After spending two years quietly studying philanthropy, learning the language and trying to figure out which rooms mattered, I eventually arrived at a realization that should have occurred to me much sooner: Black people have been doing this the entire time. Not philanthropy-adjacent activities. The actual thing. We give money to churches. We establish scholarships. We support HBCUs. We belong to sororities, fraternities, alumni associations and community organizations that have been pooling money for generations. We pay somebody’s rent when they lose their job, send money when somebody’s mother dies, cover school trips, youth sports, emergency plane tickets and college tuition, and we have personally kept GoFundMe’s servers warm. We buy the fish dinners, the Double Good popcorn and whatever else somebody’s child appears at our front door selling. And if you grew up in the Black church, please do not tell me Black people don’t understand recurring charitable giving. We had tithes, offerings, building funds, missionary offerings, pastor appreciation, Women’s Day, Men’s Day and somebody’s anniversary every third Sunday. Before Silicon Valley discovered subscription revenue, Sister Johnson was already giving the church $20 every week in an envelope with her name and member number written on the front. We apparently had every word for what we were doing except, philanthropy.

I certainly didn’t grow up imagining any of those people when I heard the word philanthropist. A philanthropist, in my mind, was extraordinarily wealthy, probably older and ideally standing beside a building bearing the family name while holding oversized scissors. Philanthropy happened after the private jet. It belonged to Rockefellers, Carnegies and people whose last names had somehow become nouns. When we gave, it was ministry, service, helping family, giving back or simply what you were supposed to do. But somewhere else, somebody was sitting down with a financial advisor, moving appreciated stock into a charitable vehicle, discussing a multigenerational giving strategy and deciding what institutions the family wanted to support for the next fifty years. Add a charcuterie board and suddenly we are doing philanthropy. I am being funny, but I am not entirely joking. The difference wasn’t generosity. We had that part covered. What I had spent two years studying was what happened when generosity became organized, strategic and institutional enough to outlive the person writing the check.

And then came In Good Company. After spending years trying to understand which philanthropic rooms mattered and, culturally speaking, who all gon’ be there, in 2026 I found myself standing in a room we had created ourselves. I looked around and saw Black nonprofit leaders, business owners, professionals, sponsors, community leaders and families who had shown up not only to celebrate Held & Rooted, but to financially support what we were building. Maybe this is the Ethiopian in me, because somewhere deep in my DNA is apparently a woman who will eventually look at any established system and ask, Yes, very impressive, but could we build one ourselves? Not because we should have to. Institutional philanthropy does not get to pack up its donor-advised funds and go home. I spent two years learning that vocabulary and fully intend to get my money’s worth. I want us in those rooms too, running foundations, sitting on boards, managing charitable capital and influencing where institutional money goes. But standing in In Good Company, I started wondering what would happen if we became just as intentional about the resources already circulating through our own rooms.

Because collective money is not a foreign concept to us. We understand church offerings, family reunion dues, scholarship funds, alumni giving. We understand everybody contributing something so that together we can do something none of us could do alone. We understand sending one responsible person the money because nobody wants Cousin Anthony holding the vacation deposit. We understand that one auntie brings the mac and cheese because the family has conducted an informal but rigorous peer-review process and determined that another auntie absolutely cannot be trusted with it. Apparently all we needed was for somebody to call this a giving circle, put it in a PowerPoint and serve sparkling wine. One hundred people giving $100 a month is $120,000 a year. Five hundred people is $600,000. A thousand people is $1.2 million. Nobody had to become Oprah. Nobody sold a company. Beyoncé was not contacted. We simply decided together that something mattered enough to fund. And that was the shift for me: what if some of the generosity we already practice in moments of crisis became capital we intentionally organized before the crisis arrived?

Now, Black people absolutely do not need another lecture about what we should be doing with our money. We have endured enough of those. Buy a house. Invest. Start a business. Stop buying coffee. Get life insurance. Build generational wealth. Don’t buy the car. Buy the car because you deserve joy. Apparently every financial problem in America can eventually be traced back to somebody’s brunch order, while the racial wealth gap is sitting quietly in the corner wondering how the mimosa got blamed for all of this. Structural barriers to wealth are real, and community philanthropy is not a cute substitute for foundations, corporations and public institutions investing equitably in Black communities. This is not an either/or proposition. I want us at their tables and I want us owning tables. I want Black leaders deciding where institutional money goes, and I want Black families thinking intentionally about where some portion of our own wealth goes. We can demand investment and become investors. We can pursue grants and build giving circles. We can inherit wealth and decide what institutions inherit something from us. Frankly, I would like all of it. Scarcity thinking has never really matched my aesthetic.

That may be the biggest thing this entire education changed for me. I entered philanthropy assuming my job as a Black nonprofit founder was to convince people with money that our community was worth investing in. I still intend to do that, so please do not read this essay and cancel a grant. I have payroll dreams. But In Good Company made me look differently at who was already in the room. We weren’t merely beneficiaries, attendees, volunteers or compelling stories for somebody else’s grant proposal. We were professionals, homeowners, entrepreneurs, executives, physicians, nurses, engineers, attorneys, educators, business owners and families building wealth of our own. What if our children inherited not only our assets, but the expectation that some portion of those assets should help sustain the institutions their communities need? What if the organizations serving Black families weren’t forced to introduce themselves from scratch to every new generation? What if twenty years from now, some of the mothers in that room were grandmothers, their daughters were donors, their children were sitting on boards, and the institution we were celebrating that afternoon was still here because somebody had thought far enough ahead to make sure it would be? I had spent years asking who was in the rooms where philanthropy happened. Standing in one of our own, I finally understood that perhaps the better question was what the people in the room were going to leave behind.

Part Four: My daughter’s problems…

Always Have, Always Will ~ Kalie