An open letter to MacKenzie Scott, philanthropist who made a seven-figure investment in MMI in 2021.

Dear Ms. Scott,

What do you say to someone whose investment and commitment to trust Black leaders has changed the game for over a dozen organizations and thousands of young people with one gift? If this ever reaches you, I’d like to spend a moment talking about not just gratitude and impact, but feelings.

I’m sure you know, as countless studies and think pieces have quantified, that Black nonprofit leaders very rarely get the investments of capital we need to scale great work. We see white leaders repeatedly getting six- and seven-figure gifts while we use our time scrambling to cobble together low-level gifts into a real budget. It’s extraordinarily difficult, but beyond that, it can be demoralizing, humiliating, and disempowering. There is a primal discomfort in knowing that you are doing true engagement work, but that you will never have the instant credibility or resources of the “legacy organizations” or the white and well connected. You are faced with a stark reminder that the systemic racism that informs our work also invades our work. We stand in front of young people affirming that they can move mountains with their greatness, then we close the door and tap dance for a $15,000 grant that won’t cover half of one position.

Through the pandemic, as we worked hard to retool our programming and be responsive to youth voice and youth needs, we spent a lot of time and energy worrying about fundraising. We tried to stick to our principles and not chase funding that did not align with our strategies or values. We are committed to disruptive philanthropy in our own organization; it’s hard to make decisions to engage with what we consider to be harmful philanthropic practice just to keep the lights on. In all honesty, it feels like we are selling our integrity and swallowing our tongue by not speaking truth to power. We know we need money to better serve the young people in our community, who deserve world-class music engagement programming and creative liberation. But too often, we feel obligated to chase low-dollar/high-bureaucracy funding that feels performative and inauthentic to our values.

So many nonprofit organizations are caught in this starvation cycle, but the statistics tell us that the financial disparities are greatest in nonprofit work led by people of color.

So, with this high-dollar unrestricted pool you provided, we can breathe. We can dream. We can invest in other Black- and brown-led work, because these leaders absolutely deserve the same sense of freedom. We can use our energy to shape new programming, instead of watching legacy organizations continue to be fed by a machine that privileges them. We can rest. This is what we really need.

On the day that I received word of this extraordinary gift, the governor of Tennessee was moving forward with legislation to ban “critical race theory,” as later defined in the law, any discussion of the notion that “…a meritocracy is inherently racist or sexist…” or that an “…individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, is inherently privileged….” So the state wants us out here codifying that the disparities our young people see with their own eyes in their own communities are their fault and that neither race nor sex factor into the great American meritocracy. Your dollars to give our young people support in understanding systems of oppression and using music and art, as they have been used for generations, to unify us in solidarity to break false narratives and speak truth to power, could not have come at a better time.

I hope you are able to see in our 2022 Call and Response initiative that we are out here, speaking our truth, funding what we believe in, and moving towards a strategic plan to do nothing less than create a revolution in Black arts funding for youth. We’re funding the things no one allows, like rest, and compensation, and long-term sustainability; and we’re using our creativity to shine a light on the absurd practices within the funding community through our video series. We bought our freedom with your investment, and now we’re on a mission to raise more dollars and get everybody else free. We don’t just want great programming and buildings and equitable pay — we want to be able to freely push all corners of these systems so that this kind of capital flows abundantly to the places it is needed most.

We humbly accept this gift, and would be remiss if we didn’t express how much it has catalyzed our dreams and renewed our spirits. This hit different — down to our souls. We are going to take this money and pour it into our young people, so that they are fortified to dream the biggest dreams possible and carve clear pathways leading to their goals. And we’ll be humming a tune of gratitude and unity as we do it.

Amber Hamilton

Executive Director

Memphis Music Initiative