About the Campaign

The Campaign for Black Male Achievement is a multi-issue, cross-fund strategy to address black men and boys' exclusion from economic, social, educational, and political life in the United States.  The campaign responds to a growing body of research that reveals the intensification of black males' negative life outcomes.  It builds on U.S. Programs' mission to support individuals and organizations that nurture the development of a more democratic, just society, as well as the Open Society Foundations' expertise and past work to reduce incarceration, promote racial justice, and support youth engagement and leadership development.

Since its launch in May 2008, the campaign has engaged in exploratory grantmaking, philanthropic partnership development, and strategic planning, which has helped narrow its strategic focus to three areas that profoundly shape the life outcomes of black males—education, family and work.  

The campaign seeks to treat black males like Lani Guiner's "miner's canary," a critical signal to our society that we cannot exclude and subjugate broad segments of our citizenry without damaging democracy and open society values for all. Through the campaign, U.S. Programs seeks to confront a formidable challenge to an open society.

Campaign grantmaking seeks to:

• promote education equity, and dismantle of the school-to-prison pipeline, to ensure that black boys have the opportunity to excel academically, to prepare for college, and to learn skills essential to earning a living wage;
• strengthen low-income black families through responsible fatherhood initiatives, policy advocacy, and supporting efforts that lift barriers facing single mothers raising black boys;
• expand and ensure 21st-century family supportive wage work opportunities for black males;
• integrate strategic communications into the campaign's work across its three core areas to promote positive messages about black men and boys;
• promote leadership development and advocacy/organizing training for young black males, providing them with the tools to become empowered citizens and informed advocates for themselves and their communities;
• serve as a catalyst in the field of philanthropy for leveraging additional private and public funds for the field of black men and boys;
• develop strategies that build local coalitions to marshal resources and expertise, to improve life outcomes for black men and boys.

Because many of the policies that perpetuate black male exclusion are state and local policies that affect people in specific places, the campaign has adopted a place-based grantmaking approach, and commits its investment to the following geographic regions:

• the Midwest, with a focus on Chicago, Illinois, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin;
• the Gulf Region, with a focus on New Orleans, Louisiana, and Jackson, Mississippi;
• the Mid-Atlantic, with a focus on Baltimore, Maryland, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Each of the regions present the campaign with prevailing problems and disparities in the lives of black men and boys in the areas of work, education, and family structure. Conversely, each of the regions offers fertile partnership opportunities with existing and potential grantees, the philanthropic community. and other U.S. Programs funds.