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Black Belt Community Foundation: How One Organization Is Investing in Local Leadership Across Alabama

Jul 23, 2026

Black Belt Community Foundation - Selma, AL | Brickers Foundation

In our last article we talked about why community solutions work better when they come from the people who actually live there. Local residents understand their neighborhoods in ways that outside organizations simply cannot. They know the history, the relationships, the barriers, and the strengths. And when they are given real resources and real decision-making power the results are different.

Black Belt Community Foundation is one of the clearest examples of what that actually looks like in practice.

What Black Belt Community Foundation Is

Black Belt Community Foundation is a nonprofit organization based in Selma, Alabama. It serves as a community foundation which means its main job is to connect people, organizations, and resources in a way that keeps funding and decision-making close to home.

The mission has stayed the same since the beginning. The foundation works to bring together giving from inside and outside the community so that people in the Black Belt can use what they have to build what they need.

They operate around three ideas. Giving, which means awarding grants to nonprofits across the region every year. Receiving, which means raising the profile of local giving and encouraging contributions of all sizes. And Growing, which means investing in leadership, organizational skills, and community collaboration over the long term.

The Region They Serve

The Black Belt region of Alabama covers twelve counties: Bullock, Choctaw, Dallas, Greene, Hale, Lowndes, Macon, Marengo, Perry, Pickens, Sumter, and Wilcox. Together those counties are home to about 184,000 people and cover nearly one sixth of the land area of Alabama.

The name Black Belt comes from the region's rich, dark soil. It is also home to the highest percentage of African Americans in the state and is widely recognized as the birthplace of the civil rights movement. The communities here have deep roots in civic engagement, mutual aid, and human dignity and that history is part of what makes locally led work in this region so meaningful.

Why It Was Created

Black Belt Community Foundation was officially founded in 2004 around one clear belief: that the people living and working in the Black Belt understood their own challenges and opportunities better than anyone coming in from the outside.¹

The founders did not start by making a list of problems. They started by asking residents what they already had. Public meetings were held across eleven counties to explore the idea of a community foundation and to map the assets already present in each area. Those meetings generated real momentum and strong support for the idea of community-owned, community-directed giving.

From the beginning the foundation's leaders were clear about what would make this work. As one of BBCF's founding voices put it, the only way to create lasting change is to do it with the people who are creating that change. If the community does not own it, it will not last.

How They Invest in Local Leadership

The most important thing to understand about Black Belt Community Foundation is how their grantmaking actually works.

They use a model built around volunteer Community Associates embedded in each of the twelve counties they serve. These are local residents who help nonprofits apply for grants, help decide where support flows, and even contribute personal funds of their own. As of 2025 the network includes more than 150 trusted volunteers living and working across the region.

And these are not just advisory roles. Community Associates make up a majority of the representation on each county's grantmaking review committee. They hold real votes on where the money goes.

In 2023 the foundation formally named what they had been doing all along as trust-based philanthropy. The idea is simple. Fund people you trust. Give them flexibility. Build real relationships over time. Do not make them jump through hoops to prove they deserve help.

What They Fund

Every year Black Belt Community Foundation awards arts grants and community grants to organizations across the region. In 2025 they awarded more than $344,000 through 141 grants to 126 different organizations.

But grants are only part of the story.

Since 2017 BBCF has directly operated the Head Start program across four counties, bringing early childhood education under local control after it had previously been managed by an organization based in Denver. Today the program serves 307 children across Choctaw, Dallas, Marengo, and Wilcox counties.

The foundation also runs programs focused on health equity, truth and racial healing, youth leadership development, environmental justice, and community recovery after disasters. When tornadoes hit the region in January 2023 BBCF activated its disaster relief fund and partnered with the City of Selma to distribute support to families across five counties.

How This Connects to What We Discussed

In the first article we talked about why programs designed without local input tend to miss the mark. They overlook context. They create dependency. And they often disappear once outside funding dries up.

Black Belt Community Foundation was built specifically to prevent that. Funding decisions sit with residents. The leadership comes from inside the community. And the work is designed to grow stronger over time rather than collapse when an outside funder moves on.

Over the course of more than two decades the foundation has helped move nearly 100 million dollars into the Black Belt through partnerships with more than 200 regional nonprofits. That is not a statistic about charity. That is a statement about what happens when a community is trusted to lead its own development.

This is exactly the kind of work that Brickers Foundation exists to amplify. Organizations that build from the inside out, that treat local knowledge as expertise, and that make sure resources and decision-making power actually reach the people doing the work.

How to Get Involved

If you want to support Black Belt Community Foundation there are real ways to do that.

You can make a one-time or recurring donation directly through their website. Even small recurring gifts matter because they give the foundation the kind of steady, predictable support that lets more community organizations plan ahead and apply with confidence.

If you are in the region or connected to it you can explore becoming a Community Associate. This is the most hands-on way to be involved and it comes with a real vote in how local grant dollars are spent.

If you represent a nonprofit in one of BBCF's twelve service counties you can apply for an arts or community grant during their annual cycle. Grant workshops are offered to help organizations through the application process.

And if you want to support the Brickers Foundation's work of connecting communities with organizations like this one we would love to have you involved.

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