Nonprofit Build Up® Podcast

In this week’s episode of The Nonprofit Build Up Podcast is part 1 of a 2 part conversation titled “Drowning in Black Genius with Marcus Littles and A. Nicole Campbell” is a personal favorite. And while this topic could be discussed any time of the year we wanted to be sure that while the world is celebrating Black History this month, we can allow them to also pay attention to the literal present day genius of Black folks as well. In today’s episode Marcus Littles, Founder and Senior Partner, at Frontline Solutions discusses his organization’s evolution over the last 18 years. Frontline Solutions, while a management consulting firm, was never intended to be just that. This Black-founded and led company is comprised of a diverse team of activists, scholars, advocates, coaches, strategists, and artists. They draw on these multifaceted perspectives and lived experiences to engage with organizations in the journey toward their boldest, most expansive visions. Tune in to learn more about how Frontlines continues to build and support an ecosystem that is “Drowning in Black Genius.”

Listen to Part One:

Listen to Part Two:

 

Marcus Littles, Founder and Senior Partner, Frontline Solutions

A strategist and visionary, Marcus has been instrumental in directing philanthropic investment at the intersection of race and gender. In 2005, he founded Frontline to advise philanthropists on a multi-billion-dollar investment in Gulf Coast recovery in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Since then, Marcus has led Frontline in reimagining the role of “consultant” and becoming an integral part of the racial justice ecosystem.

Marcus is passionate about connecting with members of his network to leverage individual and collective assets to create a more equitable world. Over the course of his career, he has pursued racial justice in several sectors, including government, philanthropy, and education. In 2016, Marcus was named one of Living Cities’ 25 Disruptive Leaders Who Are Working to Close the Racial Opportunity Gaps, alongside Ta-Nehisi Coates and Angela Glover Blackwell.

Marcus is a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. He serves on the boards of The Beautiful Project, Brotherhood Sister Sol, and School Justice Project, as well as the advisory boards of Communities for Just Schools Fund and the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color. A native of Mobile, Alabama, Marcus is a graduate of Auburn University. He holds a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Delaware.

Transcript for Part 1:

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:08] Nicole Campbell: You’re listening to the Nonprofit Build Up Podcast. I’m your host, Nic Campbell. I want to support movements that can interrupt cycles of injustice and inequity, and shift power towards vulnerable and marginalized communities. I’ve spent years working in and with nonprofits and philanthropies and I know how important infrastructure is to outcomes. On this show, we’ll talk about how to build capacity to transform the way you and your organization work.

[0:00:38] Stef Wong: Hi, Build Up community, we’re so glad you’re tuning in. I’m Stef, Build Up’s Executive Portfolio Manager. Today’s episode of the Nonprofit Build Up Podcast is part one of a two-part conversation titled, Drowning in Black Genius, with Marcus Littles and Nicole Campbell. This is a personal favorite. While the topic could be discussed anytime of the year, we wanted to make sure that while the world is celebrating Black History Month, they can also pay attention to the literal present day Black genius as well.

In today’s episode, Marcus Littles, a founder, and senior partner at Frontline Solutions, discusses his organization’s evolution over the last 18 years. Frontline Solutions, while a management consulting firm was never intended to be just that. This Black-founded and led company is comprised of a diverse team of activists, scholars, advocates, coaches, strategists, and artists. They draw on these multifaceted perspectives and lived experiences to engage with the organizations in the journey toward their boldest, most expansive divisions. Tune in to learn more about how frontline solutions continues to build and support an ecosystem that is drowning in Black genius.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:01:52] Nicole Campbell: Hi, Marcus. Thank you so much for joining me on the Nonprofit Build Up. I am so excited about our conversation and really looking forward to it.

[0:02:03] Marcus Littles: Thank you.

[0:02:03] Nicole Campbell: Yes, of course.

[0:02:05] Marcus Littles: I appreciate it. I feel like we’re letting people into conversations we’ve had offline, we’re just recording it.

[0:02:10] Nicole Campbell: That’s right.

[0:02:11] Marcus Littles: We’ll see how it goes.

[0:02:14] Nicole Campbell: Agreed. To get us started, and just so folks can learn a little bit more about you and your work. Please tell us about the kind of work that you focus on, and what Frontline Solutions is all about, and what are its priorities, particularly given the time we’re in.

[0:02:33] Marcus Littles: I’m Marcus Littles. I am the founder of Frontline, and this is our 19^th year. 2024 is our 19^th year, which is pretty amazing to say out loud. I founded Frontline about 19 years ago, and we now see ourselves as a Black-owned, Black-led management consulting firm. We worked really, really hard over our first three, four, five years, not to be a consulting firm. We tried to make up new things like we wanted to be an idea lab, we wanted to be all sorts of things, but we didn’t want to be consultants. Have been for a couple of reasons. One is that no one who’s at Frontline, or has been in Frontline really sees putting consultants on their tombstone as their vocational identity. Then secondly, the origins of consulting, just like the origins of so many different things are extractive, we feel like. It was some White men got in the room and said like, how do we create silver bullet answers and do that over, and over again, and are able to charge a lot for it. We don’t say that with judgment, but that’s not what we were trying to do.

But then, we realized a couple things like, you know what, we don’t have to do it like others. There actually is something that is challenging and inefficient, about starting from scratch every single time that folk of color feel like we have to build something new in order to create space that’s ours. No, we can either reclaim or revise what already existed. Frontline emerged as a set of folks who most of us don’t self-identify as, I’ve been a consultant all my life. It’s folks who are artists, and organizers, and scholars, and coaches, and a lot of things all bought into consulting as a platform, and as a medium for liberation. Liberation of Black and Brown people. So it was that.

Then secondly, we felt like it’s okay, we can do like other communities have done and take something that another community founded and use it to our advantage. We’re like, we don’t have to employ a extractive version of consulting like we can build it how we want to. So now, as we think about our work, we didn’t try to create new categories, like we do strategy work. We do evaluation and learning work. We do community practice and learning communities and hold those for folk in the social sector nonprofit philanthropic, sometimes corporate, and public sectors as well. We do a lot of research work as well. 

Then, we feel like sort of what’s, I’ll say, unique or what we lead with in how we approach our work is who we have around the table eating and doing that work. We believe that people are the key to our institutions. They are our greatest asset, and it is really intentional that we are vast majority, almost exclusively black and brown folk who are on our team. What’s important about that, that’s not just because we care about diversity, or that we care about Black people. It’s also because, it is too how do we recast what the knowledge economy is, and what knowledge, what expertise, what genius looks like. That’s really important to us, to embody that principle of, if you want to know where geniuses, look to see where the Black people are. That’s some of who we are, and what we do, and how we think about what we do.

[0:06:02] Nicole Campbell: I love that so much. There’s so many questions that have just come in from that response. What jumps out at me is the focus on legacy, and I really like the word reclaim. It just shows such ownership in how you’re approaching your work, and how you’re thinking about it. You mentioned that this is about the liberation of Black and Brown people. Talk to me about how you are envisioning Frontline Solutions playing a role in that, given the kind of, I’ll use the word, consulting, the consulting work that you all are leading and doing?

[0:06:40] Marcus Littles: Yes, it’s a great question. Because of being a part of – and its iteration, the evolution for a period of time. Hopefully, my answer to that question, does it completely changed, or hopefully, it’s evolved over time. Because I think we never set out to build a consulting firm. I did set out to build a container for the work, and the community, and the impact that I imagined us having collectively. Does that make sense? So it didn’t, it wasn’t like consulting firm or even business. Like, let’s start a business, and then let’s backfill what that business is. No, let’s create a container that can leverage what some of my experiences, superpowers, and things I’ve been lucky around. Like, how do I leverage those things and what’s a container that can hold that? I frame it that way, although the nomenclature has changed, and evolved in a good way. And I think, evolved in a smart and more precise way. 

That I’m certain, that 19 years ago, or 18 years ago, when I brought on a couple other cofounders, that in our first meeting, if you look at the notes, it doesn’t say, liberation for Black and Brown people. But it does have many of the bullet points of what we would define that is. Just what it means for community to have efficacy? What does it mean for Black folks to have access to positive life outcomes? What does it mean to reduce disparities in access to education, and health, and wealth, and all those things? It was very framed by issues, or framed by the picture of the communities, and families that we aspired for.

Again, 19 years ago when we started to work. that even what family looked like for each of us, and meant for each of us, and what communities we live in, and been like, all those things have evolved and grown. Even like our starting place was different. I’ve said that in terms of what it means, like liberation has been our North Star, as our life, and our circumstances. And our world has also put us through a 19-year education that isn’t over around what liberation means. The way I’ve just pretty casually say that liberation for Black and Brown folks 19 years ago, it was like, all of my language was really explicitly and exclusively about Black people.

Although my language has changed, some of my analysis has been more of what’s grown in terms of, yes, like if we are serving the interests of Black people, if they had benefits, not just Brown folk, and indigenous folk, it benefits but White people too. I don’t think I knew that or we had that language or analysis 19 years ago, and I actually don’t think it’s complete now that we’re continuing to learn. But I’ll just say, when we started this, and what has never changed, it’s the word that consulting, a consulting firm became the container through which we pursued liberation work formally and informally, as opposed to, let’s build a business and figure out what it’s about. We knew the what, and we learn the how, we learned how to do consult.

But what we were clear about is that liberation as a North Star, and we also were clear about is that we wanted to create a space where Black folk were on the supply side, and not just on the demand side. That the knowledge economy could look like us, not just like needing the knowledge economy to acknowledge that there are disparities and that we need to do stuff for Black folks. And that Black and Brown genius should be core to not just implementation, but also the imagining, and execution of what those things are.

[0:10:38] Nicole Campbell: I like the framing of that container, for the work, and for community, and the impact. Go back to 19 years ago, what is making you think about, we need to create this container, or we need to think about the word differently? What’s happening at that point that makes you say, “Let’s go form or let’s go do this thing that ends up becoming Frontline Solutions”?

[0:11:05] Marcus Littles: Yes. I think a couple of things. One is, the knowledge economy was not deemed a growth economy for Black people. I went to great public institutions that I’m super proud of, Auburn University, and then University of Delaware for grad school, and was a part of these leadership programs, and community development, community economic development. But no one came in and said, “Hey, a pathway to impacting community is via the knowledge economy.” I came up around community development, so it was around community development corporations or to work in federal government, which I did for a stint, at HUD.

It was a little bit around philanthropy, but I don’t know that there were open doors in philanthropy. I feel like that folks that – I love to count mentors, and colleagues, and friends, like Debbie Gilbert, Lauren Harris. They had kicked down some doors to where it became cracked, to where that was an opportunity as well. But that wasn’t talked about in grad school. I think just one of part of the frame for me is that the knowledge economy, and I use the word knowledge, because I love to be able to lead with that Black people are brilliant, and they have incredible experiences. Like lived experience isn’t a value, but it is a set of competencies.

This knowledge economy was not deemed a growth sector. No one introduced it to me. So that’s one, and it’s backdrop for that 19 years ago. The other backdrop is, I’m always clear, I did not set out not only just not to build that consulting firm. I did not set out nor did I have aspirations of being an entrepreneur, or building something, not because I didn’t have access to that, because I feel like there were folks in my family who were entrepreneurs. But there weren’t folks in my family who had married being an entrepreneur with working in the social sector and community impact. And no one framed in grad school, anywhere else that those two things were possible.

But when I worked at the Ford Foundation, as a program associate, I had the benefit of working for, and this is not always the case at any institution or in philanthropy. But like worked for, and with three or four of the program officers, senior program officers who are I reported to. One, they were all people of color, but two, they were also, all four of them, incredibly vested in me like sort of personally and interpersonally. In a way that was alluring, in a way that was actually not representative of what it means to come into the workforce and then professional in sort of position.

I later on was like, “Oh, why don’t these people love me like the last job I was?” Because they loved me. Like [inaudible 0:13:46], and Lauren Harris, Miguel Garcia, Michelle [inaudible 0:13:49]. I worked with them, and we would go into meetings in the foundation, outside the foundation. Oftentimes, there will be these conversations around, “So where do we find a Black intermediary? Where do we find Latino, Latina scholars to partner with? Where are the –” It was this, where’s Waldo conversation.

Then, so after those meetings, whether it was with all of them, or any of them individually, we would debrief. They were my bosses, and mentors, and I would look at them and they would always say, “I don’t know what they’re talking about, that these people are all over the place.” Because I would always think like, “Oh, what do you mean where are these folks? I went to college with these people. I went to grad school with these people. I go to the gym with them, I drink with them, I go to church with them, I drink with them after church. Like they’re everywhere.”

The context for me was, I brought all of that with me. When me and colleagues got in the room, and we’re like, sort of what do we want to do and be. Even if we didn’t know consulting, what we did know is there are so many Black folks who have so much genius to be on the supply side of the knowledge economy and not just on the demand side. We knew that. If we didn’t know them personally, it would take two or three calls, or texts, or emails to find, you fill in the blank. I’m looking for sort of someone who knows how to do blank. As a personal challenge, we’re like, “Oh, well, that’s not hard to find.” That’s what we brought in. 

So again, the container was, what does it mean to be a container that can leverage those relationships, that living a life where we were drowning in Black genius, in our families, in our schools, in our neighborhoods, in everywhere. That’s what we came into the room with. When that folk the Ford Foundation asked me around, “Can you help us figure out what to do after Hurricane Katrina?” That’s why I quit my job, and started consulting, even though I felt it was short-term, and then didn’t have enough – I was like, “Oh, I need to pick up a couple other things.” And then the other colleague said, “Hey, we want to do this exploration around philanthropic investment, around Black men and boys. Would you do that research?” 

I asked two people, two young folk who were previously my little brothers, almost, and then teased and asked them, “Hey, would you?” But they’re geniuses, so it wasn’t – I mean, asking them, “Would you work with me on this project?” And that project grew, and folk started asking us to do other things. So when we were doing and building at the same time, our vision wasn’t a firm, our vision was a container to be able when someone comes and says, “Hey, do you know this? Can you find this? Will you help us with this?” That our answer would be, “Yes, not because we are inherently geniuses, but because we’re drowning.” Because we’re going to leverage this thing, and we didn’t know, “Oh, well, that means we’ll have enough to actually hire people.” And, “Oh, pay roll, benefits.” Like we backfilled, well, what do we need to equip this container with for it to be sustainable and for our work to be even more powerful?

[0:17:13] Nicole Campbell: So you said that phrase, thinking about it like you’re drowning in Black genius, right? 

[0:17:18] Marcus Littles: Yes.

[0:17:19] Nicole Campbell: You also mentioned communities of learning, and communities of practice that you will facilitate and host. How do those two things come together in a meaningful way, and kind of get as close to that vision that I now have of drowning in Black genius?

[0:17:36] Marcus Littles: Yes, it’s really interesting. I think about our practice around community practice, and the learning communities is actually something that’s been where we’ve gotten more of that work, we’ve been asked to do more of that work. I would say, just before COVID, and definitely during COVID, a lot of it being done virtually. Previous to that, we were helping do a lot of, for foundations, grantee convenience, per se. Like, let’s help us bring our grantees together, and learn from them, with them. Or sometimes, hold space for sets of grantees, so they can be in community, and learn from, and exchange with one another. 

It’s fascinating how we – I mean, there’s some interests that I think about different clients, and even how we got into that body of work. I mean, one of our early clients, Maisha Simmons at that Robert Wood Johnson Foundation was like, we were thinkers. So let’s do a convening grant, okay. We had not planned a big convening before, did that kind of three or four years in a row. But I bring that up because I think that before we were being engaged as, oh, like you have expertise in curating, facilitating, and managing communities of practice, and learning communities. That it was, help us with this grantee convening. 

The superpower we had, the capital that we fought – I don’t know that we even realized that we had when we brought to those spaces. Is when we were curating who was going to come and speak, and who were going to be the plenary speakers, or facilitators, or those sorts of things. We always were very good at identifying genius, or amazingly talented folk that the client, the philanthropic institution many times had not heard of or did not know about. I want to be really clear, this isn’t that the institution of the person we were working with was a White program officer. You know what I mean? These are like sort of Black, and Brown folk, and it’s not speaking disparagingly of them.

We’re like, “No, let’s democratize and spread out who these powerful institutions see as leaders in doing this work. Sort of how do we break down an unintentional tendency for Black exceptionalist. Especially, one of my favorite most proud moments early on is that when we – it was our firs convening, we’re working with Robert Wood Johnson and Maisha Simmons, before the book, before his – as prominent as he is now, we really wanted to get Bryan Stevenson to speak in front of this convening. Then we also had access to his brother, Howard Stevenson, who was a brilliant scholar, amazing sort of thought leader in his own right.

We had reached out, reached out, reached out. Bryan wasn’t sure he was going to be able to do it, but we had confirmed his brother, and his brother told Bryan, “Well, I’m going to do it.” And Bryan Stevenson reached back out and said, “I’ve never been asked to speak with my brother before.” They had never spoken together. To be clear, when we are trying to create this platform, it was the most amazing sort of thing ever. There was not a dry eye in the place. But the amazing thing is, we did nothing, we did zero. We have zero contribution to how brilliant Bryan Stevenson and Howard Stevenson were. We did create this platform that more people knew that than did before.

How do you change who the learners are and who the teachers are? How do you broaden folks imaginations and/or knowledge of all of the different folks who are doing amazing work? So, I’m super, super proud of – I could name all of these folks who are being asked all the time to come and speak to philanthropy, speak to civil rights organizations, et cetera, who are mainstage folk now. That when some of them, they were teenagers, and some of them were in their early 20s, and some of them were just early in their career. Because we were grounded in community, because this was working in communities where Black folk lived, and played, and struggled was our happy place, our career. And who we are personally and interpersonally, that we had identified and seen those for early on was like, “Hey. Come speak to this group. Come be a part of this convening.”

We did not know that that was this special asset, it was because we’re drowning in Black genius, and we built the trust from clients that were like, “Okay, I’ve never heard of this person, but we’re going to rock with you.” Nine times out of 10, we made them look good, which was a big part of – it ended up being our growth strategy as to where folks trust us once. Then the next thing was not, “Hey, can you do another grantee convening for me?” They’d ask, “Would you know anything about research? Do you all know evaluation because we trust you and your ability to figure things out? But also, the folk you are putting in front of us to lead this work are the people we always wanted to support, but sometimes didn’t have access to, or sometimes the courage to push it through their institutions.”

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:22:42] Stef Wong: Thanks so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode of the Nonprofit Build Up Podcast. Tune in next week for part two of this conversation. To learn more about how you can work with the Build Up Companies, visit http://www.buildupcompanies.com.

[0:23:00] Nicole Campbell: Thank you for listening to this episode of Nonprofit Build Up. To access the show notes, additional resources, and information on how you can work with us, please visit our website at buildupadvisory.com. We invite you to listen again next week as we share another episode about scaling impact by building infrastructure and capacity in the nonprofit sector. Keep building bravely.

[END]

Transcript for Part 2:

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:08] Nicole Campbell: You’re listening to the Nonprofit Build Up Podcast. I’m your host, Nic Campbell. I want to support movements that can interrupt cycles of injustice and inequity, and shift power towards vulnerable and marginalized communities. I’ve spent years working in and with nonprofits and philanthropies and I know how important infrastructure is to outcomes. On this show, we’ll talk about how to build capacity to transform the way you and your organization work.

[0:00:38] Stef Wong: Hi, Build Up community, we’re so glad you’re tuning in. I’m Stef, Build Up’s Executive Portfolio Manager. Today’s episode of the Nonprofit Build Up Podcast is part two of a two-part conversation titled, Drowning in Black Genius, with Marcus Littles and Nicole Campbell. This is a personal favorite. While the topic could be discussed anytime of the year, we wanted to be sure that while the world is celebrating Black History Month, we can allow them to also pay attention to the literal present-day genius if Black folks as well.

In today’s episode, Marcus Littles, a founder, and senior partner at Frontline Solutions, continues to discuss his organization’s evolution over the last 18 years. Frontline Solutions, while a management consulting firm was never intended to be just that. This Black-founded and led company is comprised of a diverse team of activists, scholars, advocates, coaches, strategists, and artists. They draw on these multifaceted perspectives and lived experiences to engage with the organizations in the journey toward their boldest, most expansive visions. Tune in to learn more about how Frontline Solutions continues to build and support an ecosystem that is drowning in Black genius.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:01:51] Nicole Campbell: It goes back to what you shared at the very beginning, like not recreating the wheel, but reclaiming it. When I think about communities of practice, and learning communities, they’ve existed, but your focus, changing who the learners are. I think it’s reframing the whole conversation, is what I just heard what you describe, and how you all are thinking about, and approaching these communities. With all of that in mind then, Marcus, how does this show up with in Frontline Solutions itself? How do you all operationalize all of these concepts that you’ve been talking about, all of the ways in which you are approaching the work, your methodology? How does it show up by your staffing, how you’re structured, how you’re thinking about which engagements to take on, which clients to work with?

[0:02:43] Marcus Littles: It shows up a couple of ways. I’m really, really proud of who Frontline is and has become back. Melissa DeShields, who’s one of the owners, is the CEO now is a visionary, amazing leader. Micah, one of my cofounders is a genius and empathetic. There’s not a time you talk to him and don’t feel better or challenged from it. I am proud of who we are. And that we have struggled, hopefully transparently and out loud to be who we imagined other institutions, and who we imagined our community to be. Give as an example. We have done a lot of work around helping organizations operationalize diversity, equity, inclusion in their culture, in their operations, in their program, et cetera. 

I wrote a couple articles or I used to say all the time to folks when they were interviewing us, I would say, “Hey, you can hire us or don’t hire us, but we are an institution.” At whatever point in time, it’s usually from 15 employees to close to 40. But we are institutions, we are a culture, and we are an organization. So our consulting practice with you all, one of the resources we’re drawing from are the things that we are struggling through, hopefully, with integrity as an institution. So hire who you want to hire, but I always say, like, I don’t trust the consultants who come and they’re like, “Well, we’ve always done it right. If folks don’t have a mess story around how they messed up, or how they had to struggle through it, that annoys me. I actually don’t think – I don’t enjoy perfect people. Or this frame of like, just kind of this equity exceptionalism or survive, been awake all my life, and so I didn’t have to have an awakening.

I use that as an example, because I think that you have like – we did a pay equity study before our team, and then sort of – and we think we’re really, really good, we know this work really well. Then, the pay equity study comes out, and there’s pay equity disparities. I’m like, “No, not me.” I sound like sort of the White people who say, “I have Black friends.” I’m like, I would never be a part of an institution where women, Black women were not paid equitably to men. Never, not Marcus. Sort of not like – and it’s not mine, all the – but like just really personally. So we have to do those things, we have to name those things, we have to struggle to do those things. We have to define what it means to be an equitable institution, our work around values. We used to have a – one iteration we have like a Frontline genome. What does diversity mean? What are these things mean to us?

We would send out that genome to folks who applied for jobs. The first question if they got to interview was, “Tell me what you think about it, tell me what you think is BS, and what inspires you. Tell me, like let’s break that down, because we want you to know who we are and who we’re trying to be from the beginning.” Sometimes that would set a high bar that we were operating below. You were sharing people your aspiration, knowing that you fall short in some ways, which has an impact on the culture. Sometimes, folk are inspired, and sometimes they’re inherently disappointed. Because like, “Wait, well, you wrote this thing, but I see these challenges here.”

One, I mean, our work in community, we see ourselves, we are they, we work with all these nonprofits, foundations, et cetera. We also can’t take the posture of complete critique of philanthropy. We are not a watchdog. We are not in CRP, who does amazing work. They’ve been a client before, right? Here’s what philanthropy is doing wrong, in part, because some of that is disingenuous. Because philanthropy pays a whole bunch of our bills. We are they, like the duality of having a liberatory vision and operating within the context of a beneficiary of capitalism, sort of like a participant. But we also feel like we can be a participant and a critic, like the folk who your biggest servant should be your biggest critic. And your biggest critic should be your biggest surfer. And like, what does it mean to embody those things?

I think that duality, that nuance, we try to bring that to our organizational culture, in our pursuit of who we are as an institution, and as a set of individuals who come together as a team. Then, like in terms of who we are, as the clients we take on. If clients were perfect, they would need consultants. What does it mean to both like sort of have a filter around, “Oh, are we aligned?” But they’re not snobs in terms of like, I looked at their board, and the board is not 30% African-American, so we can’t work with them.” I’m not mad at someone who has that filter. But again, we chose our container of consulting, is to help people like organizations transform from this to this. 

Our appetite for what is the appropriate starting place, and then how do we do that, and maintain wellness among team members. Many of which, not all have come from work environments, where they were minimized as Black women, or as queer folk, that they were beat up. So you’d come to a new institution, smarting from that. But the gig is to help folks along a trajectory. What is the appropriate starting point? I wish I had an answer for you to say like, “Well, we figure that out. Here’s our formula to determine whether it’s a good client or not.” It also sometimes, depends on who you ask. Like, Marcus does not do much of the client facing work anymore. There are hardly any of it, but I’m doing a lot of new business cultivation.

How is my authority checked, or assessed, or even informed by the people who are doing the client facing work? Where I’m saying, like, “Oh, I think they’re a good client.” Then, sometimes, some folks on staff are like, first meeting, I was clear. Like, “Oh, they’re going to be problematic.” Is it right or wrong? Or is Marcus blind to some things? Because you don’t really have to do that anymore. I mean, there’ll be real struggles to figure out, but hopefully, it’s principled struggle. Hopefully, we try to write about it internally. We try to write about it externally. We try to be unapologetically, but also just sort of earnestly under construction in progress. 

My colleague and great friend Micah talks about – he’s talked about forever to where like, we are all in recovery from white supremacy and patriarchy. Not White people, not Republicans, like all of us. Because those are the default systems that we’ve grown up. There’s a way in which we’re more comfortable, even if we don’t agree, but we are more comfortable with some of the norms of white supremacy and patriarchy than we are in the reality that we’re drowning in Black genius.

Sometimes we have to tap ourselves on the shoulder and say like, there’s Black genius everywhere, right? Because if you wouldn’t remind yourself that, you go to the default of the systems that all our systems have been swimming in patriarchy and White supremacy. So there’s actually, as much as it’s traumatic, there’s an ease upon which we navigate, because we’ve been professional navigators. 

Inarticulate way of answering your question is that like, sometimes, Micah, and Melissa, and I, and then with the management team, Lucy, Rhonda, and Nigel, sometimes we’re waiting for the day when it’s like, “When does this get easier? When are we getting over the hump?” I don’t know when it’s not uphill, so do what you can do as long as you can do it. Then like, equip and invest in other folk to do it when it’s time for you to move on to the next thing.

[0:10:52] Nicole Campbell: Yeah, agreed. Equip and invest. I’m just thinking, and wondering how much of what you describe is how you would also just describe being a Black-owned business in this space? How much of what you’re describing is the joys of being a Black-owned business, the challenges of being a Black-owned business? I’m just curious to get your reaction, your thinking around that, because you’ve been doing it for 19 years. So you’ve seen a lot of evolution, a lot of change in the past three years. We’ve all seen a significant amount of change. How are you holding on to what you describe as being part of the Black-owned, Black-led business experience?

[0:11:38] Marcus Littles: Yes. We haven’t written on this, but I think there’s a way in which it’s been important for us to begin to bifurcate the difference between being Black-owned, being Black-led, and being Black-centered. Those things aren’t exactly the same, and there are some tensions among each one of them. I have these principles of collectivism and set it right even, but the Black ownership part is that, sort of, it’s some Black people signing the names on the bank documents. There’s like Black-owned, Black-led, but the underbelly of ownership. Yes, it is asset, and wealth accumulation, like all that, like really great aspirational words. But the underbelly, our responsibilities as a Black-owned enterprise that gets assessed. And we’re not alone, like you all, like many others across industry, like a Black tax. Because sort of Black ownership is still counter to the economic system that this country built.

They’re the three extra questions you get on your loan application. Core on your line of credit sort of thing, whether they’re formal or informal. This is our 19th year, and this is the crazy thing. But it was not until year nine, eight, or nine, where we had any financing. The first eight years was, if the contract hadn’t paid, and like sort of, then the staff doesn’t get paid, or the owners are writing the check with resources we didn’t have, and then hope that thing comes in later on.

Also in this social sector, it’s really great that it’s been more normalization of Black folk, and BIPOC folk sort of being a part of the knowledge economy, and consulting industry, and having individual practitioners, organizations of all sizes growing and emerging. But part of the Black-owned part of it is this notion of, how many times or how often today, even, that we are fighting hard to justify rates that we know are hundreds of dollars less an hour of White counterparts? Or just what knowledge means, like one of our clients we’ve had for a long time, or organization we work with appeared a number of times in determining whether they want to accept the rate we’re charging. Not just as a firm, but a specific person. If you don’t have a PhD, then there’s a cap. It doesn’t matter all the other inputs.

So we’ve been said, like you don’t have enough folks with PhDs on the team to be able to justify charging blank an hour. Now, to be really clear, we have a whole lot of people on our team with PhDs, like sort of like that because that’s one of their superpowers, has been scholars in academia. And if I put that person on that project, you would have gotten the person lesser equipped to do that body of work. That’s not minimizing their PhD. That’s mean, it is not an all-encompassing indicator of what someone’s capable of being able to do. 

So we have a whole podcast on the Black taxes that we end up paying. And I think it’s both important to acknowledge it, but we also have had to put it in context. Again, navigating the traps and manifestations of White supremacy while trying to change it. We don’t get – as a Black-owned and Black-led institution, I think the biggest lesson for me is that we don’t have the luxury of navigating or changing. That the thing they never put in the job description is, if you’re going to sustain as an enterprise, you need to get good at doing both.

If you are just navigating, and not seeking to change it. I think that is physically, emotionally, psychologically unsustainable. One, because you need to be changed. But one, I feel like I need to feel like we maybe didn’t get that. But I needed to tell these people why they were full of shit. You may not have – but let me tell you why that’s BS on this rate stuff. But then, if you just are trying to change, unless your container is, I am seeking to change the system, and that is my work, and that is the case for some. But if you’re just doing that, and you’re not navigating, I refuse to navigate, then you’re actually not getting some of the other important parts of the work. That is my biggest takeaway. You got to be a navigator and a change agent around it, and figure out both emotionally, psychologically, mentally, spiritually what the balance of those two things are. While maintaining giving people, paying them their check, unless you have the benefit of having brilliant volunteers working for you, which we never have.

[0:16:34] Nicole Campbell: Right. Yes. Yes to all of that. I think when you’re talking about navigation, and change making, it’s a nice framing of the thing, because that’s exactly what’s happening. The Black [inaudible 0:16:47] – Marcus, I’m going to say that this is just the beginning of a series of conversations that I think we have to have, you and I. Because I have so many additional questions about how we are doing that change making while navigating. What does it mean to really navigate? How do we define change, particularly when things are constantly changing around us? And how do you operate within a sector that you’re just ultimately trying to change, and you’re trying to impact at the same time, and the communities that you’re trying to work with are a bit historically left out of conversations that are often about them? How do you, when you’re are part of these historically marginalized communities, take the conversation, lead it, pull in community members, and make sure they’re also leading it, and changing the way we’re having those conversations. Like you said, at the very beginning, how we’re learning, and changing who the learners are in that.

I think I started by saying this conversation would be about 30 minutes. Clearly, I lied, because it was just so good. I literally could keep talking about this, and I do want us to think about what that series of conversations could look like. Because what you’ve shared so far has been so incredibly powerful. I think what just keeps jumping out at me is both the vision and the reality of drowning in Black genius. Centering that, realizing that, holding that, and then saying, how does this then informed the way we work, the way we approach our work? Again, that idea of both navigating while changemaking, holding that vision of reality of drowning in Black genius. What does that all look like? I think that that’s just really powerful.

It makes me think about how we continue to build our infrastructure, as you talked about how my solutions is looking at how it builds its infrastructure and centering its people with it, all of that, including in its work, and who you’re deciding who to work with, or not to work with, right? I think it’s going to be very powerful proposal listening to this, and think about both nonprofit leaders, and philanthropic leaders, as well as folks who are providing advisory services, consulting services, to the sector. How we think about our approach to work, the work itself, and how they’re showing up.

With all that in mind, I do want to ask you a question to help us continue to build knowledge through books and people you should learn from or about. What book do you think we should read next or what artists do you think we should be paying attention to?

[0:19:29] Marcus Littles: There’s a number of artists and books. Sometimes, even just people who I’m sort of following that sort of respect to time. They always are a bellwether for how I’m seeing the world, so I’ll name a few. I mean, just one of the artists, and I feel like I should go back and look at the words and making sure like it’s all okay. But I love Brittany Howard. I listen to her all the time, I listened to her before this podcast. I could make it about content, or I could make it about like she’s just inspirational, and brilliant, cross genre artists that I am super into.

In terms of people, like one person, she’s actually in the sector and has been in the sector, Lateefah Simon. She’s actually running for Congress in California. I met Lateefah when she was 19-, or 20-year-old executive director of the Center for Young Women’s Development, and one of the first worksite visits I went on for when I worked for the Ford Foundation. She’s gone on since then to be a MacArthur Genius, and student president of Akonadi Foundation, and all these other things. But I actually have no real ties to California, except that, I feel like I’m going around telling everyone, “Vote for Lateefah Simon, she’s amazing.” Lateefah Simon has been really instructive into the world that I see, and want to know, and be a part of.

Then, a brother, Phil Agnew, who was one of the founders of Dream Defenders. Now, he runs this organization, Black Men Build. He’s a friend, but he also is a giant, who I have just learned a ton from it. Last person, always just like to name this woman, Jackie Berrien. She actually passed away about eight years ago a couple of days ago. She worked for LDF, Legal Defense Fund, and she was at Forbes, and she was over EEOC under the Obama administration. But she was a giant, and when you ask the question, she’s the first person that came to mind. So even though I didn’t have links to send people, it’s to honor the first name that came to mind is Jackie Berrien. If you check out her career, I imagine you look at it, and see something that is either encouraging, or challenging, or that pushes you to go on, I think.

[0:21:37] Nicole Campbell: Thank you so much for sharing all of these folks, Marcus. What we’ll do is we’ll put their names. and just some more about them in our show notes so that people can read more about the work that they have done, and are doing. I want to thank you, again so much, Marcus, for your time for this very thought-provoking, and changemaking conversation. I do want to make sure that we continue it. I think that all of the advice that you shared, the guidance that you’ve shared, just being vulnerable and transparent about how you all are approaching the work and thinking through these things would be very helpful to other leaders to help them build bravely. So thank you.

[0:22:16] Marcus Littles: Absolutely. Thank you. Thanks for letting people hear our conversations out loud.

[0:22:23] Nicole Campbell: Of course.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:22:24] Stef Wong: Thanks so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode of the Nonprofit Build Up Podcast. To learn more about how you can work with the Build Up Companies, visit http://www.buildupcompanies.com.

[0:22:38] Nicole Campbell: Thank you for listening to this episode of Nonprofit Build Up. To access the show notes, additional resources, and information on how you can work with us, please visit our website at buildupadvisory.com. We invite you to listen again next week as we share another episode about scaling impact by building infrastructure and capacity in the nonprofit sector. Keep building bravely.

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