Two Canadian philanthropic organizations transfer $3.85 million to Foundation for Black Communities’ endowment — here’s why that matters

Two major Canadian foundations are the first to donate $3.85 million in funds and capital transfers to the Foundation for Black Communities, a new philanthropic organization focused on supporting Black communities across Canada — and other foundations may follow suit in the near future. 

The Foundation for Black Communities is working to build a $300 million endowment that can sustainably fund Black-led and Black-serving organizations for years to come. According to a statement from the Inspirit Foundation on March 9, it is offering an “immediate, unrestricted grant” of $350,000 along with a $1 million capital transfer — in other words, investments or assets capable of generating income on their own. Meanwhile, the Laidlaw Foundation is giving their own capital transfer of $2.5 million.

These contributions come three months after a report called Unfunded showed Black-led organizations in Canada receive just seven cents out of every $100 granted by Canadian philanthropic organizations. For Black-serving organizations — defined as organizations where serving Black communities was explicitly spelled out in their mandate — that number rose to just 70 cents. 

“We believe that Black-led, Black-focused (community organizations) are best funded through the very community that they serve,” said Liban Abokor, a working group member of the Foundation for Black Communities in an interview. “We know where the priorities are (and) where the investments need to be made. In order to do that, we need to have those resources on hand.”

He said the broader Canadian philanthropic sector was concerned about the findings of the report last December. But the Foundation for Black Communities said more needed to be done. One of the Unfunded report’s main recommendations was the creation of a foundation in Canada to counteract the sector’s systemic underinvestment in Black communities. Abokor said the Foundation for Black Communities began calling on the philanthropic sector to do more than just acknowledge the past — it had to understand how to change. This would require foundations to step up and offer their own resources. 

“What we were asking was each foundation to share 3.5 percent of their endowment with the Foundation for Black Communities — that 3.5 percent representing not only the typical one-year disbursement rate, but also the population of Black Canadians in this country,” Abokor said. 

He estimates the Foundation for Black Communities has spoken to more than 50 foundations across Canada since last September. Abokor said they also asked for $200 million from the federal government to help create their endowment and financial structure. It isn’t clear when any new commitments may come through — Abokor says each of the foundations they are speaking to is in a different stage of the process. (No firm date for the federal government’s latest budget has been announced). 

Sadia Zaman, CEO of the Inspirit Foundation, said in an interview that she and her board chair began attending a series of meetings with Black community organizers last year to learn about systemic racism. She also knew the report was in the works — something that could package all the information available about the systemic underfunding of Black communities in a way that philanthropists could easily digest. 

“The time was now,” Zaman said. “There was no more time for studying and learning.”

After the Unfunded report was released in December, the Inspirit Foundation’s board unanimously agreed to provide both an unstructured grant and a capital transfer to the Foundation for Black Communities. Offering capital was very important to Zaman and the rest of Inspirit’s team — they wanted to do more than just grant money. 

In the process of arranging all of the fiduciary details, Zaman said, they learned a second foundation — the Laidlaw Foundation — was having similar conversations with FBC. Zaman said Inspirit reached out and suggested the two foundations band together and coordinate their public commitment to try and get other philanthropic organizations on board. 

Jehad Aliweiwi, executive director of the Laidlaw Foundation, said the organization’s experience with the Indigenous Peoples Resilience Fund, a philanthropic initiative to support Indigenous populations, meant they understood how efficient community responses like the FBC’s could be. 

“This presented us with an opportunity to be connected to Black Canadian communities in a way that we haven’t in the past,” Aliweiwi said in an interview. 

The COVID-19 pandemic, not to mention systemic racism and exclusion, have taken their toll on Black Canadians, he added. Funding Black-led organizations and communities across the country makes sense, no matter what a particular philanthropic organization does. 

“For my fellow foundation and philanthropic leaders, I say — whatever your funding objectives and priorities and focus area — Black and Indigenous peoples have been impacted by it,” Aliweiwi said. 

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