This August, Surge Institute celebrates that legacy, honors your generosity, and asks for your continued commitment to the leaders our children deserve.

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August is Black Philanthropy Month, and as this celebration of generosity reaches its peak on Black Giving Day, August 28, Surge Institute pauses to say what we mean and mean what we say: Black giving built this movement, and Black giving will sustain it.

This generosity exists across generations, sustained through systemic barriers, racial wealth gaps, and political headwinds that would have broken lesser communities long ago.

ROOTED IN A TRADITION THAT PREDATES PHILANTHROPY.

Black philanthropy was never a trend. It was survival. The mutual aid societies of the post-slavery era. The church funds that financed the Civil Rights Movement. The NAACP, co-founded in 1909, sustained by Black donors who understood that investing in organized protection was the only way forward.

This tradition arose from something far more powerful than abundance: it came from an unshakeable belief that Black communities were worth investing in before anyone else was willing to say so.

That belief lives in Surge Institute today. As an organization founded and led by a Black woman, we are the direct inheritance of that tradition. Every fellowship cohort, every Surge Angels venture, every Impact Community member who shows up month after month represents the continuation of a line of giving that goes back generations. Your support funds programs and affirms a lineage in the same breath.

Every day, Surge leaders across the country are leaning into their genius and creating transformative change for young people, their families, and our broader communities. Thank you for believing in our work.

When you give to Surge, you are funding the teachers who will hire teachers who look like their students. You are funding the principals who will build schools where belonging is designed from the foundation. You are funding the superintendents who will advocate for families that have historically been excluded from the rooms where decisions get made. This is what your dollar does. This is where it goes. This is why it matters beyond the moment of giving.

THIS BLACK GIVING DAY | GIVE 8/28 | YOUR MOVE

Help Us Build the Future Our Children Deserve.

Black Philanthropy Month is a time to recognize and inspire giving from Black communities and allies. We have the power to make a difference. Surge Institute

is asking you to exercise that power today, on Black Giving Day, with a gift that travels far beyond the moment of giving.

Every dollar fuels irreversible change.

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BEFORE YOU GO: 

PUT YOUR KNOWLEDGE TO THE TEST.

We built something to meet this moment. Surge Institute Black Philanthropy Jeopardy is an interactive trivia game with 16 questions across four categories covering Black giving history, Surge Angels entrepreneurship, education equity research, and the Impact Community. You play against an AI opponent. Every question you answer correctly deepens your understanding of why this movement exists and why your investment in it is the highest-leverage decision you make this Black Philanthropy Month.

Four categories. Real data. You versus the AI.

 >> PLAY NOW

Play it. Share it. Then come back and invest in the movement.

Thank you for believing in this work. Thank you for believing in these leaders.

Thank you for understanding that Black giving is the oldest and most consequential investment strategy in American history, and for choosing to continue it here, with Surge Institute, this Black Philanthropy Month.

The movement is only as strong as the community behind it. 

And this community is extraordinary.

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