When Spider Webs Unite: Historic Donation from Dimon Foundation Grants Freedom to 12 UNCF-Member HBCUs

Historic donation by the James and Judith K. Dimon Foundation grants freedom to 12 UNCF-member institutions, which have nurtured students into leaders for more than a century.

I have spent almost seven decades of my professional life as a professor at several colleges and universities, then as the president of Spelman and Bennett Colleges. I now have the honor and joy of serving as a president-in-resident and one of the four co-chairs of UNCF’s capital campaign. It is from these cumulative experiences that I respond to the $12 million gift the Jamie and Judith K. Dimon Foundation recently awarded to 12 UNCF-member institutions. This phenomenal gift to establish the Dimon Fund to Advance Economic Opportunity makes a powerful statement about the importance of UNCF as our nation’s largest and most effective organization dedicated to helping students attend and complete college, and much of that work now runs through a $1.5 billion capital campaign that is designed to build lasting financial strength at our 36 member institutions, rather than fund them year to year.

I believe that the institutions that we build as a nation are the clearest evidence of what we believe about our future. So, when I tell you that this $12 million gift, given as permanent endowment capital, is a different kind of gift than $12 million in grant or program funding, I am not speaking in the abstract. I am speaking from decades of watching what changes at a college or a university once its future no longer depends on this year’s fundraising alone.

This Ethiopian proverb has stuck with me throughout my years: “When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.” One strand can be broken effortlessly. But the same strands, when woven together by enough people and effort, create strength enough to withstand power many times bigger than they are. I have witnessed this truth many times.

The gift from the James and Judith K. Dimon Foundation will be used to establish the Dimon Fund to Advance Economic Opportunity and turned into permanent endowment for 12 of our member institutions. This is a historic gift. Commitment of this scale and significance that strengthens the endowments of historically Black colleges (HBCUs) is something that will help countless young people soar to the heights of their possibilities.

In order to understand the significance of the Dimon gift, it is necessary to know the history of these colleges and universities. The majority of these institutions were established during the difficult period of Reconstruction following the enslavement of African Americans who firmly believed that their children deserved an education. They built with what they had: what was in church offering plates and teachers who worked for wages that were really acts of faith. These institutions were designed to last for centuries. However, for generations they were deprived of the resources which allow institutions to survive. And yet, drawing on their faith and working collectively, leaders and teachers in those institutions managed to do extraordinary work with very small budgets that would have destroyed other institutions with less heart. Endurance has been both their heritage and their burden.

An endowment helps to eliminate this burden. The donation is invested and stays intact while every year, a part of the earnings can sustain generations of students. For institutions forced for generations to budget semester by semester, efforts like this make all the difference between survival and growth. It is the freedom to plot their own course: to keep the professor which a more affluent university is trying to hire, to establish nursing skills labs, to maintain tuition affordable for a family, to say “yes” to an ambitious journey within higher education, because, finally, the means are available.

Here are the 12 institutions that are the recipients of $1 million from the Dimon Foundation. In Alabama, Miles College, Oakwood University, Stillman College and Tuskegee University. In North Carolina, Johnson C. Smith University and Shaw University. In South Carolina, Benedict College and Voorhees University. In Texas, Huston-Tillotson University and Jarvis Christian University. In Louisiana, Dillard University. And in Florida, Edward Waters University. Each of these colleges and universities will now stand on firmer ground than they stood before.

I want to say something about Jamie Dimon and Judith Dimon. When I was president of Spelman, Jamie Dimon accepted my invitation to came to that historically Black college for women to speak with our students—not for a photo-op, but to engage with them in serious conversations about why and how they were responsible to fully participate in their preparation to be future leaders in their communities, their country and their world. Judith Dimon has spent years building the paths that carry young people from a classroom to a livelihood.

For more than 80 years, since 1944, UNCF raised over $6 billion dollars based on one idea: “a mind is a terrible thing to waste.”® This donation joins this tradition and advances it.

Twelve of our institutions have been granted the freedom to more clearly plot their own course, and along with it, the opportunity to continue to do what these colleges have always done best. To open the door. To expect greatness. To inspire. To advance their students further. To send them out to succeed. And yes, to prepare them to be of service to their communities, their nation and the world.

Underinvestment and inequities are real, and, like a lion, they wait patiently for opportunities to express their power. However, so are we, and we are numerous and we have always known how to weave our strands together. This is what a collective does. It created these colleges from blood, sweat, tears and joy, and brought them through a century of underinvestment and doubts. Now, it has strengthened 12 of these institutions. This is a historic event. Let it also be a beginning.

A guest post from Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole, co-chairperson, Capital Campaign, UNCF