Two Years in, The 1954 Project is Moving the Needle on Funding for Black Leaders in Education
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Liz Thompson, co-founder, The 1954 Project
The 1954 Project was created in early 2021, a time of heightened awareness of systemic racism in the United States. George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police had sparked months of protests, and the COVID-19 pandemic revealed sharp racial disparities in health outcomes.
Liz Thompson hadn’t planned to launch The 1954 Project in such a charged climate, but it made her goal — to increase the ranks and support the work of Black educators — all the more urgent.
Thompson and her husband, Don, founded The Cleveland Avenue Foundation for Education (The CAFE Group), which in turn created The 1954 Project, a pooled funding initiative. Since it was launched, the effort has raised $35 million and awarded more than $15 million to Black education leaders.
These leaders, which the project calls “Luminaries,” each head small organizations that promote Black student success. Sharif El-Mekki, for example, who was in the inaugural cohort of Luminaries, is the founder and CEO of the Center for Black Educator Development, which is working to get more Black teachers into U.S. classrooms. Carmita Semaan, who was named a Luminary this year, leads the Surge Institute, which develops and supports leaders of color.
The 1954 Project awards each Luminary $1 million in unrestricted funds to strengthen their organizations and expand their reach. The Bridgespan Group provided guidance to Liz Thompson as she was getting The 1954 Project off the ground, and conducts a strategic assessment of each Luminary organization after they are selected to help them identify strengths and weaknesses and chart a path into the future.
The 1954 Project is funded by Liz and Don Thompson, and other large education funders have stepped up, too. The Walton Family Foundation has been a longtime supporter; it joined The CAFE Group in providing original seed funding. Other funders include the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation.
Along the way, The 1954 Project has elevated Black education leaders and opened funding doors for their organizations, which, like other Black-led nonprofits, typically struggle to attract philanthropic backing. A 2020 report by the Bridgespan Group and Echoing Green found that the revenues of early stage Black-led organizations are 24% smaller than those of white-led organizations. In terms of unrestricted funding, Black-led organizations receive 76% less than their white counterparts.
The 1954 Project seeks to tip those scales. In a recent case study, Bridgespan outlined the project’s goal: “To upend the chronic underinvestment in Black-led organizations, The 1954 Project seeks to radically redesign how philanthropy connects with Black leaders in education.”
Creating proximity, building community
How, exactly, is The 1954 Project redesigning how philanthropy connects with Black leaders in education? For Liz Thompson, it’s been a deliberate process of creating connections and introducing funders to promising Black-led organizations.
Thompson acknowledges that entrenched racism may contribute to funders’ hesitancy when it comes to funding Black-led organizations, but she also believes it’s a matter of familiarity. “Yes, racism is deeply embedded in our nation's culture,” Thompson said. “But the other thing I know for certain is that we don't know each other at the level that I would like us to, and that is part of the reason that investments in Black-led organizations can be seen as riskier than investments in other organizations. … [Author and human rights lawyer] Bryan Stevenson has helped us understand that proximity matters. I think that proximity, or lack thereof, is sometimes very, very challenging for funders.”
Like most of us, funders may not elect to step out of their comfort zone — in this case, their familiar networks — to take a chance on a group they don’t know. In many cases, that group might not even be in a funder’s line of sight. The 1954 Project is elevating the education leaders selected as Luminaries, as well as other organizations they come across in the course of their work.
“Whether it’s because we see less risk where others see more risk, or it's because we have channels and networks of people that trust us and bring this work to our attention — whatever the case may be, we are getting introduced to leaders that others may not be,” Thompson said. “We feel like that is a tremendous value add that we're providing to the philanthropic landscape.”
As Thompson told Bridgespan, one of the strongest indicators of success was when one of The 1954 Project’s largest funding partners told the group that 40% of the grantees they’ve selected were never on the funder’s radar.
The 1954 Project’s annual Network Summit is all about proximity. “This is where we bring all of the members of the 1954 network together,” Thompson said. “We bring them together with our funders — not just the people that have funded us, but the people that we would like to fund us, and the people who may never fund us but have philanthropy at their core.” The summit creates space for casual meetings and conversations between funders, Black educators and others to create connections, share information and spark ideas.
“We want funders to understand the genius of these leaders, who are coming up with solutions that address the very problems that many of the philanthropists seek to have impact on,” Thompson said. “Once you get to know the people doing this work, you cannot help but be blown away by how creatively they approach the challenges, and how much they lend their life experiences to create solutions.”
“Learn alongside us”
Getting the nod from The 1954 Project has helped open the funding spigot for many of The 1954 Project Luminaries. “When we launched, there wasn't any other organization in the nation that was awarding seven-figure, transformational, unrestricted grants to Black-led organizations,” Thompson said. “Fast forward to now, and I can point to two or three organizations that are doing it.”
Aimée Eubanks Davis, the CEO of Braven, who was in the first cohort of Luminaries, later received a $11 million grant from MacKenzie Scott. And Jerelyn Rodriguez, co-founder and CEO of The Knowledge House, raised $5 million in her first year as a Luminary — more than she had ever raised for her organization. Thompson also pointed to a recent $40 million initiative by the Ballmer Group, Echoing Green and New Profit to target the funding gap for Black-led organizations. “Our work has been catalytic on so many fronts, and we're very proud of the impact that we've had across this landscape,” she said.
The 1954 Project doesn’t just create funding opportunities, it strives to provide a community for Luminaries past and present and other education leaders — even those who are not selected as grantees. Applicants don’t just get a rejection letter if they are not chosen; instead, The 1954 Project provides feedback, and in many cases, encourages them to apply again. Thompson and her staff also work to put applicants in touch with other potential funders.
As Verneé Green, CEO of Mikva Challenge and a Luminary finalist, told Bridgespan, “You think of an award as a one-time thing, and you think of a network as a lifetime family. I wasn’t expecting a network — I was expecting to win a prize and get some money. But this is really about making the work we do better and stronger, because I am standing in community with other leaders across the country who will help advance the critical mission of our work. I am not doing that by myself, now.”
Still, Thompson would like to be able to do more, and is hoping more funders will broaden their portfolios to include Black-led education organizations. The 1954 Project has to turn away far more organizations than they can fund; each year, they’ve received more applications, making selecting each year’s cohort from the flood of qualified applicants increasingly difficult.
“It is challenging to see so much good work happening and only be able to recognize so few of them in the way that we do,” said Thompson. “That’s why we are hoping to attract more philanthropic partners to help us advance this work even more.”
Thompson sees the work as a learning journey for everyone involved. She pointed to the partnership with Schusterman Family Philanthropies. “One reason we are so excited to be working with them is that we have a joint learning agenda,” she said. “Schusterman is committed to equity in philanthropy in the same way that we are, so we want to learn together. As we go out and try to attract more partners, that's one of the things we're leading with now: ‘Come and learn alongside us.’”
