The Cost of Community Care for Black Women Leaders

For Wande Okunoren-Meadows, working at her mother’s early childcare center in metro Atlanta offered an early lesson in the economics of community care. 

The business is a lifeline for families in Clayton County, Georgia, where the median household income is 25% below the state average. But behind that stability lies strain: long hours, no healthcare benefits, and thin profit margins. 

“Staff would come to work with an abscessed tooth because they couldn’t afford to miss a day,” Okunoren-Meadows says. “I kept thinking, ‘We’ve got to do better as a society.’” 

That experience was one of many that led her to co-found Hand, Heart, + Soul Project. The Clayton County-based nonprofit nourishes local children and families through access to nutrient-dense foods, holistic health and education programs, and advocacy outreach. 

Community-rooted work is where her heart is. But the financial realities of running a nonprofit have been sobering. 

“A funder might give a non-Black organization $50,000 or $100,000, while an organization like mine might get closer to $5,000,” she says. “And then you want me on the phone four times a year about what I did with that $5,000.” 

Her frustration highlights a common paradox: Black women who lead community organizations are routinely praised for their expertise and proximity to the people they serve, yet often face heightened scrutiny and fewer resources once in leadership roles. 

Sector-wide, nonprofits led by Black women are less likely to receive unrestricted or multi-year funding than white-led organizations, and the grants they do receive are often smaller. About 61% of Black-led nonprofit organizations operate on budgets under $100,000, hindering their ability to grow or plan beyond the next funding cycle.

Dr. Tiffany Rogers Bussey, executive director of the Morehouse Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center at Morehouse College in Atlanta, sees this pattern across Black nonprofit and business leaders alike. 

“Black women entrepreneurs face a compounding penalty: race, gender, and sector bias layered together,” she says. “Burnout is real, because the ecosystem frequently relies on their labor without resourcing their sustainability.” 

Atlanta’s nonprofit landscape shows how this paradox plays out in practice. The city is celebrated as a “Black Mecca” of cultural and economic power, yet that reputation exists alongside stark inequity: White households in the city hold 46 times more wealth than Black households. 

For Hope Wollensack, founder and executive director of the Georgia Resilience & Opportunity (GRO) Fund, that tension became clear early in her career. She worked as a teacher and assistant principal in New Orleans, another city known for both its rich Black culture and deep wealth inequities. 

“We’d tell students that with hard work, the American Dream would be within reach,” she recalls. “But as students grappled with eviction notices, not enough food in the fridge, caregiving responsibilities, and violence in their communities, it felt like a hollow promise.”  

That experience pushed Wollensack to ask why students were being asked to overcome generations of disinvestment, rather than addressing the systems that produced those gaps in the first place. Launching GRO Fund was her answer: “We bring bold ideas to life by directly investing in people through cash and capital.” 

Both Wollensack and Okunoren-Meadows join a broader trend. As systems fall short, Black women across the region are stepping up to build social-good organizations rooted in trust, proximity, and lived experience. About 34% of nonprofits in Georgia are led by Black CEOs, the highest share of any state.  

Dr. Bussey has seen a rise in students turning to entrepreneurship as a response to a job market that has long underperformed for Black workers. She’s also observed more Black women launching organizations focused on health, education, and community well-being—areas where needs are visible and urgent. That trend holds true nationally, with health care and social services topping the list of industries with the highest share of Black-owned businesses. 

But leadership brings new pressures, from limited funding to racial bias. Many aspiring Black entrepreneurs lack generational wealth, which shapes who can take chances and how long they can hold on. While the majority of Black entrepreneurs say growth is their top priority, just 3% of Black-owned firms scale to $1 million in revenue, compared with 7% of white-owned firms. 

Dr. Bussey says these factors often work against the young entrepreneurs in her program. 

“They are less able to self-finance, absorb early losses, or rely on family networks for seed capital,” she notes. 

Black women working within established organizations are also more likely to be underpaid, making the economics of community leadership less sustainable. In nonprofit roles, they earn 21% less than the sector average, despite higher levels of educational achievement. Recent Financial Health Network research found they are also more likely to work in nonprofits with budgets under $1 million a year. 

“Our economy broadly leaves too many people behind, but Black women face some of the most acute and persistent economic challenges,” Wollensack says. “Pay disparities are compounded by caregiving responsibilities, placing additional strain on already limited resources.”

Bias and misperceptions further complicate these pressures. Some encounter the “pet to threat” phenomenon, where early enthusiasm for a Black woman leader—often grounded in her differences from other team members—give way to resistance as she demonstrates knowledge, gains visibility, and challenges the status quo. Others experience the “glass cliff,” stepping into leadership roles during periods of crisis without support. 

Dr. Trina Peterson-Garcia PhD, Director of Human Resources at the Financial Health Network, underscores that these challenges are systemic barriers, not isolated experiences. 

“Research, including my own, highlights that these leaders carry disproportionate emotional labor and psychological strain,” she says. “In response, Black women leaders have cultivated highly adaptive and creative coping strategies, pairing resilience, exercising strategic excellence, and emotional regulation to navigate bias, double standards, performative DEI, and tokenism.”

The emotional and physical toll of these pressures is increasingly clear. One survey of Black women nonprofit executives found that 90% said their work had harmed their health. Another report noted that more than 300,000 Black women across industries exited the workforce in the first few months of 2025, driven by a combination of federal layoffs, DEI program rollbacks, and structural inequities.

Access to capital is key. Funding approaches like zero-interest loans with flexible repayment for businesses, alternative underwriting models that consider potential community impact, and unrestricted grants for nonprofits can strengthen stability and reduce financial strain. 

“The challenges we’re working to solve are structural and generational,” Wollensack says. “They don’t operate on a one-year timeline, and funding should reflect that.” 

Sustainability also hinges on investing in leadership through development, mentorship, and compensation that reflects skill and responsibility. Dr. Bussey points to HBCUs as places where those pathways can take shape. 

“We use the university as a de-risking platform, providing applied consulting, research, talent pipelines, and trusted networks that founders would otherwise go without,” she says. 

Underpinning all of these shifts is trust: trust that Black women can lead without surveillance, that proximity to community is an asset, and that solutions built closest to the problem are most likely to last. 

Okunoren-Meadows puts it plainly: “Stop scrutinizing us so much. Fund the work.”

While the issue is larger than any single organization, Dr. Bussey says, so are the potential benefits. 

“When Black leaders succeed in starting and sustaining organizations, communities stabilize, jobs grow, and the economy benefits,” she says. “This isn’t a zero-sum issue. It’s a systems one.”