This is the second installment in a series for NPQ based on excerpts from Shawn Ginwright’s new book, The Four Pivots: Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves. Read the first feature, “Healing-Centered Leadership: A Path to Transformation,” here.

I grew up in a working-class Black neighborhood in Southern California. My summers were spent playing hide and go seek and football on asphalt streets. I wore Tuff Skins jeans with holes from which my knee would poke when I ran. After playing with my friends, we would return to one of their homes to listen to the magical music of Funkadelic. I didn’t know then that the group’s futuristic soul would have an indelible impact on me and my work in Black communities even to this day. The music was a funky portal to Black possibilities where I could dream about my future and imagine my life. As lyrics like “One nation under a groove, getting down just for the funk of it… nothing can stop us now” soaked into our souls, my friends and I would make up fantastic stories about our superpowers. These phrases showed me a Black future and pointed me toward a vision of possibilities for my work.

It wasn’t until I created a nonprofit organization that I realized that my vision of a Black future wasn’t widely shared by others. I learned early on that in order to secure funding and raise money from donors, I couldn’t simply share with them my dream of creating healing sanctuaries for Black youth. I couldn’t write about the significance of Black joy in funding proposals, nor could I share my vision of hope and love as an intervention to the many challenges Black youth confronted. So, instead, I learned how to highlight problems in the Black community where I worked, rather than lifting up its assets.

Read the full article about supporting Black-led organizations by Shawn A. Ginwright at Nonprofit Quarterly.