Two Ways to Move Capital This Black Philanthropy Month

Black Philanthropy Month started with a simple, radical idea: Black communities have always been philanthropic, pooling what they had long before anyone called it that. Mutual aid societies, burial societies, church building funds, rotating credit circles. Giving wasn’t an event. It was infrastructure for surviving and building at the same time.

That history asks a real question of modern philanthropy: Are donors giving in a way that matches the scale of what Black communities have already been doing for generations, or are they still writing checks and calling it enough?

Grants and Investments: Two Ways to Direct Capital

Tides Foundation donors have two distinct tools for moving capital toward Black economic power, and they work on different timelines. 

Grants move fast. Tides Foundation donors direct grants to nonprofits doing the work right now: legal defense, direct services, organizing, advocacy. Grantmaking meets urgent need with urgent capital. 

Impact investing moves differently. It’s patient capital, structured to compound. When a donor’s invested dollars sit inside a fund that’s building a business, financing a housing developer, or capitalizing a lender, that capital keeps working for years, not just for one grant cycle. These are two of the most direct levers Tides Foundation donors have, alongside other structures like fiscal sponsorship and donor advised funds. 

Most donors are fluent in the first lever and unfamiliar with the second. Black Philanthropy Month is a good moment to close that gap, because what the wealth-building work this month centers on — ownership, capital access, generational assets — is exactly what impact investing is built to do. 

The Opportunity Ahead in Impact Investing 

Capital allocators tend to route money through the relationships they already have. Consultants recommend managers they know. Institutions follow other institutions. That closed loop rewards proximity to existing networks more than it rewards results. 

Black-led fund managers have built real track records across private and public markets for decades. Many still don’t get a fair look, not because the performance isn’t there, but because the allocators making decisions aren’t looking closely enough, or aren’t looking at all. 

Grantmaking has spent years building rigor around equity: application processes, community accountability, and participatory reviews. Impact investing hasn’t caught up. A fund can call itself values-aligned and never get checked against that claim. 

The Tides 50: A Closer Look 

The impact investing team at Tides built the Tides 50 to bring that same rigor to manager selection. The Tides 50 is a curated list of investment managers evaluated by Tides for investment strategy, organizational strength, and commitment to real social and environmental outcomes, across categories from housing and healthcare to climate, technology, and financial inclusion. 

Tides applies the same lens to every manager under consideration. A manager doesn’t advance because of who they know. A manager advances because the underlying fund fundamentals and impact practices shared by the fund manager hold up. 

The Tides 50 is a resource, not a recommendation or a solicitation for investments. Tides’ Impact Investment team built it for informational purposes: to give donors a more complete view of the field, not to solicit investment in any specific fund or tell anyone where to put their money.

What the Tides 50 does is make the field more visible. When donors and their advisors have a fuller picture of who’s building strong, well-run impact funds, capital has a better chance of reaching managers who’ve been doing strong work without the visibility to match, closing a gap that’s historically kept capital from reaching Black-led managers at scale. 

What This Means for Black Philanthropy Month 

Black Philanthropy Month isn’t asking donors to choose between grants and investments. It’s asking them to use both, deliberately, at the same time. 

A Tides Foundation donor can direct a grant to an organizing effort this quarter and, in the same sitting, they can ask their advisor how their invested dollars are allocated and whether that allocation reflects the same values driving their grantmaking. One dollar meets urgent need. The other builds toward capital access that outlasts any single campaign or news cycle. 

This month is a good time to ask. Explore mission-aligned impact investing in the Tides 50 to see the breadth of managers building toward a more equitable economy, and talk to your advisor about what your own invested capital is already doing. 

See what’s possible with the Tides 50.

 

Although Tides reasonably believes the information provided about each fund manager is accurate, all fund information reviewed by Tides has been provided by the respective fund or fund manager and has not been independently verified by Tides. The Tides 50 is for informational purposes only and is not a solicitation to participate in securities offerings and is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Inclusion in the Tides 50 is not an endorsement of any fund, fund manager, or fund portfolio company. Tides is not compensated by any funds for their inclusion in the Tides 50; however, certain Tides Donor Advised Funds have ownership interests in certain of the funds included on the Tides 50. Tides is not an investment advisor, a broker-dealer, or otherwise qualified to provide investment advice. Please consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions.