What does it mean to authentically know a community and invest in its progress and growth?

This is the question we ask ourselves as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) community leaders working to mobilize our communities and mainstream our issues.

In order for foundation leaders to become allies and demonstrate commitment to the communities they intend to support, they must understand the complicated histories, cultures, and self-determination of these vital communities… all of which take time.

What is common knowledge to marginalized communities needs to transfer as common knowledge to foundation leaders. In “Making the Invisible Visible; A Policy Blueprint from Urban Indian America,” the National Urban Indian Family Coalition (NUIFC) has gathered many data points that might surprise readers. For example:

  • 67 million people in the United States identify as American Indian and Alaska Native, alone or in combination with one or more other races (American Community Survey 2019).
  • According to the U.S. Census (2010), 78% live outside of tribal lands. Chicago is one of the top 10 cities with a large Indigenous population. Nearly 27,000 people identifying as American Indian and Alaskan Native, including those of more than one race, call Chicago home.
  • According to NUIFC (2015), 30% of the native population is under the age of 18, compared to 21.6% of the white (non-Hispanic) population. However, 32.1% of the American Indian and Alaska Native youth population live under the poverty level, compared to 17.8% of white (non-Hispanic) counterparts.
  • Furthermore, Scarborough et al. (2019) reported that “the wage increase associated with a college degree is lower for Native Americans than for all other race groups in Chicago” (p. 3).

At Muslims in America: A Year of Learning for the Philanthropic Community inaugural program, Outreach Coordinator Petra AlSoofy from the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) explained “The largest ethnic population of Muslims in the U.S. are African Americans (Younis, 2009).” Islam in America goes back 400+ years to the transatlantic slave trade where as many as 30% of all enslaved people brought to the U.S. from African countries were Muslim (Khan, 2019).

Read the full article about Indigenous and Muslim leaders in philanthropy by Roohi Younus and Cynthia Soto at the Johnson Center.