Pass the Plate

The last three posts I've written have been about building something sustainable:

→ You Need a Board

→ Moving Papers

→ Clarity Requires Loss

This week, I'm sharing a piece I wrote for The Penny Foundation about what it looks like to build infrastructure, not just for yourself, but for an entire community.

My friend Trelani talks often about collective imagining. I've been thinking a lot about that lately, and about what becomes possible when communities—across every divide—begin to trust and collaborate around the future of our young people.

This piece is about formalizing collective economics. About turning instinct into institutions. About creating systems that don't just serve this generation, but the ones coming after.

If you've been thinking about legacy, this might land differently.

From Giving Circles to HBCU Invitational: The Penny Foundation's Blueprint for Black Wealth in the Tech Era

By Elbi Elm, Director of Communications and Philanthropy

The Penny Foundation

Before donor-advised funds, fiscal sponsorships, and formal philanthropic institutions, Black communities understood collective economics.

We passed the plate.

We pooled money for tuition. Covered funeral costs. Helped families stay housed after difficult seasons. Funded churches, businesses, scholarships, organizing efforts, and neighborhood survival through relationships and collective responsibility.

The instinct was always there.

What was often missing was formalizing those traditions into permanent infrastructure designed to protect, scale, and reinvest collective resources across generations.

Today, across the country, a growing number of Black-led institutions are thinking beyond charity and toward ecosystem-building, creating structures that allow communities not only to circulate capital, but to govern it long term.

The Penny Foundation is one example of what that evolution can look like.

Founded as a giving circle, the organization has evolved into a broader philanthropic platform focused on Black economic mobility through three interconnected areas: donor-advised funds, fiscal sponsorships, and programming.

Together, those three pieces create something larger than a traditional nonprofit model.

Through donor-advised funds, individuals, families, and businesses can pool charitable dollars, receive immediate tax benefits, and direct long-term investments into causes and institutions they want to sustain over time. Instead of giving reactively, communities can build organized pools of capital capable of funding scholarships, nonprofits, workforce initiatives, and civic development across generations.

Through fiscal sponsorships, emerging organizations gain the ability to operate, raise funds, and build capacity before establishing independent nonprofit status. Ideas, partnerships, and community-driven initiatives are able to grow inside an existing institutional framework. Jahman Hill and Eric Marable Jr., co-founders of The Flourish Alabama, a youth arts program working with community members to build a Black Arts District in Ensley, are doing exactly that, developing under the foundation's fiscal sponsorship while building toward independent standing.

And through programming, the foundation invests directly into the development of future talent pipelines.

Its most visible example is The Penny Games.

As the nation's only multi-disciplinary HBCU invitational, The Penny Games brings students together across debate, business strategy, esports, and cybersecurity, fields increasingly tied to communication, emerging technology, digital production, artificial intelligence, and the future workforce.

The larger goal is exposure, access, and early visibility into industries that will shape economic power over the next several decades.

As artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and digital industries continue reshaping the workforce, early exposure to emerging technologies may become one of the most important economic advantages a community can create for the next generation.

The Penny Games is not separate from donor-advised funds and fiscal sponsorships. It sits downstream from them and eventually feeds back into them. Students become professionals. Professionals become donors, founders, and institutional leaders. Capital gets reinvested into new talent, new organizations, and new opportunities.

That model feels especially important at a moment when conversations around Black economic advancement are increasingly centered on ownership, technology, and sustainability.

Historically, communities have used philanthropic infrastructure to shape regional economies, fund universities, support innovation ecosystems, and sustain civic growth for generations. Black communities are continuing that tradition while building new models aligned with the future economy.

The question now is how many will formalize that power into institutions designed to build lasting economic infrastructure around opportunity itself?

Black communities are not only passing the plate. We are building institutions designed to hold it for generations. See you next week. 🥂