TDNet Discover

The purpose of this phenomenological study is to examine the effects of the funding gap on Black-led nonprofits and provide innovative solutions to disrupt the disproportionate and discriminatory infrastructure that continues to impede the outcomes for Black-led nonprofits (Neubauer et al., 2019). The silencing around the broken funding infrastructure in America’s nonprofit space and its causal impact on Black-led nonprofits in disenfranchised communities is palpable (Dewey, 2026). The goal of the capstone is to amplify the voices of Black nonprofit leaders and white philanthropists who believe in redesigning the giving gap to create a more equitable funding infrastructure (Bentley, 2026). The central phenomena of the study is Black nonprofit leaders (Simms, 2024). The quantitative and qualitative data identified for both groups excavate an imbalanced funding system that Black nonprofit leaders incur, some white philanthropists are eager to dismantle, and others have intentionally ignored (Ceasar et al., 2024). For the utility of this study, Black-led nonprofits will be defined as organizations with Black leaders at the helm, who depend on charitable donations from white philanthropists to facilitate the work they conduct in disenfranchised communities (Logan & Feit, 2024). Francis Bacon’s inductive theoretical framework is utilized to create a structured approach to problems from an inquiry-based lens, embracing observation and experimentation, to derive generalizations about the funding gap (Belkind, 2021). The framework is rigorous, data-driven, and interrogative (Bishop, 2021). It is an exploratory, bottom-up research phenomena, using empirical information to develop patterns and relies heavily on interviews, focus groups, and personal data approaches to build the nucleus of a theory and generate new theories.