The Magic Behind Scaling Black Girls Code with Kimberly Bryant

Reading Time: 2 minutes

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Kimberly Bryant started a movement out of a passion project. Black Girls Code has scaled significantly over the years and now has over 15 chapters across the United States and DREAM partnerships with brands like Google, TikTok, Verizon, the NBA, and Capital One.

This inspiring conversation touches on so many pillars of growing a nonprofit organization from the ground up. You’ll hear Kimberly’s “founder’s story”, her obsession with building their brand and making it pop, and how she scored all of those incredible brand partnerships for the long-haul. 

Plus, Kimberly shares the new trailblazing venture she’s creating with Black Innovation Lab, a space to help marginalized founders and entrepreneurs build pathways to financial freedom and ownership.

Sneak Peek:

In This Episode:

• How the power of story, authenticity, and vulnerability helped Kimberly expand Black Girls Code so rapidly in the early days
• Kimberly’s scrappy approach to creating their digital footprint, from leveraging volunteers and stock images, to pro-bono support
• The first role Kimberly hired within marketing and how she remained flexible to move people within the organization, especially if it was a better match for their talents and passions
• How Kimberly secured a multimillion dollar grant from Google to fund their New York headquarters (and how she ensures partnerships aren’t just “one and done”)
• The moment where Kimberly saw an article on Twitter, which inspired her to turn an abandoned, historically Black college, into what will become the Black Innovation Lab

Kimberly’s Ask

Kimberly is committed and invested in making a change and uplifting those who have been overlooked the most. She encourages you to send her any founders who need support or funding, including people of color and marginalized founders that have an idea that’s gotten traction but don’t know how to get it off the ground.

Notable Quotes from Kimberly

“The power of the story was a big reason that our organization expanded so rapidly. It wasn’t a career move, it certainly wasn’t something that I was doing for dollars, because there was no dollars involved. Initially, it was purely based on this passion and a calling. And I think I was really able to rally people to the cause because of that. They could see that authenticity when I spoke about the work that we were doing, and that allowed us to really scale our growth exponentially in a way that’s uncommon for most nonprofit organizations.”

Resources & Links

Learn more about Black Girls Code and follow Kimberly on Twitter and Instagram at @6gems. You can follow ASCEND Ventures Tech on LinkedIn to learn more about the Black Innovation Lab.

What inspires website visitors to invest in your mission? Are you providing donors with a desirable online journey that keeps them coming back? Join my virtual session at the DonorPerfect Community Conference. I’ll see you on June 6th and 7th! 

Applications for my Monthly Giving Mastermind program are now open. If you have been wanting to start a monthly giving program but haven’t had the time or the team to make it happen, this is for you. We start in July, so apply now!

Kimberly recommends the book The Business of Venture Capital by Mahendra Ramsinghani. 

Want to make Missions to Movements even better? Take a screenshot of this episode and share it on Instagram. Be sure to tag @positivequation so I can connect with you.