The Beautiful Project: Helping Black Girls and Women Thrive

How can the arts and a sup­port­ive com­mu­ni­ty be com­bined to posi­tion Black girls to be agents of social change? The Beau­ti­ful Project pro­vides men­tor­ship through train­ing in pho­tog­ra­phy, film and writ­ing to help Black girls and women advance their well-being and tell their own sto­ries. With sup­port from the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion, The Beau­ti­ful Project has honed its mis­sion, refined its pro­gram offer­ings and achieved 501(c)(3) non­prof­it sta­tus to expand its work and make the orga­ni­za­tion more sustainable.

Since its 2004 launch, The Beau­ti­ful Project has brought togeth­er Black artists, edu­ca­tors and researchers in Durham, North Car­oli­na. The orga­ni­za­tion offers four core activ­i­ties, includ­ing a sum­mer inten­sive train­ing and a youth appren­tice­ship for girls ages 14 to 18. In addi­tion to help­ing par­tic­i­pants cul­ti­vate their writ­ing and pho­tog­ra­phy skills, these pro­grams pro­mote the per­spec­tives of Black girls and women in the Durham region and beyond. In 2019, the col­lec­tive brought its work to the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art in New York City for the exhib­it ​“Pen, Lens & Soul: The Sto­ry of the Beau­ti­ful Project.”

The Beau­ti­ful Project’s empha­sis on using the arts to build self-con­fi­dence and rela­tion­ships between Black men­tors and mentees drew the atten­tion of Ayo Atter­ber­ry, a senior asso­ciate with Casey’s Evi­dence-Based Prac­tice Group. Atterberry’s port­fo­lio focus­es on help­ing pro­grams and orga­ni­za­tions devel­oped specif­i­cal­ly to improve well-being for youth of col­or to doc­u­ment their pur­pose and build evi­dence so they can grow and work with more young people.

Strength­en­ing lan­guage to advance mis­sion and programs

At the onset of their rela­tion­ship with the Casey Foun­da­tion, The Beau­ti­ful Project’s team strug­gled to artic­u­late their core activ­i­ties and pro­gram out­comes. Despite hav­ing built a strong local rep­u­ta­tion, they knew they need­ed to refine this lan­guage to gain the atten­tion of exter­nal boards and donors. With a Casey grant, Jamaica Gilmer, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the orga­ni­za­tion, hired Erin Stephens to help them do so.

Stephens worked with Gilmer and con­sul­tants deployed by the Foun­da­tion to devel­op The Beau­ti­ful Project’s the­o­ry of change (a state­ment of the over­ar­ch­ing belief that guides their work) and log­ic mod­el (doc­u­ment­ed steps they take to achieve their goals). The result­ing tools com­bined the con­sul­tants’ expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge on imple­ment­ing and eval­u­at­ing pro­grams with first­hand per­spec­tive from staff and par­tic­i­pants at The Beau­ti­ful Project.

Fund­ing also enabled The Beau­ti­ful Project to start a sec­ond cohort of its youth appren­tice­ship pro­gram, help­ing four to six par­tic­i­pants devel­op advanced writ­ing and pho­tog­ra­phy skills. The Beau­ti­ful Project gained access to a net­work of oth­er Casey grantees on sim­i­lar jour­neys to doc­u­ment and eval­u­ate how they con­tribute to well-being for young peo­ple, fam­i­lies and communities.

“Growth is not just about scale,” says Atter­ber­ry. ​“Growth is also about going deep. The goal was to help The Beau­ti­ful Project real­ly dig deep into their pro­gram so that they can show their log­ic mod­el, get addi­tion­al fun­ders and even­tu­al­ly scale their program.”

Becom­ing a more sus­tain­able organization

Orig­i­nal­ly, The Beau­ti­ful Project was sup­port­ing its work through a fis­cal spon­sor. Gilmer was reluc­tant to reg­is­ter The Beau­ti­ful Project as a non­prof­it, hav­ing wit­nessed oth­er orga­ni­za­tions strug­gle with being ful­ly on their own. She changed her mind when, through a con­ver­sa­tion with Atter­ber­ry, she real­ized she could steer her team along this process through con­tin­u­al learn­ing and strong leadership.

Ulti­mate­ly, The Beau­ti­ful Project’s non­prof­it sta­tus has made the orga­ni­za­tion more sus­tain­able, Gilmer says. Mon­ey that was going to the fis­cal spon­sor is now direct­ed toward goals. It has also earned the orga­ni­za­tion greater legit­i­ma­cy among donors and fun­ders. ​“It put us in a dif­fer­ent sphere,” says Gilmer. ​“Now, when apply­ing for fund­ing, we have the enti­ty that phil­an­thropy is going to con­sid­er before they even get to our mis­sion and vision.”

Expand­ing access for lead­ers of color

Lead­ers of col­or often lack access to crit­i­cal resources to sus­tain their pro­grams, par­tic­u­lar­ly fund­ing and out­side exper­tise. At the same time, they’re indis­pens­able fig­ures, cre­at­ing cul­tur­al­ly respon­sive and effec­tive orga­ni­za­tions. By help­ing lead­ers pin­point their orga­ni­za­tions’ strengths and nav­i­gate the com­plex­i­ties of fundrais­ing, the Foundation’s sup­port helps pre­pare them for growth.

“Our part­ner­ship with the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion was a piv­otal shift to how we think about and do our work,” says Gilmer. ​“It gift­ed us with the abil­i­ty to just choose some­thing that we can com­mit to as opposed to try­ing to do every­thing, but being less effec­tive. The thought­ful and trans­par­ent part­ner­ship allowed us to see that we did not have to be per­fect, but if we could take what we had learned, learn more and oper­a­tional­ize our exper­tise, we could go further.”

Hear pro­gram lead­ers of col­or dis­cuss their jour­neys in build­ing evidence