August is Black Philanthropy Month, and this episode is your kickoff.

Kaci Patterson has raised and leveraged over $86 million for Black-led organizations in California. She is the founder and chief architect of Social Good Solutions and the founder of the Black Equity Collective, an infrastructure that brings funders and communities together across 65 Black-led organizations working in 16 different issue areas in Los Angeles.

In this episode of Missions to Movements, Kaci and I talked about what it actually takes to fund an ecosystem rather than just an organization, why the nonprofit sector’s grantmaking structure drives competition when it should be driving collaboration, and what a piece of paper she found in her mother’s purse on the day she died has to do with $86 million and a career built entirely around purpose.

Take your time with this one.

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Who Is Kaci Patterson?

Kaci spent years as a senior executive at a mid-sized nonprofit before leaving in 2014 to start Social Good Solutions as a sole practitioner. The calculated risk came with a one-year window: her husband told her they would give it a go, and if it didn’t work out, she would find another job. Eleven years later, she has built one of the most distinctive practices in California philanthropy.

What she identified as missing in the sector was the perspective of Black women with both professional credibility and lived community experience who could translate between philanthropy and the nonprofit sector, and bridge the cultural divides that exist between them. That translation capacity is the foundation of everything Social Good Solutions does.

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The Difference Between Raising Money and Funding an Ecosystem

Most fundraising centers the individual organization: what does this specific nonprofit need to fund its programs, sustain its staff, and secure its future? That framing makes sense for the organization sitting across the table from a funder, but it leaves something important out.

No organization does its work in isolation. There is a natural ecosystem around every organization, made up of partners, peer organizations, and community relationships that make the work possible. When you fund only the individual organization without asking what its partners need, you can end up in a situation where one organization grows stronger while its collaborators grow weaker, and a strong organization with weak partners is not actually a stronger ecosystem.

Kaci learned this directly from the organizations she worked with through an initiative called the JIB Fund. They told her plainly: “We cannot be strong if our partners are not strong.” That reoriented the way she thinks about the entire enterprise of nonprofit ecosystem philanthropy.

Funding an ecosystem means asking a broader set of questions: what does this organization need, what do its partners need, what is the collective vision they are all moving toward, and how do we resource that shared direction in a way that gives each organization the agency to operate within its own expertise?

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Why Collaboration Is Harder Than Funders Admit

Funders tell community-based organizations to collaborate. They say it in RFPs, in convenings, in strategy documents. But the grantmaking structure itself drives competition, because grants produce winners and losers. For Black-led organizations, the stakes of that competition are especially high. Many exist as the one or the two Black-led organizations that get funded in their issue area. Smaller, grassroots, lesser-known organizations face real barriers to even being seen by funders, let alone funded.

Kaci’s observation is that people in community are natural collaborators. The competition is a product of the system, not the people. Changing the collaboration dynamic requires changing funder behavior first.

She has seen real movement on this in the past year. Pooled funds and funder collaboratives are not new, but the level of funder-to-funder collaboration she has witnessed recently is unlike anything she has seen before, driven by shared urgency and the recognition that the sector itself is under pressure. Funders who once told communities to collaborate are now doing it themselves.

“None of us will survive if we don’t work together and figure out how to collaborate through the chaos,” she said.

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How the Black Equity Collective Came to Be

The Black Equity Collective grew out of a four-year initiative funded by a group of Jewish siblings who wanted to contribute to addressing the killings of unarmed Black men. They wanted to enter the work with genuine community credibility and cultural sensitivity, without being performative and without being exploitative. They knew they needed someone who could help them do that.

Kaci became that person. Over four years, she organized and operationalized the initiative from start to finish, building relationships between funders and grantee organizations that would eventually form the foundation of something larger.

Two needs surfaced at the same time. The original funders wanted to create space for other funders to participate in the work. And the grantee organizations wanted more of philanthropy to understand why funding Black-led organizations matters and to get involved. Out of those parallel needs, the Black Equity Collective formed around a core mission: build the infrastructure that allows funders and Black-led organizations to operate as co-equals and values-based partners.

Kaci describes her role in that work as cultural translator. The analogy she uses is direct: saying hi, hola, and ciao are all the same greeting, but the cultural context in which you say each one matters. Knowing that ciao can mean both hello and goodbye, and understanding which one it is in a given moment, is the kind of fluency that only comes from deep familiarity with both sides of a relationship. That fluency is what she brings to every table.

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What the Black Equity Collective’s Economic Impact Study Found

Two years ago, the Black Equity Collective launched a survey to document the economic impact of Black-led organizations on California’s economy. About 220 organizations across the state completed it, representing roughly a third of all Black-led organizations in California.

Two-thirds of those organizations are run by Black women. They have created over 4,000 jobs and generated $335 million in salaries. More than 71% of respondents said they have hired someone who has been system-impacted, meaning formerly incarcerated, formerly unhoused, or otherwise excluded from traditional employment pathways.

The reframe Kaci offers is important: these organizations are not capacity-building projects waiting for investment to make them ready. They are economic engines already driving jobs, salaries, and community wealth in the places where philanthropy has historically been slowest to show up. When a funder invests in a Black-woman-led nonprofit, they are investing in her leadership, in employment for people typically left out of the workforce, and in a model of leadership that carries responsibility for the generations before and behind it.

“We are committed to a community,” she said. “That is the value that we bring, and that’s what makes us leaders and not needers.” She was channeling her friend Revin Ben McBride with that framing: Black organizations are leaders of leaders.

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The Piece of Paper in Her Mother’s Purse

When I asked Kaci about her personal brand and how she has approached showing up publicly as a thought leader, she paused and got personal. It happened to be the nine-year anniversary of her mother’s death.

Her mother died suddenly, with no chance to say goodbye. In the grief and stress that followed, Kaci faced the task of writing an obituary for a woman who cared deeply about what was said at the end of a life. Going through her mother’s purse, she pulled out a folded, ripped piece of paper. At the top were two words: my legacy. Below were three things her mother had written.

Kaci had never known anyone else who carried a written articulation of their intended legacy in their pocket. That piece of paper became the lens through which she evaluates every professional opportunity: does this reinforce or distract from the purpose she has chosen for her own life?

The fellowships, the board seats, the Aspen Institute invitation, the speaking engagements, each one is connected to a broader purpose she continues to choose deliberately.

“It’s really how I got to the 86 million, to be honest,” she said. “I was saying yes to things that were leading me in the path that were facilitating the direction of my purpose.”

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What Funders, Board Members, and Nonprofit Leaders Can Do Right Now

Nearly 600,000 Black women have left or been pushed out of the workforce since February 2025. Chronic underfunding of Black-led organizations is well-documented. The economic impact data from the Black Equity Collective makes the case that this is a priority problem, and the data is there to back it up.

Kaci’s invitation is a reframe. Stop approaching Black-led organizations from a deficit perspective, focused on what capacities they lack or need to develop. Start from what they already bring: deep community trust, a commitment to hiring people traditionally excluded from the workforce, leadership that holds intergenerational responsibility, and a track record of economic impact that rarely gets credited as such.

For funders interested in joining the Black Equity Collective, Kaci can be reached on LinkedIn or at socialgoodsolutions.com. For Black-led organizations in the Los Angeles area, the Collective currently works across three counties. For organizations outside LA interested in replicating the model in their own region, Kaci’s team offers technical assistance and would welcome the conversation at blackequitycollective.org.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Black Equity Collective and how does it work? The Black Equity Collective is a philanthropic infrastructure founded by Kaci Patterson that brings funders and Black-led community organizations together as values-based partners. Currently operating across three counties in Los Angeles, the Collective includes 65 Black-led organizations working across 16 different issue areas. Its approach is grounded in the recognition that people do not live single-issue lives, and that funding Black-led organizations in isolation from one another limits the broader impact of philanthropy.

What did the Black Equity Collective’s economic impact study find? The Black Equity Collective surveyed approximately 220 Black-led organizations across California, representing roughly one-third of all Black-led organizations in the state. Two-thirds are led by Black women. Those organizations have collectively created over 4,000 jobs, generated $335 million in salaries, and more than 71% of respondents reported hiring people who have been system-impacted. The study makes the case that Black-led nonprofits function as economic engines for their communities and should be resourced accordingly.

What does ecosystem funding mean in practice for nonprofits? Ecosystem funding moves beyond asking what an individual organization needs and asks what an entire network of partnered organizations needs to move toward a collective vision. It is grounded in the recognition that organizations are interdependent, that a strong organization with weak partners does not constitute a strong ecosystem, and that funders drive greater impact by investing in shared infrastructure and relationships alongside individual grants. Kaci Patterson developed this approach through her work with the JIB Fund and the Black Equity Collective in Los Angeles.

How does Kaci Patterson approach her personal brand and public presence? Kaci Patterson evaluates every professional opportunity against a legacy framework shaped by her late mother, who carried a handwritten note in her purse articulating her three intended legacy goals. Kaci asks whether each opportunity reinforces or distracts from her own stated purpose. That discipline has guided her decisions around board seats, fellowships, speaking engagements, and her work with the Aspen Institute, and she credits it directly with how Social Good Solutions reached $86 million raised for Black-led organizations in California.