People-Powered Participatory Action Research
RESEARCH & ENGAGE
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About The Black Donors Project
The Black Donors Project is a home for Black donors who give through time, talent and treasure. We are a grassroots participatory action research project that documents Black philanthropic giving as cultural practice, community care, and activism.
We found that our giving happens through donation links, ticket purchases, a request from a friend, a repost, a volunteer shift, a mutual aid contribution, and direct support for an artist. Across these forms, Black giving carries memory, responsibility, love, strategy, and resistance.
Through surveys, listening sessions, group dialogue, and individual interviews, we document the ways Black people share resources, what calls us into generosity, how trust moves among us, and how our contributions help nourish Black creativity, safeguard ancestral memory, and send resources toward community organizing, liberation work, and shared freedom.
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Our work challenges colonial philanthropic models that often define giving through proximity to wealth, institutional access, and donor recognition. We are interested in a wider truth: Black communities have always practiced philanthropy through time, talent, treasure, care, protection, cultural production, and collective responsibility.
What We Are Learning
In 2024, The Black Donors Project surveyed 145 self-identified Black donors about giving to the arts and arts organizations. The findings affirmed what many in our communities already know: Black arts donors are values-driven, deeply engaged, relational, and attentive to ethics.
