What the Black Social Economy Teaches Philanthropy About Collective Care

Some of the most important lessons about economics, stewardship, and collective flourishing are found in how communities have cared for one another across generations.

For Black communities, collective care has always been inseparable from economic life. It has lived in mutual aid societies, family networks, and countless acts of reciprocity that often go unseen by traditional measures of economic value.

At a moment when philanthropy is searching for new approaches to move with trust, collective stewardship, shared agency and community power, the Black Social Economy offers a vital place to look.

The Black Social Economy as Collective Care

My work is rooted in strengthening what scholars have described as the Black Social Economy: the interconnected economic, social, cultural, and spiritual systems through which Black communities generate, circulate, and steward resources. These practices are grounded in longstanding traditions of kinship, reciprocity, and shared flourishing.

Black communities have long practiced another kind of economy, one in which relationships themselves hold value and care functions as infrastructure.

Dr. Caroline Shenaz Hossein coined the term “Black social economy.”  Drawing on her work and that of Drs. Elmer and Joanne Martin, we can understand these systems as economic formations rooted in mutual aid, solidarity, cooperation, and enterprise, both formal and informal. Hossein names them economies; the Martins illuminate the Black Helping Tradition as the moral and relational infrastructure that sustains them.

Together, their work helps us see that Black communities have always built economies shaped by relationship, obligation, mutual care, and shared responsibility.

Dominant economic frameworks too often reduce value to markets, transactions, and accumulation. But Black communities have long practiced another kind of economy, one in which relationships themselves hold value and care functions as infrastructure.

We see it everywhere:

in church kitchens feeding entire neighborhoods,

in aunties helping raise children across households,

in rotating savings circles and funeral collections,

in barbershops functioning as civic institutions,

and in neighbors becoming first responders to one another long before formal systems arrive.

These are not simply cultural practices surrounding the economy.

They are part of the economy itself.

This is where African worldviews such as Ubuntu, Sawubona, and Ujamaa become important, not simply as cultural concepts but as ways of understanding leadership, responsibility, and our relationship to one another.

Wealth was not meant to separate people from the community but to deepen their responsibility to it…to circulate in ways that sustained the community…not for a few to endlessly accumulate while others struggled to survive.

Ubuntu teaches us: I am because we are. It is an acknowledgment of shared humanity, dignity, and belonging, guided by a recognition that another person’s wellbeing is tied to our own.

Sawubona, often translated as “I see you” or “we see you,” is more than a greeting. In the teaching of philosopher, healer, and community organizer, Orland Bishop, Sawubona is an invitation into deep witnessing and presence. To truly see another person is to recognize the fullness they carry: their humanity, history, culture, ancestors, and possibilities. Each encounter holds mutual potential and obligation, a covenant to support one another’s becoming.

Ujamaa, often translated as familyhood, carries this understanding into economic life.

In Ujamaa: The Basis of African Socialism, Julius Nyerere argued that many African societies traditionally understood wealth relationally rather than individualistically. Wealth was not meant to separate people from the community but to deepen their responsibility to it. Resources were meant to circulate in ways that sustained the community. The purpose of society was not for a few to endlessly accumulate while others struggled to survive.

At its core, Ujamaa asks a simple but profound question:

What if we organized our economies the way we organize healthy families?

In healthy families, people do not eat while others starve.

Children are protected.

Elders are valued.

Care work matters.

Responsibility is shared.

Resources circulate according to need.

This is not charity.

It is collective care as social design.

Black communities have practiced versions of this for generations despite displacement, exclusion, and disinvestment. But these traditions should not be understood merely as reactions to oppression or mechanisms of survival.

People shared with one another not simply because survival demanded it, but because interdependence was understood as a core principle of community.

Philanthropy and the Question of Stewardship

Dominant institutions too often position themselves as the primary producers of expertise while overlooking the intellectual, cultural, and relational frameworks communities have carried for generations.

That reality becomes more striking alongside the racial wealth gap in the United States. Black families continue to hold a fraction of the wealth of white households, a gap that reflects generations of exclusion from land, banking, homeownership, education, and capital.

Yet Black Americans consistently contribute a greater proportion of their income to charitable causes, religious institutions, mutual aid efforts, and extended family networks than many other groups.

That points to something deeper than generosity.

It reflects an enduring ethic of collective responsibility.

This is one of the central tensions that philanthropy must grapple with.

Communities with comparatively fewer resources often practice extraordinary mutual aid and stewardship, while institutions established specifically for public benefit allocate resources cautiously, preserving endowments as communities navigate immediate crises.

At its root, philanthropy means “love of humanity.” Yet modern philanthropy too often becomes more focused on preserving institutions than on sustaining human flourishing.

The Black Social Economy asks whether communities thrive.

The endowment model asks how assets endure.

This does not make philanthropy unimportant. It has real potential to support ecosystem-level transformation. But doing so may require moving beyond transactional grantmaking toward relational stewardship.

What would it mean for philanthropy to trust communities the way communities trust one another?

What would it mean to practice the kind of deep witnessing that Orland Bishop names through Sawubona: to recognize the history, wisdom, culture, and possibility communities already carry, instead of approaching them primarily through needs, deficits, or institutional risk?

What would it mean to fund not only individual organizations but the ecosystems they live within, to resource what actually holds people together: the relationships, the networks, and the shared infrastructure?

What would it mean to recognize artists, organizers, faith institutions, healers, and neighborhood elders as essential civic actors?

Transformation rarely happens through isolated organizations.

It grows through networks of relationships, shared responsibility, and collective participation.

The Black Social Economy asks whether communities thrive.

These traditions continue to shape contemporary approaches to community building, resource sharing, and collective action. Whether expressed through giving circles, cooperative enterprises, faith communities, or place-based organizations, they reflect a common understanding: lasting change requires more than supporting individual institutions. It requires investing in the relationships, trust, and shared infrastructure that enable communities to solve problems together.

These traditions are not relics of the past. In Baltimore, I have witnessed them take contemporary form. Black-led organizations, community leaders, artists, entrepreneurs, and residents routinely share knowledge, move resources, and support one another beyond the boundaries of any single institution. They show what becomes possible when the conditions for connection and participation exist through community giving, collaborative learning spaces, and informal networks of care.

In my own work through CLLCTIVLY, these principles have shaped how we strengthen Baltimore’s Black social economy. Initiatives like CLLCTIVGive, a community-wide day of giving for Black-led organizations, alongside giving circles, leadership fellowships, and the emerging Kindred Abundance Fund, all rest on a simple belief: communities already hold extraordinary assets, wisdom, and capacity. Through CLLCTIVGive, communities across Greater Baltimore have mobilized and deployed more than $1 million annually for four consecutive years, demonstrating that ecosystems built on trust, participation, and collective stewardship can move resources at scale.

Social change rarely comes from a single institution acting alone. More often it emerges from communities that are connected, resourced, and trusted to steward their own futures.

What African Worldviews Teach Us About Regeneration

Many African worldviews understood life as regenerative and cyclical rather than endlessly extractive. In Kongo cosmology, existence moves through cycles of birth, growth, transition, and renewal. Life is sustained through balance, continuity, and relationship across generations.

That could not be more relevant in our own time, when much of our economy is organized around extraction without restoration—consuming people, communities, and ecosystems faster than they can heal.

A regenerative society thinks beyond quarterly returns and institutional preservation.

It asks whether future generations will inherit the conditions they need to flourish.

This is why collective care matters.

Social change rarely comes from a single institution acting alone. More often it emerges from communities that are connected, resourced, and trusted to steward their own futures.

Regeneration requires more than financial growth. It requires social trust, cultural continuity, reciprocal relationships, and communities with the capacity to replenish themselves across generations.

It is also why the practice of Sacred Memory feels so important. Guided in part by the wisdom of Dr. Itihari Toure, who journeys with CLLCTIVLY as an elder and teacher, Sacred Memory invites us to [re]member, reimagine, and restory ourselves beyond narratives of scarcity and deficit.

It reminds us that many of the solutions we seek are not new inventions but recoveries of the wisdom communities have carried across generations.

Care is not separate from the economy.

Care is the economy.

The Black Social Economy reminds us that economies are ultimately expressions of what we value, who we belong to, and how we choose to care for one another. It offers a vision of stewardship rooted not in extraction or accumulation, but in reciprocity, responsibility, and renewal.

Across many African traditions, the measure of a healthy society was never simply how much wealth it accumulated, but whether people were cared for, whether relationships endured, and whether future generations could thrive. This stance is starkly different than philanthropy’s work of simply focusing on how to redistribute wealth more effectively.

The question the Black Social Economy now puts to philanthropy: are we willing to cultivate the relationships, trust, and collective capacity that make thriving communities possible?