Editor’s note: Baltimore Beat has fundraised through CLLCTIVGive.
Across generations, Black communities have pooled what we had to build churches, schools, businesses, freedom movements, and systems of care. We formed burial societies and building funds, mutual aid networks and susus. When institutions would not hold resources for us, we held them for one another.
We gave because our survival often depended on one another. We gave because our dreams did, too.
These traditions cannot be reduced to responses to scarcity and exclusion. They also grew from a deeper understanding: our lives are connected, and what we have comes with a responsibility to one another.
Communal care is not charity. It is a way of being, a form of infrastructure, and an economy built around our responsibility to one another.
It is how we have fed one another, raised children across households, cared for elders, protected our neighbors, built institutions, and imagined a future together. Giving was a practice of reciprocity, shared responsibility, and belonging.
CLLCTIVGive is grounded in this Black tradition of collective care, and it is a call to everyone who believes Baltimore’s future is a shared responsibility.
On Friday, August 7, more than 130 Black-led organizations across Greater Baltimore will participate in CLLCTIVGive, our annual 24-hour giving day. Our goal is to bring 20,000 people together to mobilize $2 million for organizations shaping the future of our region.
The number of people matters as much as the amount mobilized.
Too much of philanthropy is still organized around a small group of wealthy donors deciding which communities, organizations, and ideas are worthy of investment.
CLLCTIVGive asks a different question: What becomes possible when thousands of people see themselves as participants in shaping Baltimore?
A gift may feel modest on its own. Joined with thousands of others, it becomes a public statement about what we value. It makes the work more visible and builds momentum.
Especially now, participation becomes power.
Institutions that once made public commitments to racial equity are narrowing, renaming, or abandoning them. This retreat is often framed as caution or neutrality. But there is nothing neutral about withdrawing support while Black-led organizations continue carrying the weight of unmet needs.
The work has not become less urgent. Institutions have simply become less willing to stand behind what they said they believed.
We must demand institutional accountability while continuing to invest in our communities.
Community giving cannot replace public investment, foundation funding, corporate responsibility, or the large-scale capital Black-led organizations deserve. It should never become cover for institutions doing less.
But we are not going to wait for them to rediscover their courage before supporting the people already holding Baltimore together.
When I think about what care looks like in practice, I think of Rev. Heber Brown III and the Black Church Food Security Network. I have witnessed them connect Black churches, farmers, and families, turning congregational land, kitchens, and relationships into infrastructure for feeding communities and circulating resources.
Their work makes clear that care must be built before a crisis and sustained over time.
Across Baltimore, Black-led organizations are doing this every day. They mentor young people, preserve culture, feed families, support entrepreneurs, help neighbors remain housed, heal trauma, interrupt violence, protect our environment, and organize for justice.
They are present before a crisis becomes news and long after the cameras leave.
Much of this work gets categorized as service, charity, or programming. Those labels can obscure what these organizations actually are: part of the infrastructure that makes community life possible.
What is an economy without care?
What does market growth mean if families remain unhoused, workers cannot afford to live, children go without what they need, and entire communities are denied the conditions to thrive?
A city can attract capital, build new developments, and celebrate economic growth while the material conditions of its people remain unchanged. That is not shared prosperity. It is growth without accountability.
The true measure of an economy is whether people have what they need to live with safety and dignity.
That is why care is the economy.
Black-led organizations carry cultural memory and local knowledge. They also hold the trust that makes collective response possible. That is value. Investing in these organizations strengthens the relationships and systems that allow communities to care for one another.
CLLCTIVLY grew from questions I carried out of the 2015 Baltimore Uprising.
I witnessed grassroots leaders and residents create safe spaces, feed families, organize jail support, and move resources with an urgency formal institutions often could not match.
What became clear to me was simple: Baltimore already had Black leadership, community knowledge, and people willing to act. What we lacked were systems built to recognize, connect, trust, and resource that leadership before the next crisis.
The deeper question was how to create the conditions in which Black-led organizations could remain connected and build lasting power.
CLLCTIVGive is one response.
Last year, the giving day mobilized more than $1.2 million in 24 hours for over 130 Black-led organizations. For three consecutive years, it has moved more than $1 million into community-rooted work in a single day.
Those numbers matter. But the deeper work is building a culture of collective stewardship.
Communities do not experience life issue by issue. Housing is connected to health. Education is connected to food access. Art, safety, employment, healing, and belonging are all connected.
The organizations responding to these realities form an ecosystem, whether philanthropy recognizes it or not.
CLLCTIVGive helps make that ecosystem visible. Residents discover organizations working in their own neighborhoods. Donors begin to see connections across the work. Organizations build relationships with people who may continue supporting them.
CLLCTIVGive is not asking Baltimore to rescue Black-led organizations. It is asking Baltimore to recognize, resource, and follow leadership that is already here.
CLLCTIVGive takes place during Black Philanthropy Month and Black August. Both remind us that Black freedom has always depended on how we care for one another, move resources, preserve memory, and build power.
The giving day also falls during Black Business Month. That matters because we cannot talk about generosity without talking about ownership, labor, and the circulation of resources through our communities.
We must follow the resources beyond the gift. Where do they go next? Whose labor is valued? Who owns the assets? Who has the power to decide? Does investment continue to circulate through the community, or does it leave as quickly as it arrives?
What We Are Building Toward
We will close the day with GIVE WITH: A CLLCTIVGive Celebration at the Baltimore Museum of Industry because place matters.
Baltimore’s industrial history is inseparable from Black labor, creativity, organizing, and enterprise. We will gather in a place shaped by that labor while honoring the people building what comes next.
The celebration will turn the museum’s two theaters into spaces for Black memory and imagination. One will feature CLLCTIVLY’s “Baltimore Legacy of Black Liberation” short films, honoring the people and movements that shaped the city’s freedom struggle. The other will feature “Power of One: Black Futures Cypher,” bringing together original music and film from 28 artists imagining what comes next.
The evening’s inspiration is summer dandyism. Black style has long expressed dignity, resistance, and the freedom to define ourselves. Joy is part of the work of liberation. It reminds us what freedom is for.
On August 7, I am asking people across Greater Baltimore to discover an organization they did not know about, give at a level that is meaningful to them, and invite someone else to participate.
Engaging 20,000 people and mobilizing $2 million are ambitious goals. The goal is to bring more people into relationship with the organizations already holding Baltimore together.
Baltimore knows how to mobilize money for what it decides matters. Black-led organizations should not have to operate on scarcity while being asked to solve problems created by generations of disinvestment.
Institutions must keep their commitments. Philanthropy must move more capital and more trust. Government and business must invest at the scale Black-led organizations deserve.
And CLLCTIVGive adds one more expectation: each of us has a role.
We are not waiting for permission. We are not waiting for rescue. We are building.
Care is our economy. Baltimore’s future depends on whether we are willing to invest in it.
CLLCTIVGive takes place Friday, August 7. Supporters can discover participating organizations and give at givewith.org. The day concludes with GIVE WITH: A CLLCTIVGive Celebration at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. Tickets are available at tickets.givewith.org.
Jamye Wooten is a designer, organizer, and founder of CLLCTIVLY, a Baltimore-rooted social change organization strengthening the region’s Black social economy through narrative power, resource mobilization, and shared infrastructure.