Groundwork: Mission Critical
Black-led nonprofits often carry the weight of a community’s pain, potential and promise on shoestring budgets and with sheer determination. They tend to the wounds many prefer not to look at and offer hope where systems have failed. Too often, these are the very organizations doing essential but invisible work — responding to crises, restoring people’s dignity and helping rebuild lives.
Much of the time, this must happen before individuals have the stability or support to access the more resourced, well-structured nonprofits that offer life-enhancing services.
Ironically, some of the nonprofits that don’t look impressive on paper are the ones making the most stunning impact. Funders may not be acquainted with these organizations since many don’t make it past the first review of applications. With the scale of challenges we face in Memphis, can we really afford to overlook them?
Many funders feel the nonprofit landscape is too crowded, or they suggest that smaller organizations should fold into larger ones. But what if the question isn’t how to eliminate them but how to strengthen them? What if some of the nonprofits we are dismissing are actually the ones holding our communities together at the seams? Often guided by lived experience more than formal management expertise, could these organizations hold the solutions if better resourced?
The Community Foundation of Greater Memphis (CFGM) spent the past year exploring that idea — doing the groundwork to find answers.
It began in August 2023 during a Black Philanthropy Month town hall that gathered more than 100 Black-led organizations. The room was thick with truth: frustration, fatigue and yet, a fierce hope. In response to a collective need to be heard, the CFMG created the Black-led Nonprofit Leadership Alliance, a yearlong space where Black leaders could shape the conversation, define what equity should look like in philanthropy and guide CFGM toward lasting change.
“The inspiration for forming the Black-Led Nonprofit Leadership Alliance (BNLA) came directly from listening to Black nonprofit leaders and taking seriously what they shared with us,” said Aerial Ozuzu, CFGM’s director of community impact. “They called for lasting commitment, real accountability and meaningful partnership. … We couldn’t stop at listening.”
The cohort was made up of 18 Black nonprofit leaders who helped shape the Foundation’s next steps. This included creating a clear definition for what constitutes a Black-led nonprofit. Their recommendations are now embedded in CFGM’s 2024–29 Strategic Plan. The time and effort wasn’t performative. It was, as Ozuzu put it, “an act of alignment and activation.”
Apple Seeds Inc., a maternal and mental health nonprofit, was one of the organizations represented in the alliance. Its Founder and CEO Tenikki Sesley describes the yearlong work:
“It was powerful and deeply affirming to be in a space intentionally created for Black nonprofit leaders to share without filters or code-switching,” Sesley said. “There was a collective strength in the room, and a shared understanding that we are each building something that goes beyond programming. I feel this was a step in restoring dignity, trust and wellness in our communities. That kind of solidarity can’t be overstated.”
Perhaps what made this process most radical was not just what was said, but who was listening.
Funders did not lead the conversation. They didn’t frame the agenda or hold the mic. “It was a welcomed shift, one that felt long overdue,” Sesley reflected. “Having funders simply listen created a kind of reverence for our lived experience and professional insight … because our stories are not deficits; they are data.”
CFGM Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Sutton Mora saw this effort as necessary and overdue. “Our job, as a white-led organization that was not, for a long time, responsive to the Black community, was to have the conversation anyway,” Mora stated. “But I’ll also say this, if you push through, the outcome can be pretty beautiful.”
Mora noted that Ozuzu’s early vision was simply to keep the town hall conversation going. “That was literally the least we could do. It was an easy yes,” she said.
“As the conversations evolved and got tougher, she and I worked together to make sure that she, and the members of the BNLA, had everything they needed to be able to speak freely and safely and know that they were being heard,” Mora added.
From the Foundation’s top, the presence was personal. CFGM CEO Robert Fockler attended every meeting. “The Community Foundation, since its founding more than 50 years ago, has never actively served the Black community in Memphis. I needed to show all of the participants that we were serious about listening to Black nonprofit leaders, hearing their concerns and supporting them appropriately.”
He admits the experience reshaped his understanding.“Pretty early on, though, it became clear that despite my assumptions and hopes, the field remains tilted and grossly unfair to Black-led and Black-serving agencies.”
Fockler added, “The Community Foundation has committed to taking meaningful steps to promote Black-led agencies to our donors and to other funders in our community and to better represent their interests however we can.”
Beyond naming the problems, the Alliance offered clarity, including on something as seemingly simple as defining what it means to be ‘Black-led.’
As Mora put it, “It seems like such a simple question. We said, ‘We don’t know, you tell us.’” The result? A nonprofit is considered Black-led if the most senior leader, such as the executive director or CEO, is Black and the leadership team includes other Black people. The board should also reflect the community served, particularly when the organization’s work centers on Black communities.
For a long time, this kind of precision didn’t exist. Now, it guides the foundation’s priorities, especially around Give 8/28, the main day of giving in August, which is designated Black Philanthropy Month.
As for CFGM’s plans for Black Philanthropy Month 2025? “Thanks to the BNLA,” Ozuzu explained, “this year’s Black Philanthropy Month is more than a celebration. It’s an act of alignment and activation. It’s about listening, reflecting and making sure our actions match what Black leaders have made clear they need and deserve.”
That includes launching Powered By Us: Black Generosity in Memphis, a symposium on August 22 shaped by the insight the BNLA surfaced. The goal is to bring attention to the need for Black-led nonprofit organizations to thrive and how the community can help ensure their success.
“What we can do now is so much more powerful,” Mora said. And it’s true, when you listen without defensiveness, when you share power, when you center people who have long been pushed to the margins, the work doesn’t just evolve. It transforms.
And that’s what Groundwork is all about. Doing the listening, doing the learning. Doing the work. The mission is critical.
