Twin ties: Philanthropy and the carceral state   - Alliance magazine

N.B. I use the term ‘Black women’ throughout this article as inclusive of Black women, transgender, non-binary, genderqueer folks, and others who do not hold a cis-male identity. 

My first interaction with philanthropy came in my late 20s, years after I was arrested and jailed for stealing.  

Back then, I was straight out of college, away from home, and would take random items from big-box stores. I would return them a few days later for store credit and then use the credit to buy groceries. It was a reliable way to feed myself when in a pinch – which was often – and then one day I was caught. 

I buried this experience beneath a mountain of shame. I held my breath during background checks and cringed when I was reminded of lost freedoms.  

Years later, when I began to learn about how the carceral state functions (the formal institutions of criminal justice including incarceration, policing, and surveillance), I took a different look at what happened to me and began to unearth this shame.  

After attending a book club for We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice, I started to locate myself within the greater cycle of divestment, poverty, and incarceration perpetuated by racialised capitalism and anti-Blackness, especially against Black women and girls.  

These realisations paralleled my entry into philanthropy where I was dumbfounded to discover that while for me, my family, and many others I knew, there was never enough money – for others, there was too much. So much in fact, that an entire sector had been built around it. 

When I first started out in philanthropy, I was a fundraiser, then a programme officer, a consultant, and then a fundraiser again.  

In these roles I began to see how the philanthropic sector – like the carceral state – presented itself as a solution to inequities and harms, while minimising the role it had in creating and exacerbating them. 

Both sectors operated under the guise of repair and rehabilitation while side-stepping accountability for why that gap in resources exists. Both used self-directed, patchwork reforms that gave the impression that change was happening while the systems of inequality were reinforced.  

My time in jail didn’t fill my empty stomach, nor stop the deep cycles of intergenerational poverty that I and countless other Black women are entrenched in. And while my experience is US-based, anti-Blackness and racialised capitalism are global, with Black women serving as the canaries in the coal mine for societal dysfunction. 

We are the backbone of our communities, are forced to navigate systems that are hostile to us, and yet resource the life-giving and stabilising work of ourselves and others. Birth equity, gender justice education equality, and economic justice are movements in the nonprofit sector and mutual aid networks that are all powered by Black women who work to patch holes left by systemic disinvestment.  

Yet as people, we are largely invisible in both the carceral and philanthropic systems, and this invisibility exacerbates violence while leaving our efforts for advocacy under-resourced and ignored. Repeatedly, Black women take up the work of naming the problem and then work to fix it in the shadows.  

In 2014, the African American Policy Forum launched the #SayHerName campaign to visibilise the Black women, girls, and femmes brutalised and killed by state violence.  

Campaigns of the same name have been adopted globally in the wake of the murder of Marielle Franco, the Black, queer council member in Rio de Janeiro, and in South Africa, in response to the country’s rampant femicide. These campaigns emerged to fight the lack of attention to Black women in the movements for justice for Black lives.  

Meanwhile, in a 2022 article, Let Black women-led funds and Black girls lead the way: Centering Black women-led funds to lead social justice efforts, philanthropic activists Monique Couvson and Tynesha McHarris note that: ‘in 2018, just US$15 million out of almost US$428 billion in philanthropic giving in the United States reached Black women and girls. That means less than 1 percent goes toward supporting the voices, visions, and experiences necessary for the liberation of Black girls and all people,’ in the country. 

They go on to say that in the Global South: ‘funding for Black women, girls, and trans people constitutes roughly 5 percent of funding designated for human rights efforts – both in dollars and number of grants.’ This reflects an open secret among Black women. 

Namely, that organisations that aren’t explicitly for us, will often implicitly and explicitly exclude us. Black-women-led organisations are often the only ones dedicated to work that truly benefits our communities, and in turn, funding that doesn’t go directly to us, simply doesn’t reach us. 

The Combahee River Collective, a radical Black feminist, lesbian, and socialist organisation outside of Boston, released a statement in 1977 outlining the ways systems of oppression interlock to further the oppression of Black women.  

In it, they said, ‘We realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are us. Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work.’ 

This speaks to our invisibility and strength, but we also do this work while paradoxically being more highly scrutinised than our counterparts. 

Beyond the Glass Cliff: Investing in Conditions that Sustain Women of Color Leadership by Building Movement Project cites a study that found ‘women of color leaders – particularly Black women – receive systematically lower levels of financial support even when controlling for credentials, organisational age, and mission alignment.’ 

We are both hypervisible and invisible. Expected to do more with less, and if we do manage to secure support, demands on us are often disproportionate. When expectations aren’t met, glass cliffs, increased surveillance, funding cuts, and job loss await us. When they are met, they are often at the expense of our wellbeing as we carry more work than we can afford.  

This cycle is strikingly similar to the overpunishment of Black women in the US carceral system where, in 2023, the imprisonment rate for Black women in the US (68 per 100,000) was 1.7 times the rate of imprisonment for white women (41 per 100,000).  

The factors fuelling our incarceration? Criminalised survival strategies including stealing food, self-defence, and trying to make a living. The fact is, Black women are forced to navigate societies designed against us with our hands tied.  

We’re currently facing a toxic relationship perpetuated by systemic disinvestment. Like the carceral system, where prison and police interventions don’t address the root causes of systemic inequity, philanthropic investments remain disjointed and reinforce centuries-long neglect. 

While holding abolition as the long-term goal, because we can’t reform foundationally unequal systems, resourcing Black women directly and abundantly to build reliable and life-giving infrastructure now is critical. Here, Grantmakers for Girls of Color, Black Feminist Fund, The African Women’s Development Fund, and Fundo Agbara are just a few examples of Black women-led funds that are moving directly to Black women-led movements across the globe.  

Black women have and continue to create realities that allow everyone to flourish and our freedom has ripple effects. By centring the needs and wellbeing of those forced to the margins, so society becomes more liveable for everyone.  

In a world with more than enough, Black women’s freedom is necessary to liberate us all.

Grace Anderson, founder of The Lupine Collaborative