Moving Through the Crossroads
CREATING A SUSTAINABLE FUNDING FUTURE FOR BLACK-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS IN HAWAI ʻ I
At the Crossroads
In many African diaspora traditions, the crossroads, the physical location where two paths meet, has long held potent spiritual power for transformation. In the legend of Mississippi bluesman Robert Johnson, the crossroads was where he was endowed with a supernatural musical ability. The crossroads is a point at which travelers may encounter each other, imparting knowledge or cautioning about the road ahead. It is a place where one may decide to pursue an alternate direction and can be an important milestone along the journey.
This brief is a waypoint in an ongoing conversation about the future of Black community-serving organizations in Hawai ʻ i. By bringing together some philanthropic paths and patterns in Hawai ʻ i and North America, we are spotlighting the distinct position Local Black organizations occupy in our communities. Demographic changes in Hawai ʻ i and political developments in the US and around the world place our organizations in an important decision making moment. It will be up to us to decide what steps we take next.
Hawai ʻ i is the US’s most demographically diverse state, but, according analysis by Forbes Magazine in 2023, it is also the most difficult state for households to save money due to the high cost of living and tremendous wealth inequality. Less than half of households in Hawai ʻ i were able to give $25 or more to charitable causes, placing Hawai ʻ i in the bottom nine states for charitable contributions per household. There is no doubt the financial strain people face here has a profound impact on giving.
Historically, Black organizations have relied on the financial support of their communities when traditional philanthropy and government funding have not seen the value in resourcing our cultural and social justice work.
In Hawai ʻ i, this funding gap is exacerbated because of unique features of the Black experience in the islands. The Black population of Hawai ʻ i is relatively small, comprising about 3% of the state’s population. As a result, Black communities and individuals are often perceived as perpetual
DIVERSITY +
+ INVISIBILITY
outsiders, even though people of African descent have lived in Hawai ʻ i continually since the early nineteenth century. Black-led organizations may not receive the same attention or resources as those serving larger or more visible groups in the islands. Black voices and stories have likewise been marginalized or misrepresented in Local media and public discourse. Increasingly, social media is a place where anti-Black content and trolling find a wide audience.
The narrative of Hawai ʻ i being a “racial melting pot” downplays the real experiences of Black communities, hiding the systemic issues we face, such as medical racism, workplace and housing discrimination, mistreatment by Local law enforcement, economic inequity, and underrepresentation in leadership positions.
Because of this narrative and the focus on marketing Hawai ʻ i as a tourism and leisure economy, national funders perceive Black communities in Hawai ʻ i as less in need of support compared to other groups, particularly due to the misconception that racial disparities affecting Black Americans on the mainland are not as significant in Hawai ʻ i.
Many of our Black community organizations face obstacles when we advocate for our specific cultural and racial concerns with Hawai ʻ i-based donors, many of whom are not used to thinking about Black people as truly part of the Local community and who may have a different set of philanthropic values informed by common narratives of this place and rooted in their own cultural perspectives.
Across the US, there has been a retraction of financial support for Black community causes since before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2017, 2% of national philanthropic organizations in the US specifically targeted their funding to Black community organizations. A short-lived boost followed the 2020 uprisings in North American cities after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery by police and vigilantes.
Funders and private citizens voiced support for a “racial reckoning” with America’s enduring antiBlackness, promising financial resources, support for Black leaders, and a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. By 2022, watchers of the philanthropic space observed a backlash and a severe reduction in funding to Black-led organizations. Black leaders reported less support and more antagonism from their philanthropic partners leading into 2023. DEI initiatives were defunded, Black leadership curtailed, and communities found themselves on their own yet again. In 2024, many possible supports for grassroots organizations were redirected into electoral campaigns for presidential and down ballot races. With the looming second Trump administration, Black organizations are strategizing and preparing for funding
cuts and possible criminalization of our activities to protect our communities. Inflation and many grantmakers’ turn away from explicitly addressing racial justice are national issues that have caused many Black community organizations to reduce staff, limit their programming, and to close their doors. These same trends play out in Hawai ʻ i, with the added layers of our geographic remoteness to national funders, our unique social and cultural environment, and the racial paradise myth obscuring and invalidating our community’s needs.
Addressing these barriers requires intentional efforts from both grantmakers and Black-led organizations to build relationships, diversify funding approaches, and raise awareness about the moral and strategic value of supporting Black communities in Hawai ʻ i as part of US-wide and global strategies for social justice.
BY THE NUMBERS
45% of the Black community in Hawaiʻi identifies as multiracial. Investing in Black organizations has tremendous impact across Hawaiʻi.
2020 US Census data show that our Black community (identifying as Black/ African American alone) is at 3.2% of the total population of Hawaiʻi, up from 2.9% in 2010. That number represents a 20.5% change in the size of our community in just a few years.
13% of Black people in Hawaiʻi live in poverty1. 72.7% of Black residents rent in a state where 60.2% of people own their homes.2 In 2022, the average Black/African American household income was $51,286, just over half of $94,814,3 the median household income in Hawaiʻi.
1 American Community Survey 2023
2 https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/measures/homeownership_disparity/homeownership_hpi/HI
3 https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/blackafrican-american-health#:~:text=Economics,for%20non%2DHispanic%20white%20households.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Many Black organizations in the US are facing existential questions as they consider the next few years and beyond.
Here in Hawai ʻ i, we could be observing the disappearance of hard-fought spaces for building and sustaining community. We have many options and decisions ahead and we invite you to move through this crossroads with us.
MEET US AT THE CROSSROADS
Historically, due to structural and systemic inequality, Black-led, Black-serving organizations are disadvantaged in philanthropic giving despite proven track records of delivering on social impact. A commitment to supporting a Black-led nonprofit supports equity work that ultimately benefits everyone in our society.
At the Pōpolo Project, our work is by design and by circumstance collaborative. Each year, our partners step forward with us as we work with other grassroots community organizations, funders, scholars, and cultural institutions here in the islands and around the world as we work to make Black life vibrant and visible in Hawai’i.
Since 2019, The Pōpolo Project has been leading conversations on the particular social and cultural contours of race here with our training series Understanding Race and Belonging in Hawai ʻ i. We have provided professional development to hundreds of Hawai ʻ i professionals in diverse fields from medicine to education and law, museums, community, and trade organizations. However, we are more than experts on race.
In 2020, we collaborated with the grassroots community organization Pacific Islanders in the Arts to convene the Creative Resurgence Collective to lift up
the work of organizations in Hawai ʻ i who support the most marginalized culture bearers here. The collective brought important attention to the issues facing gig working artists in the early pandemic and pushed the state legislature to take up policy that supported cultural workers and art beyond the tourism industry.
T his work is intentional and we have been broad in our approach to effect systemic change in Hawai ʻ i through education and relationship building.
As a Black organization, we understand ourselves to be part of a long tradition of advancing racial equality and justice for all people wherever our roots anchor us.
We are guided by deeply held values that center care for our communities and the lands that sustain us, rooted in the ancient lineages of our ancestors. In order to move forward to meet what this moment demands of us, we invite you to meet us at this crossroads and take advantage of opportunities connect with Black organizations like ours beyond Black History Month and Juneteenth. There is a rare opportunity for us to invest in building trusting relationships between Black organizations and philanthropy in Hawai ʻ i to amplify community voices and mobilize collective resources for collective impacts. Our unique lenses on belonging, strategy, culture, and community are valuable all year long.
TELL NEW STORIES WITH US
People of African descent have lived in Hawaiʻi since the early 19th century, predating many other ethnic communities we now think of as regular parts of the Local fabric. In visual communications, hiring practices, and organizational culture, attention to whether and how the Black presence in Hawaiʻi is represented and supported can profoundly shift the narratives of this place toward promoting equity and growing power. Hawai ʻ i is often portrayed as a place free from racism and ethnic bias. However, many communities are negatively impacted by anti-Black ideas, whether or not they are of African descent. Bias often thrives in the absence of representation and Hawai ʻ i ’s social dynamics are complex. Sharing new stories about Hawai ʻ i with attention to the underrepresented stories of the most marginalized communities can highlight how these biases interact, helping to unravel misconceptions and illuminate the truly layered nature of life in Hawai ʻ i .
Though our community building here through connection to culture practice and to land, we are able to intervene in social spaces to redirect narratives of anti-Blackness, to serve as a beacon for our community to gather and to engage in imaginative creative work for
visioning a future where we are free. We produce digital media, including videos, a podcast series, and educational resources that highlight the potential in exploring these histories and connections.
We are part of the global Black community while simultaneously rooted in Hawai ʻ i . Our position provides a unique perspective to engage with the specific and diverse experiences of Blackness in the Pacific as we build relationships with Indigenous communities and organizations, and produce media and scholarship highlighting intersections that complicate representations of Hawai ʻ i and bring us into new understandings of how we can can heal through activating new relationships and being responsible to and for each other.
With philanthropic support for narrative change, new narratives that are responsive to the real-life contexts of many people in our society can influence policymakers, educators, and institutions to address biases and inequities in ways that can drive change in education, policing, housing, and employment practices.
LET’S TRANSFORM
Building with Black organizations in Hawaiʻi is a transformative step toward equity and systemic change. Our organizations are uniquely positioned to advocate for policies that address racial disparities, advance justice, and amplify the voices of underrepresented communities .
By supporting our efforts, funders and philanthropists can help create pathways for civic engagement, leadership development, and sustainable change. Together, we can ensure that Black communities in Hawai ʻ i have the resources and influence needed to shape decisions that impact their futures. When we work together to transform systems and empower voices we build a foundation for a more just and inclusive Hawai ʻ i .
In our multidimensional work at the Pōpolo Project, we invest in building community through opportunities and continual invitations for our Black community to gather together. Often, our community members have not just not been engaged in processes to build knowledge and power for change in Hawai ʻ i , but have actively been excluded
from them. With our partners moving through this crossroad with us, the task before us is not only to make a convincing invitation for our community to contribute to change, but to identify and dismantle the dis-invitations and obstacles that have been entrenched for decades.
By all indications, the next several years may prove challenging, especially for cultural and social justice-oriented organizations that depend on grants and the shifting interests of the philanthropic field. Realistically, without resource support we may be presiding over the end of organizations like ours in Hawai ʻ i . At this crossroads we have an important opportunity to transform how we work, who we work with, and where we invest our time and resources.
Whatever challenges await us, we have an unprecedented opportunity to do things differently, and we invite you to join us.
The Pōpolo Project is a Hawai ʻ i-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 2017. Our mission is to redefine what it means to be Black in Hawai ʻ i through creating profound reconnection to ourselves, our community, our ancestors, and the land. Ou r name comes from the Hawaiian word pōpolo, a traditionally valued native plant that produces deep purple berries used in medicine and kapa dyeing. In informal use in Hawaiian since the mid-nineteenth century, the plant’s name has been applied to Black people on the analogy of the dark color of the fruit and the color of our skin. In our usage, we see an opportunity to link to the many layers of kaona in pōpolo’s healing and creative power.