalyst, like a neutral convening space. We are not black philanthropy. We are a way for us to get together and celebrate our giving and make it more powerful as we build a global black community and economy.
Langston Clark :You mentioned the term called social finance. What is social finance? What does that mean?
Dr. Copeland:That social finance is getting money to do good things around social issues like social justice, social services, and it also includes addressing environmental issues. There are different forms of social finance. It includes everything from philanthropy to actual social impact bonds that you can get through a bank or a government agency to find investors for your company or your nonprofit or social enterprise trying to do good things in the world. It's actually in a huge, vast field Our communities. Even black philanthropy month has morphed into looking not just at philanthropy, but how do our people get fair access to capital, whether it's capital for businesses or funding for nonprofits.
Dr. Copeland:Remember, a nonprofit, like a foundation, can fund a business. The WISE Fund funds businesses. All the time there is a field, money can move across the boundaries of different types of capital. One of the sessions I hope to do for maybe next year, is really to make sure our community's leaders understand this multi-trillion dollar social capital market, social finance market, the different kinds of money. I'll just talk about impact financing. That's when a bank or other financial institution provides it's not only it could be a loan or a straight up investment and as to address some social issue like building, let's say, building solar farms in a particular country, and so that is an at least $2 trillion industry, and our communities know nothing about it for the most part.
Dr. Copeland:I've never heard of it. Yeah, I know.
Dr. Copeland:And you're not the only one. The reason it is so important. I went to Oxford University during COVID to make sure I was fully up to speed and got certified in social finance so that I could teach this or get some help from my partners at Oxford and other places to teach this. So we at least have in mind the full scope of social finance, because philanthropy alone cannot get us free. Think about all the money we give and the situation we're in as a people. Now it's important we be a whole lot worse off if we weren't doing this giving Don't get me wrong, and that's always been true, but there's new money out there and we don't even know what it is and we don't know where to start to get it, and some of the rules of engagement are unfair for us, and so one of the things the WISE Fund has done is we have we created last year something called the People's Impact Fund and, if you are like an entrepreneur that has a good climate, climate change technology, like, there is a woman, an African American woman named Crystal Hansling, who has created the first solar farm in the US. That is based in Baltimore, and she's hiring people from our community and training them to work in the solar industry and build her solar farm and maintain it, and we are seriously underrepresented in the renewable energy field. There's a growth industry because we can't go on this way and expect to survive as a species, as a fact Whether people believe climate change is real or not, that's just the reality we're in and there's this new industry and we're being left behind again. So we created this fund and you don't have to be a millionaire. That's a lot of one of the challenges with most of these funds. You have to be a quote accredited investor based on a rich person to invest in these funds, and so our fund allows you to just have $100. And you can contribute that to the fund and we pull all of those investments together and then we make loans at a 3% return, which is about the same as what people will get from other fixed income products like a money market, sometimes even less than that. And we bank on companies like the one I mentioned, which is called we Solar, and so we also still share whatever grant money we're able to raise, because it's not easy being a black founder in a nonprofit space or in the impact or just conventional business space, because we're only. We only get 2% of the institutional philanthropy, and so that means like the bigger foundations and related institutions, and we get 1% or less of the venture finance. So this is a pilot for us as people's impact fund.
Dr. Copeland:We have gotten our first investment. That was $500,000 that we turned around and gave as a loan to our South African company, which is creating green lighting and accessible telecom for they call them places with energy poverty in South Africa, and we're hoping to find more investors. It's going. They made their first payment. A company is called Google, and so this is. We can only have customers in certain states that have rules that allow nonprofits to issue securities. But we're a social finance innovator. We take what has shown, what has worked, and try to create products to show how we can make finance more accessible to black and indigenous communities and women, and then we use our network and introduce these verifying companies to other potential funders that are much larger than us.
Dr. Copeland:In addition to the company in South Africa and then we solar in the US we have another company in Kenya that actually harvest. It's called Magic Water, and they can produce large quantities of clean water from thin air using a machine that they assemble. And, as the UN says, there will be 2.5 billion people by 2025, including many in the US, who will not have access to clean water and people think this is a future issue or is a problem of poor countries. But there are many places in California that truck in their water and I can tell you now, if you're in a poor mung, which is an Asian community, black community, latino community, let's just say it can be more tricky for you to get access to that trucked water. So, as the climate change chickens, come home the roost.
Dr. Copeland:I find that's one issue. That's one of many issues that we're suffering from the most, frankly, and we need to try novel solutions. So we're willing to. Everything we do is legal, created with our attorneys, but we just want people to know there's more money out there for our ingenuity and our entrepreneurship than we realize. And, as philanthropy, as impact financing, many different hybrids, as venture financing, a whole new black venture financing ecosystem through funds like the fearless fund, which is now being sued for helping black people overcome the injustices we face for centuries, where it was actually written into law that we couldn't and then custom that we weren't allowed access to loans and business capital.
Dr. Copeland:So there's a lot. There are a lot of challenges, but there are a lot of potential solutions If we know what these new capital markets are and how to access them. And Black Philanthropy Month and Wines are trying to do their part. There are certain innovations we're creating in Black Philanthropy Month, most of which I could think I can announce now, and then there's a big one for Brazil that will be announcing on Thursday. I don't think people understand the depth of racial prop challenges facing black people in Brazil, so we're gonna try and fill that knowledge gap and, like I always do, there's the knowledge gap, there's the community connection gap, but there's also how we fill it with novel pilots that can turn into more ongoing solutions, like Black Philanthropy Month itself.
Langston Clark :So I wanna say something, I think, because I've been doing this series on Black Philanthropy Month, like I've done, like a deep moral, spiritual assessment of myself. I think, reading the books, hearing from the speakers, hearing from you, hearing from Dr McKinley, I'm like I think I am more apt to orient myself and my business, my podcast, as a conduit for philanthropy than something that I see as like a passion project, that's a side hustle.
Langston Clark :I understand exactly what you're saying and I don't know that means that I'm not going to like I still need patrons to support what I'm doing Absolutely, and I may not even do things differently, but the way I am oriented towards what I'm doing has shifted in a way that I think I am more of a philanthropist in how I identify having done this series. I think that's essentially what I'm saying the way that I see myself and the way that I think about myself is more of a philanthropist than before.
Dr. Copeland:This giving connects us through time, across communities, to a bold, beautiful Black future. It is why you and I are still here, and I hope that people also think of Black Philanthropy Month, which is part of Black August all these spiritual, mystical, historical events that happen in August in particular. They end up being the culmination of millions and maybe billions of people waking up every morning and saying you know what? I'm gonna keep trying, I'm gonna keep working, I'm gonna keep paying it forward. I am not gonna buy into the myth and they call it Afro-Pessimism that we're hopeless. Life is about what we, what they won't. Let us do what we can't do, because I know what my ancestors have done. It is amazing that my grandmother and great-grandmother survived what they survived to make me. We're talking the worst imaginable aspects of slavery, jim Crow and Northern-style discrimination, and so it's almost our birthright. It's within every human being, with every Black person, to not just survive and thrive, but part of that key is every family. Every person has to make the Black give back part of their identity, however they wanna use it, however they wanna do it, and so it's wonderful to hear that you're thinking about it more as philanthropy.
Dr. Copeland:So everything I do commercially has a philanthropic component. It's how I think about my budget. Any budget that I have, my personal budget there has to be. I mean, I've never put it out there in my actual I give a lot more, but at least 10% of everything I net, and in the case of this CD, now that I've come out of the closet as a singer something I've been doing and songwriter all my life, that's all of the net proceeds. All of the net sales proceeds go to Black Philanthropy Month, and the Y is fun because, whether people know it or not, like what happened in Jacksonville, what happened in Buffalo, what happened in Salvador and Bahia, brazil, where, let's just say, in certain countries, our advocates and leaders are actually being assassinated, and so I've always known this. But when George Floyd was hunted, when George Floyd was lynched, okay, I realized, especially after 2016, and then January 6th, if we don't give everything we can in solidarity, time, talent, treasure, voice and solidarity is important because sometimes, even in Black Philanthropy, there's one man oops, what is it?
Dr. Copeland:One man yeah, and which is not helpful. We are in a state of emergency.
Langston Clark :Yeah.
Dr. Copeland:Sometimes I feel like I'm in a burning building screaming and nobody can hear me because the walls are too thick or there's just too much noise on the street. We are losing potentially the hard fought human rights and economic rights gains of our ancestors and we are the only ones who can sustain these slow, hard won trials. Black Philanthropy Month, black August. Whether you're celebrating black business, black Philanthropy Month today is Give Black Day, led by this next generation organization I just love, called Young Black and Giving Back. Where they made this, they call it the blackest day of giving. Give anything you want, but if you're not given to your own community, how do you expect for your children to do well and be well? We are our own saviors and that is what Black Philanthropy Month is about and this year the theme.
Dr. Copeland:I came up with a theme and I always go back to our partners and ask them what they think, because you can't do this in isolation. But I was thinking about the last three years, from COVID, george Floyd, alma Dahlberg, yonah Taylor just an all there are too many names to remember and even just a mass shooting problem in America and assassination of black leaders in Colombia and Brazil, issues in Africa, and I was thinking you know what? You can change laws, but you can't necessarily change people's hearts. And here we have all these foundations, the institutional foundations defining philanthropy as love of humanity, but still, if you look at what many of them are giving to, as I mentioned earlier, we're only getting 2% of the funding, it seems like more.
Langston Clark :It seems like more, though, and maybe that's just the marketing, the philanthropy and all this stuff. It seems like everybody's giving the poor black people, but that's clearly not the case.
Dr. Copeland:No, most of them. No, it's not, and it's been. You know, these are recent studies that document this.
Langston Clark :And even.
Dr. Copeland:Let me tell you something even in Africa, when you look at venture funding, the entrepreneurs who are getting the funding they're mostly white people. They have a problem. Philanthropy might be love of humanity, but the big question in our answer is does that really include black people? You know, our theme is love and action, because do we really love ourselves enough to give fully so that and strategically and collectively so we can solve many of our challenges and invite true allies to be partners? And so, unfortunately, I do not think philanthropy or the capital finance system in general is showing black people to love. Most of the banks and other corporations who looked inside themselves and after George Floyd and said you know what we know? We're not funding black entrepreneurs fairly. We're going to give this many million and this many billion. Most of them have not made good On their promises, to the point that the Congress, with certain leaders like Ayanna Presley, and the Congress are calling them to account.
Dr. Copeland:And I suspected that was a lot of performance and talk. So this year we're talking about walking the talk. If you claim you are doing any philanthropy as an institution, no matter who you are, do you really love black people enough to fund them fairly. Do black people love themselves enough to fund their own, our own institutions? And so what are we going to do as individuals, as a community, as movements and institutions? To make love and action, to make love of humanity, which is supposed to be the meaning of philanthropy True, for black people, and I've been using the work.
Dr. Copeland:I know we're going to talk about books, but I've read over and over bell hooks all about love, in part because I have a signed copy. I went to see her when that book came out and it's a profound book. Everyone should read it. She outlines six criteria of love, not romantic love, necessarily, but love of humanity. And when you look at each of those criteria, it becomes very evident that the philanthropic and the capital sector overall has not learned to love black people Period. And so that's what we're about this year with this love and action theme. I encourage everyone to take this black philanthropy mom and black August and not just talk. I love shows like this, but there are things that we can all do. Give to a black lead, founded and serving nonprofit or company.
Langston Clark :Yeah.
Dr. Copeland:It doesn't matter how much money you have to share, because I'll tell you this If you count black African immigrants and African Americans, we tend to give $26 billion a year. That's a lot of money, a lot of money.
Dr. Copeland:There's a lot of money, and think about how to keep that going and how to grow it and be more impactful and strategic about it through your giving circle or whatever kind of collective you're in. If you don't know where the black nonprofits are and I'm going to say it again, this 828 campaign, which is national, I think they have hundreds of nonprofits that are pre-bed it, qualified, working very closely with our community on bad rock kind of issues that are often seen or supported by public institutions or even governments. So go to 828.org. You can see the campaign runs until well, I know this is going to be broadcast later, but it runs until 12 midnight tonight. And there are other regional variants of that campaign, like for the new generation of African Americans and philanthropy based in the Charlotte area in North Carolina.
Dr. Copeland:And just go to blackphilanthropymonthcom because we have listed a range of campaigns, initiatives and organizations that you can support. There's. There are a range of apps that identify one called the giving gap that identifies other black nonprofits and then, through the wise fund, you can identify and let's just say we'll be launching some global black fundraising campaigns and black philanthropy month if our brothers and sisters and so many places need our help and we're going to make it easier for people to give and get their US tax break for giving through the wise fund to get some support to these underfunded intermediaries and community funds across the black giving world.
Dr. Copeland:So yeah, remember what you can do as a family, as an individual, your business, your institution, no matter how large or small your gift or investment, it makes a huge ripple effect because we're so underfunded by society at large. I remember when wise started, we had $25,000 grants for about five businesses in 2020. I only learned later that some of these businesses were thinking about closing because they couldn't make it through COVID. And they are doing amazing work. So your $100 combines with other people's money and keep some of our vital institutions alive. Keep giving. It has made our surviving, survival and thriving and future possible in the US and across the world.
Langston Clark :Yeah, so I have, because I know we're getting close to time. I have asked two questions and that will that will close our conversation, which I am, like, super grateful for. And the first question is I want you to address this concept of philanthropy, philanthropy for power. So, as I told you in the pre conversation, I'm a donor to my alma mater, north Carolina, and I have an endowment that I established with two of my friends who also went to anti but were able to be on their PhD journey Right, so it's called the from anti to PhD endowed scholarship.
Langston Clark :Because I'm a, I'm a giver, I'm a donor to an endowment. I get invited to anti's annual endowment donors luncheon and this year I'm at a table. I given the thousands of dollars, but there's people at the table who given the tens of thousands of dollars. I'm sure there was someone at the table who has given millions of dollars. And so can you talk about leveraging philanthropy to get you in the room with people who are bent towards having an impact, whether that be industry, whether that be philanthropy or whatever part of society? I view that as philanthropy for power. But then also, as you mentioned, what are some books, some literature that has inspired you on your journey as a philanthropist and a social entrepreneur.
Dr. Copeland:Okay so. So I have a spiritual and a practical perspective on this and I want to share both. So when I get in a room that I'm not supposed to be in, I figure it's because the universe wants me to do something to expand opportunity and human rights when I'm in that room, to make that institution better, to make the community and the nation and the world better. Because I've been in many rooms, people looking at me wouldn't think I was in those rooms or I was supposed to be in those rooms. And I say that because that is very empowering for me and it comes it really comes from how I was raised that you have opportunity, not just so you can help yourself, but so you can help others. So it emboldens me to speak up and keep speaking up as issues arise, even though sometimes that can be daunting if you're the first one or it's your first experience in these halls of power. So I encourage everyone to think of their journey in those terms. If you're in the room is because you're supposed to be in the room and, as you suggested, that is a lever of power. Use it to pay it forward. Think beyond your own prestige and your own self-interest, remembering that concept of Ubuntu, a South African concept from the Indebelli people. That means I am because you are. You've gotten that room because of how somebody helped you. There's no pure bootstrapping in the world. So that's the spiritual perspective that's backed up by so many aspects of not just my personal history but our history as a people and the history of the world. Then I would say it's very important to have a collective backing you up when you're in those rooms. Okay, now you could be in the room as a donor, you could be in the room as a board member, you could be in the room as a CEO. And I think you know I've had my. I've had a few controversies over my career. But because I don't know, I don't even know how to act unless I have my. You know I'm rooted in my community. That's where I get my value base, that's when I get my affirmation from, that's where I get my mid course corrections from. Maintain those community ties. Never believe your own height. You know, just get old. I'm powerful because I'm on the board of stone, so, and I'm a donor to this dad or the other, you derive that power in part because of your lived experience. That is valuable. That is an expression of authenticity and culture. And just maintain humility in those community contacts, and it's not just for you. When there's a problem, which occurs, a controversy, you will have a constituency that will back you up. It's more likely if you have bothered to maintain and sustain those ties. So those are the two bits of advice I would give. And then the third one Even if you're an individual donor and you're with an institution, like you were mentioning, try to have some philanthropic Collectivity that you're working with.
Dr. Copeland:So Traditionally in Africa there were these rotating credit and savings associations. That's what they're called in academic literature and they're like business, or let's say there are like giving sir. They're giving circles basically Organize in different ways and they're their investment, business investment circles as well. Whatever your circle is and that's like the baseline black philanthropic institution it can be in a church, it can be a circle in a sorority or fraternity, some kind of association, or it can be giving circle itself. It can be one of the black community funds or community foundations.
Dr. Copeland:Maintain a tie to those black community funds. They are the grassroots barometers of our community. They are able to get support to people first. They are trusted there For us and by us. So remember to keep even whatever. There is institutional black philanthropy. Sometimes we act like there isn't. But a giving circle is a kind of institution you know, certainly a community fund and so maintain ties to them and break off some of your giving for those organizations not just the larger institutions and alma mater's are fine. That will keep you rooted. It will provide you with confidence, encouragement, practical advice and a constituency that will back you up when the so called mainstream institutions let you down.
Langston Clark :That's a good word. And the last. The last question is I know you mentioned Bell hooks what, what books or authors have inspired you on your journey as a philanthropist?
Dr. Copeland:Oh gosh, you're so many. Three, three, okay, and so he was documenting our history and culture in ways that provided evidence, encouragement and direction. Yeah, I would say Zoro, zoro, zoro. I think he was a great inspiration for me and, as you see, I wear many hats. And that was an inspiration for me. What I will. First of all, she's the first black woman anthropologist in the US, which was the real inspiration to me and, as you see, I wear many hats, and that was an inspiration from Zoro Neil Hurston as a youngster, and here she was an anthropologist. She was using what she learned ethnographically about her own culture in Gainesville, florida, to write her novels. I like, well, almost all of her novels, and, and then we are discovering new aspects of her work every day, and she's influenced so much black literature. So really she's, she's probably she and WB Du Bois are ones who, basically their work taught me that how we finance our social projects and freedom is an aspect of our culture.
Dr. Copeland:Yeah that needs to be documented, preserved, adapted and recreated for each new generation, and that that can be done with novels, it can be done with books, it can be done in so many, through so many means of communications, and we need whether it's social media, podcast like yours, we need to use multiple media to counter this notion that we are inferior and we don't help ourselves. And so that's for me. And then I mentioned bell hooks, another one I love, octavia Butler.
Dr. Copeland:Yeah now people would probably be surprised about that. I said that, but I grew up reading fantasy and science fiction and part it gave me the freedom to imagine new worlds, and I think it was Jesse Jackson who said if you can imagine it, you can achieve it. And so it gives me the license to be a creator, which is the backbone of being a founder to have the gall and people told me this when I said when I announced Black philanthropy month, there were black people who say who do you think you are creating, announcing Black philanthropy month? Yeah, I'm just a black person who's lived it and I think we need it. And there's some other people who agree.
Dr. Copeland:So we're going to get together and we're going to celebrate our given every month, we're going to teach it to our children, we're going to solidify the giving traditions of our families. We're going to we're going to do this across the world at the same time and we're going to feel empowered every August and we're going to realize that this is our secret power and we're going to keep it alive and it's about loving all humanity, including black people. So those are maybe three or four offers authors, if you count Bell Hooks, who have found very inspirational and I read a lot of biographies of an autobiographies of various influential people of all backgrounds. Just understanding how the combination of vision, stick to it and the openness can put everyday people on paths that can have a butterfly effect of positive change across the world for a legacy we can all be that.
Langston Clark :Yeah, that's. That's a good mic drop in right there. Dr Copeland, I thank you for joining us. I appreciate you sharing your time and I'm going to share the story and the story of the wise fun and black philanthropy month. And, yeah, for those of you who are listening, be sure to check out black philanthropy month on their website. What's the website? Where can they find more information about black philanthropy month and the wise fun?
Dr. Copeland:Black philanthropy. Well, the first of all, they can go to the wise fun to find both the wise funorg. But then we have a dedicated website for black philanthropy month, which again runs all year. And go to black philanthropy monthcom If you're a business, if you're a community fund. Signed our global black funding. Equity principles is 10 principles that 2000 people in 2020. 2021 came up with through black philanthropy month. If you incorporate these principles into your personal, community or institutional philanthropy, you are much more likely to promote funding equity and racial justice. Black philanthropy monthcom.
Langston Clark :Right, dr Copeland, thank you again and we appreciate you joining us.
Dr. Copeland:Oh, thank you so much for having me Happy black philanthropy month All year.