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Charity Trickery – Black Issues, White Faces

The Black Education Free Encyclopaedia

Charity Trickery - Staff
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Why are so many charities and non-profit organisations claiming to deal with Black issues, run and staffed by White faces only?! …

This write up comes as a retaliation to all the White faces that we see on the about us, our staff, our team, trustees, board of director pages! Why? Because it is quite disturbing the amount of ‘urban’ charities that we have come across that claim to be working towards remedying the racial inequities and discrimination that Black and Brown people face on a day-to-day basis. On the surface, these charities sound great. They appear to be helping us and in support of us. Which all sounds wonderful, right? … So why are these same organisations who are researching and claiming to be in support of eradicating racial disparities and discrimination appear to be themselves, racially discriminative? Their staff, including researchers, editors, directors and trustees are what would be categorised as ‘White’ or ‘Caucasian’, so where are their Black and Brown staff? Why isn’t their staff diversity reflective of the work they claim to be doing?…  

Well, our theory is because many of these ‘charitable’ organisations that claim to be helping are in reality tricking us.

These organisations promote their ‘good cause’ and their ‘charitable work’ helping the disadvantaged, exploiting real life issues, for financial gain, by way of receiving donations. These donations pay their White staff wages and what’s left over they may put towards the odd ‘charitable’ programme to justify their pay checks. So, we wonder how are they really helping to create economic equality and eradicate racial disparity when their own organisational make-up is completely ‘white-washed’. We doubt they really understand and empathise when no-one on their team has had first-hand experience as a Black or Brown person. Shouldn’t someone in the leadership team be able to identify with the issues they are trying to combat so they can make decisions accordingly? How are they measuring their effectiveness, who are they talking to? Who are they really helping?

If you are going to support them…

  • Be aware of what you are supporting.
  • Look at who is actually benefiting from their organisation.
  • Research what programmes are actual being delivered, to who and how many are they impacting.
  • Don’t assume that because their mission statement says they are helping that they are ‘really’ helping.
  • Look at the organisations make-up. How diverse is their staff? Where are they located?
  • Exactly what community are they serving?
  • Who is leading the organisation? Look at leadership executives, the board of directors and trustees.
  • Look at their financials, what is their annual turnover?
  • How much of that is being paid towards salaries and expenses?

Thoughts? Comment below…

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Signs of Charity Trickery

  • Urban Focus – but no real programmes to help the ‘urban’ community
  • No Diversity–  If they are genuinely concerned about racial equality, they should have a diverse team to reflect the work they are doing.
  • Big Team– they have a big payroll, but few programmes. They are in the business to get paid through a nice salary from your donations. 
  • No Transparency – they are not transparent about their finances, you cannot see how much of their turnover was spent on payroll versus programmes.

Real Urban Charities