Who leads a ministry shapes how it sees the people it serves, how it describes them to donors, and whether those people ever move from receiving help to giving it. BJ Thompson and Lisa Fields, who both lead minority-led organizations, argue that Christian money tends to flow toward ministries that serve minority communities while overlooking ministries led from inside them. Their case is not that one kind should replace the other. Christians should hold both to the same standard and fund them with the same seriousness. When they don’t, the gap is a stewardship failure.
What separates a minority-led ministry from a minority-served one?
The distinction is about where decisions get made. Thompson describes a familiar pattern in charitable work. The messaging, the marketing and the fundraising images often center on Black and brown people, in poorer countries or in inner-city neighborhoods. But in his words, “though they may be the recipients of goods and services, they are not those who facilitate.”
Lisa Fields gives the structural version. A minority-led organization is minority founded, minority run, with a board led mostly by minorities. A minority-served organization may have a few minorities in visible roles, but “the organization is really tailored and structured by majority culture.”
That definition does not say minority-served organizations are bad, or that their staff are insincere. It says that the people who set direction, approve budgets and tell the story are not the people the story is about. Fields is explicit that she is not asking anyone to stop supporting minority-served groups. Her point is that “it’s also important that you equally support minority led organizations and think through who the board of directors is.”
So a donor can ask a simple, concrete question: who sits on the board, who holds the leadership seat, and how is the money allocated? Those are facts you can look up. They are more useful than a photo on a brochure.
Why does the leader’s seat change the work itself?
Fields’s first answer is knowledge. People inside a community know what its issues actually are, and, as she puts it, “we know how to give dignity to that community.” Her second answer is about the image outsiders often project. When majority-culture organizations raise money for minorities, she says, “they often are focusing on just extreme poverty,” presenting a one-dimensional picture that reinforces stereotypes already common in the culture. She names the familiar mission photo of visitors holding Black children as an example of this kind of storytelling.
The theological problem underneath is the relationship the photo implies. Fields describes the implied message this way: “And so it’s almost like we gotta help them because they’re not our equals.” Fundraising built on that message can raise real money. It also quietly teaches donors that the people they give to are objects of pity rather than neighbors and colleagues.
Minority-led organizations, in Fields’s account, tend to frame need more widely. Poverty and homelessness are real, but “they’re issues about relationships” too, and about intellectual engagement and formation, needs that reach across every income level. That changes what gets built. A ministry that sees a community only as poor will build relief programs. A ministry that sees the same community as people with minds, marriages and questions about God will build curriculum, small groups and apologetics training as well. Jude 3 Project and Thompson’s organization, Build A Better Us, are examples of the second kind.
A fair caution belongs here. Thompson himself pauses before generalizing, saying “I don’t like to speak for all black people.” Insider leadership is no guarantee of wisdom, and no community holds one opinion about its own needs. The argument is narrower: proximity gives a leader knowledge and trust that are hard to get from outside, and a donor who ignores that advantage is ignoring evidence about who is likely to do the work well.
Is the funding gap real, or just a feeling?
Fields offers a specific account. She recalls a conversation with someone who oversaw a grant program, who told her she would likely need two or three more years of extra work to prove herself to the foundation’s leaders. Then the person added that “if you were a white woman or a white male, they would’ve gave you the money in six months with no hesitation.” The person went on: “But because you’re a black woman and you’re single, you probably would have to work an extra three years and they would still give you half the amount.” Fields adds the detail that makes the story sting: “And this is a Christian organization.”
Be honest about what this evidence establishes. It is one conversation, reported by Fields, describing one insider’s estimate of how one foundation behaves. It is not a study of Christian philanthropy, and a careful reader should not turn it into a statistic. What it does show still matters. Someone with direct knowledge of a grant process believed the difference in treatment was large enough to warn her about it in advance. That should prompt a donor to examine their own habits, even if it cannot settle the question for every foundation.
Thompson’s explanation for the gap does not require anyone to be a villain. He points first to how ordinary life is arranged. People give to those they know, through friendships, schools and churches, and “our society has been structured in such a way that we live in homogenous communities.” Later he names the result directly: “it’s the lack of proximity, right? It’s the absence of awareness oftentimes.” Giving follows relationships, relationships follow neighborhoods and congregations, and those are often divided by race. No single donor has to intend anything for the money to keep flowing in the same direction.
Thompson also describes a second layer. Minority organizations are treated as meaningful mainly when they address the most desperate needs. If the work is not about water, shoes or crisis pregnancies, he says, “then it’s not treated with a sense of meaningfulness.” His conclusion is that “there’s a social conditioning that’s happened that keeps us from building a healthier society.” That is a claim about a pattern, and it is why the problem cannot be solved by good intentions alone.
Isn’t this just choosing a charity by race?
This is the strongest objection, and it should be stated plainly. A Christian might say: I give based on effectiveness and faithfulness, not on the color of the leader. Isn’t asking me to favor minority-led groups a new kind of bias?
The answer depends on what Thompson and Fields are actually asking for. They are not asking donors to lower their standards. Thompson tells listeners to check whether the books are in order and whether the work is good. His instruction is to “do your research then, but write the big check as well.” The request is for the same diligence and the same generosity, applied evenly.
Fields frames the test as a comparison a donor can run on themselves: “if you are hesitant to give to a minority led organization, but you freely give to a white organization, then that shows your inherent bias.” That is a conditional statement. It does not accuse every donor. It asks whether your scrutiny rises and your check shrinks when the leader changes. If it doesn’t, the objection is answered. If it does, the donor who claims to give purely on merit is not actually doing so.
Thompson adds a practical point donors often miss. Minority-led organizations are operations with staff, small-group directors and campus work, not one person with a cause. Token gifts treat them as hobbies. He describes telling supporters that he will gladly take a check, “but don’t write me your pity check.” He recalls a former pastor’s phrase for real generosity: “This is going to be an ouch check.”
Where does Scripture actually speak to this?
Thompson anchors his case in Matthew 25, where the Son of Man separates the nations and identifies himself with the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the sick and the imprisoned. The King’s words in Matthew 25:40 are “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Thompson draws a broad conclusion: “how we treat those with the least amount of power is truly a reflection of our Christian faith.”
This is a judgment scene, and it measures concrete acts of care toward people in need, not abstract sympathy. Interpreters differ on who “my brethren” are. Many Christians read the phrase as all who suffer need. Others read it more narrowly as Jesus’s followers, especially his messengers. On either reading the passage ties how we treat the vulnerable to how we treat Christ.
The passage does not mention donor portfolios or boards of directors. Applying it to how Christians allocate charitable money is Thompson’s extension, and a reasonable one. If the treatment of those with the least power reveals the reality of faith, then the habits by which Christian institutions decide who is trusted with resources fall under the same scrutiny as individual acts of kindness.
Fields adds a second text. When David was offered a threshing floor and animals for sacrifice as a gift, he refused. The account in 2 Samuel 24:24 records his reply to Araunah: “Nay; but I will surely buy it of thee at a price: neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the LORD my God of that which doth cost me nothing.” Fields draws out the principle that David understood “anything that he offered to God had to be a sacrifice to him,” and that what we are willing to sacrifice shows what we value.
This is a narrative. It describes David’s act rather than issuing a rule about charities. Its relevance is the posture it models. Giving to an organization outside your usual circle costs more than writing the familiar check. It takes research, new relationships and a willingness to trust people you have not trusted before. That cost is part of the offering.
What does mature, faithful giving aim at?
Thompson points to the documentary Poverty, Inc., which in his summary surveys decades of international aid and finds that communities given food, water and shoes were not more empowered years later. His lesson is that Christian generosity “when it’s mature, has to lead to the empowerment of those who are receiving.” Then the sharper line: “It can’t just be that they nurse on us paternalistic, and then we feel good.” His test is to give in a way that equips people, “so that when we come back 10 years later, those individuals are not just someone we give to, but they’re someone that we receive from.”
Here the minority-led argument and the empowerment argument meet. If the goal of giving is that people move from recipient to leader, then funding people already leading from inside their communities is the outcome mature giving is supposed to produce. A donor who funds only outside leadership can, without intending to, keep a community permanently in the receiving position.
Thompson is careful about motive. He does not want guilt or a sense of superiority driving the gift. “Money should be the outworking of what grace has already done in our lives. And charity is just saying, God, this is yours, not mine.” A donor, on that view, is a steward of what belongs to God, and neglecting good work because of who leads it is, in his words, “a misstep and a mis stewarding of what God has given you.” His prescription follows: “You have to be intentional since there is a lack of proximity to those things.” If your networks are not a fair sample of the good work God is doing, trusting your instincts will reproduce your networks.
Fields also points to counterexamples. She was encouraged when majority-culture supporters, seminaries and churches, including Black congregations, backed Jude 3 Project’s work. The pattern is common, but it is not fixed. Every gift carries a picture of the people it serves, and a Christian who believes each of them bears God’s image can choose a gift that trusts them to lead.
Quick answers
How do I start vetting a minority-led organization?
Use the same checks you would use anywhere. Thompson points to whether the books and business are in order and whether the work is good. Fields adds who sits on the board, who leads, and how the money is allocated.
What does a gift actually pay for?
Mostly people and programs. Fields lists curriculum, staff for blog writing, podcast production and campus events, and she says each stop on Jude 3 Project’s HBCU tour costs between four and six thousand dollars. Thompson describes hiring staff to oversee small groups so they keep their quality as they grow.
Does this apply only to Black-led organizations?
The distinction is about leadership from inside the community being served. Thompson’s definition speaks of Black and brown communities and of leaders who come from the communities they serve, so the principle reaches beyond any single group.
Where can I find examples?
Beyond their own organizations, Fields and Thompson name Be the Bridge, The AND Campaign, The Witness and Truth’s Table as minority-led organizations doing work they respect. Treat that as a starting list for your own research, not a substitute for it.