Black Philanthropy Month at Black Alphabet

August is Black Philanthropy Month, and it has us thinking about where we started. Black Alphabet NFP began in 2013 with a conversation about how rarely Black LGBTQ+ people saw themselves in media. That conversation became the Black Alphabet Film Festival (BAFF)—Chicago’s first Black LGBTQ+ film festival, and the seed of everything we’ve done since.

The festival turned out to be a beginning, not the whole thing. In the years since, we’ve used media and the arts to push for social equity: telling stories that don’t get told elsewhere, educating the public, and making rooms where Black LGBTQ+ people can do their work. Our Artist-In-Residence initiative, wellness retreats, and art therapy sessions give people space to explore and express who they are—and to take mental health and community healing seriously, in company.

Black Philanthropy Month, a global celebration of Black giving, lands differently for us this year. The month honors our history, sure—but it also points at what collective action can still do, right now. For Black Alphabet, giving has always been part of the mission: it’s how the work stays funded, and how we leave something behind for the Black LGBTQ+ artists and activists coming after us.

This year, under Black Philanthropy Month’s theme of “Afro-Futures of Giving,” we’re putting our energy into two things:

• First, we’re joining the Chicago AIDS Walk/Run in partnership with the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. HIV touches our community directly. The walk raises money and attention for people living with the virus and people vulnerable to it, and every bit of support counts. Walk with us, donate, or tell somebody who might.

• Second, we’re working to grow our base of individual donors. Those gifts keep our Collective Artist-In-Residence program running, and the residency puts real resources in the hands of Black LGBTQ+ creatives. When the artists are funded, the stories get told—in our own words, on our own terms.

Black Philanthropy Month celebrates a long tradition of Black-led giving and what that giving has built in communities like ours. It’s also a reminder that the work isn’t finished. Join us—by showing up to our programs, donating now to support our fundraising efforts, or telling people about the work we do.

Black Philanthropy Month exists because Dr. Jackie Bouvier Copeland founded it. The best way we know to honor her, and the tradition she named, is to act on it.

Black Alphabet is a Chicago-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose mission is to promote social equity awareness and education in all aspects of life for the Black LGBTQ+/SGL community through the use of media and the arts. All donations are tax-deductible.