From EDI to Pie in the Sky: What’s Wrong With Attempts to Solve Systemic Anti-Black Racism?

Mide Akerewusi • February 16, 2022

I’m about to leave town. I am going on a well deserved break. By the time I return, Black History Month will be over. I plan on having fun. My flight is boarding. Before I go, I want to get something off my chest. It’s something that has been bugging me since I first heard about it in 2021, and it was recently confirmed by Canada’s Ministry of Housing, Diversity and Inclusion.

No doubt, to coincide with Black History Month, the government recently put out a call for concepts for a $200-million Black-led Philanthropic Endowment Fund. All good so far, you may be thinking; how generous; that’s a lot of money; at last; Black people deserve this. Well, not quite!

Here’s where some may view me as ungrateful and downright hard to please. Perhaps I am, but there’s validity to my thoughts. The Brits say, one should never look a gift horse in the mouth. But some gift horses do warrant scrutiny. And this is one of them.

This rising conscious moment of EDI geared towards Black people was globally ignited by a brutal dehumanising act that followed millions of brutal dehumanising acts towards Black people in North America, South America, the Caribbean, Europe, and the African Continent throughout our history. Much damage has been done and much is needed to restore our universal civil rights. How those rights are restored is up for debate, some say training for white people, some say reparations, some say confronting, some say funding. I say Black economic empowerment is the best solution. But what happens when a $200 million EDI fund wears the cloak of Black economic empowerment, but may actually disempower Black people?

This fund is the result of government thinking. It probably began with the question, "what can we do to make Black People in Canada happy, and if not happy, then maybe show them we care – a bit?"

The answer came with a word salad of a call that is as lofty as it is vague:

“This call seeks to innovate ideas from Black communities to ensure the Fund meets their expectations and addresses the unique challenges they face…Announced in Budget 2021, the Fund is dedicated to supporting Black-led charities and organizations serving youth and social initiatives and will create a sustainable source of funding to improve the social and economic outcomes in Black communities.”

In other words, we don’t know precisely what this fund may fund, but we hope it benefits Black people to do whatever it is Black people do with funding – social initiatives serving youth, addressing challenges and all that good jazz.

The pledge of $200 million to Black people is a lovely idea, until we look deeply into the horse's cakehole. Without meaning to sound harsh, my idea is to scrap the idea of a Black Philanthropic Endowment Fund altogether! There, I said it! Why did I say it? Well here are three reasons and fundamental flaws that confront this fund when it is eventually awarded:

1. The Math Does Not Work

There are 1.2 million Black people in Canada possibly even more if we consider undocumented people. In theory, if this $200 million fund is shared equally among us, every Black person in Canada would potentially end up with $166 each. But hold on, there’s a catch. That $166 will not be placed directly into our hands. No, it will go to a privileged investor who will tuck it into his/her/their investment portfolio and dole out (if we are lucky) 5% of our $166 per year, infinitum. That’s a whopping $8.30 for we lucky Black people every year. Let’s not spend it all at once. It will likely be another year before the next twelve and a half cents will come our way. Supposing we have a repeat of 1981 when Canada’s Black population grew by 596 per cent? I can’t do the math on that, but I bet it equates to less than a penny for each of us on average.

2. It Creates Competition Instead of Collaboration

Audre Lorde put it best when she said, “In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower.” In the Black community, we are all too familiar with the effect of divisions within our community. Black people needed to be divided during times of slavery, so they would not conspire against the interests of slave owners. Colonization of the African continent occurred through a system of divisions between people groups and tribes that were pitted against each other. It’s not lost on me that this fund is established by the Ministry of “Inclusion” with criteria that creates competition and exclusion. It has all the traits of divide and conquer. In this winner takes all euro-centric approach to gift giving there can only be one “victor” and there must inevitably be “losers”. In an effective EDI framework, the idea would surely be to prioritize true equity, diversity and inclusion using a collectivised approach to administer the fund so that the community as a whole wins, not just one organization. This is what community-centric fundraising is all about.

3. It Lacks Imagination and Ambition

As a Black tax-payer in Canada, I am miffed as to why the Canadian government would essentially immobilize a $200 million fund through an endowment, when the interventions sought by the Black community are so immediate, so urgent and so long in coming. We know that the urgency of economic empowerment runs contrary to the drop-by-drop intention of an endowment. We need imaginative investments that can accelerate the pace of progress.

An immediate cash fund with the intention to invest in projects that catalyze the most ingenious ideas for community transformation and economic empowerment would be fantastic. Our communities need jobs, access to credit, and the dismantling of racist systems that the government itself constructed. A few such imaginative approaches would be to support Black people to own their homes, acquire tax credits to overcome systemic ant-Black racism, and for Black students to clear loan debt.

To my mind, this endowment fund needs some re-imagining. It is a reflection of some institutional approaches to EDI. Often EDI ideas seem great as they are conceptualized, however, all such ideas must bear further scrutiny before turning them into practice.

EDI is not about gimmicks and sound bites; pie in the sky or bluster. EDI is about honestly staring at the problem and collaboratively working with communities to affect solutions that are authentic and not tokenistic; ethno-centric and not purely euro-centric; immediate, rather than long-term.

I hear the final call for boarding. I’ll end my thoughts by stepping down from my soap box and wishing you a wonderful Black History Month, along with the challenge to re-imagine your EDI strategy so that it is more contemplative and ambitious. Thereby closer to the transformation we all want to see.

.S. Please forgive my typos and grammar!

What's Trending? Black Climate Action

By Mide Akerewusi • September 30, 2026

Dreams do come true. On the eve of the Giving Black Virtual Conference and Soirée, I am reflecting on my learning journey since planning our incredible gathering. This is literally a dream come true. I had thought about a climate action conference that tells the varying histories and stories of Black and Indigenous people as stewards of land, sea and air, and here we are. As we enter the Fall, I'm considering climate action in the context of the things I knew nothing about but learned on the way as a convenor of this important Black climate action discussion. July was a memorable month. My long-time friend from London, Englan d, Chris East BSc hons MCIOF was visiting Toronto for a conference. We met on July 15, on a day when the sky turned orange and the air became thick with smoke. Wildfires burning across northwestern Ontario had sent smoke hundreds of kilometres south, filling Toronto’s air with fine-particle pollution. For much of that morning and afternoon, Toronto sat at the top of global air-quality rankings. I tried to convince my friend that this was not a typical day in Toronto but we both feared it may become a trend.

The Black Male Work-Experience

By Mide Akerewusi • August 24, 2026

My Friend and Brother Julius Lindsay (he/him) a gifted and talented Climate Action expert posted a message that deeply resonated with me this morning. Here it is and below is my response: Julius Lindsay (he/him) Orginal Message... I recently had a meeting with a colleague who congratulated me on the stuff they had seen on here of all I have been up to this year.I've been bus y: moderating, panels, writing, winning awards. I've been doing a lot. By a lot of standards I've been winning, literally and figuratively. My feed looks great.And yet I am still unemployed. Contract work has been hard to find. Grants for projects have been hard to come by. I'm worried about my financial situation.I had a Black colleague say they thought I was too slick to experience harm and racism. Probably partially driven by that ongoing winning in my feed.And yet I have had some really traumatic experiences in this work, some of them play out in public spheres (if you've been here a while, you've seen some of them). I feel like as a Black person its impossible to avoid them. And their weight endures years after they happen.This is the duality of working in the this field, existing in this time, social media vs. real life. The internal and external struggles not always showing up, the shiny things being most visible.I'm doing my best to do what I can to figure things out and get to a better place. But it's hard, especially on days when the sky is orange.I don't have some grand declaration at the end of this post. Don't take this as a cry for help (although help is appreciated!) but just as a quiet reminder that visibility isn't reality and people might be struggling more than you think. Check on YOUR people. Mide (Olumide) Akerewusi, B.Sc., M.Sc. (Econ), CSR-P, CDEP. Response.... Bro! Thanks for sharing. You are one of the most gifted Climate Action experts I know, and I have HUGE admiration for you. There is never a time we meet that I don’t leave FAR BETTER informed than I was before. Your contribution to the Climate Action landscape has totally changed my mindset and that of several others in our community! Our sector is fortunate to have you. And I feel that we are all genuinely in awe of your awesomeness. Could it be that while we personally struggle, others do too? But perhaps our struggles as Black men in various sectors are compounded, and complicated by the systems we work in, and the skin we are in, and what that skin represents, and how we are perceived and treated? The propensity to have our work trivialized, reduced, erased, and othered, viewed as less-than, and inconsequential, something that the mainstream can survive without and does not need; is so thick, I sometimes feel as though I can cut it with a knife and serve it as a bitter dish! For sure we experience success. It's not all doom and gloom. But Black success seems to have a short life-span in comparison. We are cameos, seldom ever the bright burning stars of this rolling movie... What Happens When We Feel The Pinch? What happens when we all feel the economic pinch? For sure, some feel it more than others, especially Black, Indigenous, and intersectional folks. Perseverance is our only choice! Giving up is not an option. When hardship becomes too hard to bear, we need people around us to provide that extra level of support. I love support because at its best, it has mutual benefit. But we need more of it because what we carry requires more energy. Do you know what I mean? Unicorn Black Men And Universal Issues Brother, I’ve had loads of conversations about the importance of Black and Indigenous voices in the Climate Action space, since focusing this year's Giving Black Conference on this issue. And I’m often met with curiosity about why such a distinct voice is even necessary. There seems to be an indifference within the climate sector towards racialization, while across the broader non-profit sector there is still inertia about how deeply climate affects our collective health, artistic, sporting, social and economic wellbeing. When we turn up in our Blackness, things are sometimes not viewed in the same way. You, my brother (along with many other Black men in the sector - including me), are somewhat of a Unicorn. And Unicorns are not always easy to mainstream - especially in times of collective crisis. Admirers, Admirers, Everywhere, And Not A Job In Sight Despite our many admirers, we remain on the periphery of full acceptance/integration into the systems of Contracts, RFP's, Engagements, and Paid Work. We are are often remote from consistent opportunity! I hear you when you speak about the difficulty of navigating this moment as a Black man in the sector. It’s real, for REAL, and I respect you for making the distinction between accolades and active employment. They are poles apart! I’ve experienced it too. People tell me how successful I am. Ironically, this "success", sometimes, I think, is due to my activism, which in and of itself comes at a price. It's one thing to have an opinion and a position on a principled or divisive issue, and exercise ones liberty to share it with others. It's quite another thing to get work thereafter! Speak and be damned! The Need For Tremendous Leadership I've said many times, our sector has a habit of avoiding the realities we face. We need inner strength to truly fight for what we believe. If we shy from impacting the world, the world will most certainly impact us. Surely, this is the echoing call of Climate Experts such as yourself. And this is an area that requires tremendous leadership - standing up for what we know to be right - despite the price/cost to us personally. And no doubt there must be a price and cost to the equity we pursue. Freedom Ain't Free! Awards, likes and re-shares continue, while meaningful action, employment and practical solutions remain elusive to Black folks in our sector. These are weekly conversations I have had with many people in my network, since the licence to abandon any thought of equity was granted, more than a year ago. There's som ething so necessary and yet so disposable about Black thought these days. This is a conversation I had with our Sister Sade Dozan, CAP®, CFRE on a recent podcast discussion. We Need REAL Solutions That’s exactly why we need to get into these conversations, rather than avoid them. Once again, thank you for sharing such a powerful message, that immediately stirred an emotional and concerning response within me. I'll join you in looking for real solutions that support our perseverance and maybe even changes our respective landscapes. It seems to me that we have many more years of concern to come. One solution is to convene and work things out collectively, rather than separately. I am game if you are. All are welcome to DM me if you agree.... Have Zoom, will set up!

Black Philanthropy Month Is Here, And It's Here To Stay.

By Mide Akerewusi • August 7, 2026

Happy Black Philanthropy Month (BPM)! As part of agentsC’s multi-year association with BPM, this month, I'm re-exploring The Duality of Giving , reflecting on the rise and reach of African philanthropy as a global phenomenon, and considering what it means for the future of giving. This article is an invitation to join me in discovering the unprecedented rise and recognition of African philanthropy as a force for social and environmental transformation in our world today, not just for one month but for all the months. Before our opinions have a chance to form, we must first be curious. I'd like many more of my peers to be both curious about and interested in Black philanthropy, because I believe it is a gateway to understanding the future of generosity and to supporting us as we change and adapt our fundraising practices. Black Philanthropy and Afrocentric fundraising are practices we should all be stakeholders and investors in. What should we know and how can we identify opportunities to engage people of African ancestry on their terms as they practice traditional Western forms of philanthropy, while also demonstrating the uniqueness of a totally African interpretation of generosity? African philanthropy is one of the world's most generous, and least recognized giving traditions. Firstly, we can pay attention. Secondly, we can document. Thirdly, we can amplify what we see. There are a multitude of global stories , statistics , and surveys that signify contemporary African philanthropy as one of the world's most unique and prolific forms of giving. So why do so few fundraising, philanthropic, and financial services organizations have programs curated around African/Black philanthropic culture? Part of the answer is inertia: fundraising continues to be taught around traditional Western practices. The major gift, direct marketing, capital campaign, and named endowments. African traditions like giving circles, mutual aid, remittances, Ubuntu, Harambee, and Stockvel are not built into fundraising or financial services training. There's also a visibility problem. The evidence of the power of Black philanthropy exists in academic journals and global giving indices, but rarely reaches the rooms where fundraising strategy actually gets written. Our current definition of "best practice" is really “Western Practice”, and this needs to change as the demographics of our populations become more diverse. Its growth and global giving indices and stories rarely reach fundraising strategy and practice During Black Philanthropy Month, Black folks all over the world are collectively acknowledging ourselves as among the most generous people on the planet , including in the USA , where the highest levels of cash donations reside. BPM follows July, where the Black Feminist Fund marked its fifth anniversary, for the first time, in London UK. On September 2, I’ll be delivering a keynote video at the IFC Pop-Up, Cape Town , where African fundraisers will network, share, and be equipped with tools for fundraising leadership on the continent and around the world. Fast Forward to October 1, agentsC Inc. will launch our sixth annual Giving Black Conference and Soirée . You are invited! As someone who grew up in a Black community surrounded by abundant examples of African and Caribbean generosity, I often reflect on what philanthropy means to me. I describe philanthropy in African terms as, a reciprocal exchange of generosity, rather than transactional support from one to the other or pity for someone else. Admittedly philanthropy practiced by people of African ancestry can be like most other cultural philanthropies, paradoxical: seemingly worlds apart , and at other times definitively rooted at home . And yet, it’s our job to try to better understand what we are seeing and to try to shape and inform its direction. We should recognize, document, and amplify Black philanthropy all year round Let’s acknowledge that we are at the dawn of a new era of generosity in Black culture. One that can both fund and underpin our desire to improve our world. African approaches to generosity are both ancestral and contemporary. They deserve a rightful place of belonging in the many global narratives about giving. The Duality of Giving shows us that such is the generosity of African people that we support on average six causes a year including our donations to charities, family, friends, and faith groups. We can do so much more to harness this scale of giving that is continually growing and already at unrivalled and unprecedented levels. To begin, let’s stem the paucity of curiosity, let’s all tell our stories, let’s delve into the research, then let’s get practical by building and testing Afrocentric donor programs, bringing our fundraising practices into the realities of the universality of cultural diversity in the 21st century. If you'd like to know more about Black Philanthropy Month, Giving Black, Black Philanthropy, or Afrocentric fundraising programs, you can DM me at mide@agentsC.ca to request a conversation. Happy Black Philanthropy Month… I am Black Philanthropy…I am Excited! Olumide Akerewusi. 🖤 🖤🖤

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