Black-led nonprofits need volunteers. This local newspaper is helping

As the pandemic eases, Seattle’s nonprofits are coming back to work in person. Some don’t have the volunteer staff to match demand, and the support they received at the height of the pandemic isn’t what it used to be.

That’s especially true for Black-led nonprofits, which is why the Seattle Medium newspaper has launched a new website called supportblackorgs.com.

Chris B. Bennett is publisher of the paper. He said the project started even before the pandemic, with the initial goal to highlight the efforts that people were making in the community.

The aim of the project is to help attract more volunteer staff, and other resources to Black-led nonprofits, which includes the large ones – but also the smaller organizations, which are sometimes run by one person alone.

“Many of them, their budget is more kind of what some people would term as a “pocket book budget,” Bennett said. “Whatever they have, in their wallet or pocket book at that time, is the budget for that organization.”

During the pandemic, he added, many nonprofits saw an uptick in donations — and also saw a surge in support amid the 2020 racial justice protests — but he and collaborators didn’t expect it was going to last forever.

“We knew that the amount of resources were going to diminish, but that we’d still [have a] need in our community for these nonprofits,” he said.