…we are each other’s
harvest:
we are each other’s
business:
we are each other’s
magnitude and bond.
— From “Paul Robeson,” by Gwendolyn Brooks
The full results of a first-of-its-kind research survey of Black-led literary arts nonprofits won’t be released until spring of 2025, but preliminary results from research by African-American poetry nonprofit Cave Canem indicate that the Black literary arts are almost completely ignored by the philanthrosphere.
The literary arts, in general, receive only a miniscule fraction of the total philanthropic funding out there for the arts. But according to data provided to Inside Philanthropy by Cave Canem and Ithaka S+R, philanthropic organizations have been such a negligible source of support for the Black literary arts organizations surveyed that they didn’t even rate their own category in the study; instead, philanthropies were lumped into “Other” sources of income, all of which collectively contributed just 7% toward the nonprofits’ bottom lines.
“A very good view into the field” of Black literary arts nonprofits
Cave Canem announced “Magnitude and Bond: A Field Study on Black Literary Arts Service Organizations,” earlier this summer as part of its commemoration of Juneteenth. The study, which takes its name from Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem about actor, singer and activist Paul Robeson, was funded by the Wallace Foundation as part of a total of $2.96 million in 2023 grants the foundation made to eight nonprofits for “research projects intended to bring definition, depth, breadth and perspective about the nature of the ecosystem of nonprofit arts organizations of color and the communities they serve.”
Its focus is the five members of the Getting Word Collective, which includes Cave Canem as well as Furious Flower Poetry Center, the Hurston/Wright Foundation, Obsidian, and The Watering Hole, and it looks at the strategies these nonprofits use to keep functioning despite insufficient support.
Cave Canem Executive Director Lisa Willis said that her organization started working on the first iteration of “Magnitude and Bond” in 2021. Cave Canem and Ithaka S+R, which conducted the survey, chose to focus on the Getting Word Collective in part because Cave Canem’s membership in the group meant they had a ready-made group of participants. Additionally, Willis said, Getting Word Collective members “offer a good snapshot of the field.”
Getting Word’s member nonprofits are located in different areas of the country, they focus on different literary arts, and they’re also different types of institutions, including freestanding nonprofits, university-affiliated organizations, and one that hasn’t jumped through the hoops for recognition as a legal nonprofit by the IRS. As a result, Willis said, the survey is “in no way representative of all [Black literary arts nonprofits], but it is definitely a very good view into the field, since our collective history is 140 years of service.”
Cave Canem itself seems ideally situated to conduct this first survey of Black literary nonprofits. The organization, which was founded in 1996 to “remedy the underrepresentation and isolation of African-American poets in the literary landscape,” has supported more than 500 Black poets through its fellowships and has nurtured the careers of several poets who are considered among the best of the 21st century. Its programming also includes regional workshops, poetry prizes and recorded “Legacy Conversations” featuring poets and scholars “who have played historic roles in African American poetry.” Adrian Matejka, the editor of Poetry magazine, told IP that Cave Canem “was and is a space for unfettered Black poetry unlike anything I’ve experienced.”
Cave Canem is also unique among the Getting Word Collective when it comes to funder support. In 2022, the vast majority of its support came from foundations: $1.3 million. Its funders include the Ford Foundation, the Poetry Foundation, the Heinz Endowments, the Mellon Foundation and the Lannan Foundation.
Starving in plain sight
Most nonprofit sectors complain about underfunding — though, as IP’s Philip Rojc noted in 2022, “the nonprofit sector’s overall lackluster status quo on data and transparency” makes it difficult to know exactly where philanthropic dollars are and aren’t flowing. The small number of nonprofits captured by the “Magnitude and Bond” study is also a caveat against drawing overbroad conclusions from its results.
Still, it’s pretty telling that, despite Cave Canem’s foundation support, private funders gave so little to the Getting Word Collective in total during the period covered by the 2023 study that they didn’t even rate a separate category in the survey. Another significant fact: The directors of two out of the five Getting Word nonprofits are unpaid volunteers, and three are juggling other jobs in addition to their leadership work. One of them is working two jobs on top of leading their nonprofit.
Granted, these facts aren’t necessarily surprising, given that the literary sector as a whole receives only around 2% of all funding that’s dedicated to the arts. But they must also be considered in light of the fact that, for a good part of the country’s history, it was illegal for Black people in many states to learn how to read or write.
Currently, federal grants (at 15%) are one of the two largest sources of monetary support for Getting Word’s members, potentially putting these nonprofits’ survival at risk from right-wing, anti-racial-justice members of Congress. It’s also important to note that the books of Black and other writers of color, along with writers who are sexual minorities, have been subjected to challenges and bans — including one-time Cave Canem fellows Mahogany L. Browne and Elizabeth Acevedo. “Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice,” featuring work by Browne and Acevedo, was among the books challenged by Texas parents in 2021 and other works by Acevedo have also reportedly been subject to censorship.
Given the historic and current racial disparities faced by Black literary artists and the nonprofits that serve them, it feels safe to say that any foundation with a focus on racial justice should at least strongly consider supporting this field. That includes further research not only into funding in this sector, but also the strategies that such nonprofits are using to survive and serve their missions.
“The purpose of this field study is to support the case for what is needed to level the playing field and address the needs of culturally specific organizations who really have, in a lot of ways, starved in plain sight while they continue to contribute significantly to the cultural canon and are essential spaces for the public good,” said Willis. “Those seem like two very simple messages, but unfortunately, they are messages that really aren’t out there.”
In an environment where forces actually question whether or not racial disparities even exist and extremists are fighting to have books by and about racial and sexual minorities pulled from library shelves, these messages are, if anything, doubly important.
In addition to racial justice, Dawn Wolfe covers issues including LGBTQ+ philanthropy, giving for women’s & girl’s issues and abortion rights, and economic justice and philanthropic reform. She is also passionate about poetry. Contact her at: dawnw@insidephilanthropy.com.
