LaDawn Sullivan didn’t learn philanthropy in a boardroom. She learned it at her grandmother’s feet.

Before Sullivan understood grantmaking, donor strategy, or philanthropic infrastructure, she understood that people gave because communities depended on it. Around the kitchen table of her grandmother, Ruth C. Denny, generosity wasn’t measured by wealth; it was measured by willingness.

Sometimes it looked like opening a home to neighbors who needed a meal. Sometimes it looked like organizing families to stand against injustice. Sometimes it looked like spending another long day in a classroom because the children deserved more than what the system expected of them.

There was no ceremony around it. It was simply what her family did. For Sullivan, that distinction matters.

Today, as executive director of the Black Resilience in Colorado (BRIC) Fund, she spends much of her time talking about philanthropy. She is quick to remind audiences that Black philanthropy did not begin when foundations discovered equity, nor when corporations issued public statements after moments of national tragedy.

“We’ve always been giving,” she often says. “The question isn’t whether Black communities are philanthropic. The question is whether people have been paying attention.”

That perspective – equal parts historical truth and loving challenge – has become one of the defining characteristics of Sullivan’s leadership. She is as comfortable speaking to billion-dollar foundations as she is sitting in neighborhood meetings, encouraging someone to make their first $10 gift. To her, both acts belong to the same tradition.

An inherited tradition of giving

Denny was a respected Denver Public Schools educator whose commitment to civil rights stretched far beyond the classroom. She organized, advocated, marched, and believed that education and justice were inseparable. She helped challenge segregation, participated in the movement that culminated in the historic March on Washington, and spent her life proving that ordinary people could create extraordinary change when they moved together.

She never used the word “philanthropist.” She didn’t need to. Her life defined it.

Watching Grandma Ruth shaped Sullivan’s understanding of leadership long before she would hold executive titles herself. Leadership wasn’t about having the loudest voice. It was about showing up, again and again, for people whose dignity mattered.

Denny planted the seeds. Sullivan’s mother, Dianne Briscoe McKenzie, demonstrated what those seeds could become. 

McKenzie fulfilled , in many ways, exceeded her mother’s dream of having a lawyer in the family. Serving as assistant city attorney of Denver, airport attorney, prosecutor of child protection, and ultimately in the esteemed position of Denver County court judge, she devoted her career to pursuing justice through the legal system, bringing compassion, fairness, and integrity to the bench.

Where Denny organized communities to challenge injustice, her daughter wielded the law to protect them. Together, grandmother and mother offered Sullivan a powerful inheritance: the knowledge and drive to pursue justice through education, law, organizing, leadership, and philanthropy. Each generation found its lane and carried the movement forward.

Sullivan found hers in philanthropy. Her career has spanned more than three decades in government, philanthropy, and nonprofit leadership. Along the way, she became known for building relationships. She developed a reputation as someone who connected people before they knew they needed one another, believing that lasting change rarely comes from isolated brilliance but rather comes from collective effort.

Her belief in collective giving helped shape an important facet of Colorado’s philanthropic landscape: Black giving circles. Throughout her career, she created and strengthened spaces where individuals pooled their resources, relationships, and influence to invest directly in their communities. She helped launch and support Colorado Black giving circles such as Denver African American Philanthropists (DAAP), Sisterhood of Philanthropists Impacting Needs (SPIN), Women of Color Making a Difference (WOCMAD), and ties to Community Investment Network, a national network of giving circles.

She championed a simple but transformative idea: philanthropy becomes even more powerful when generosity is shared. These giving circles have done more than award grants—they have cultivated new donors, strengthened civic leadership, inspired volunteerism, and affirmed that everyone has something meaningful to contribute, regardless of the size of their gift.

Not a moment, a movement

That philosophy eventually found its fullest expression in the BRIC Fund. Launched on Juneteenth 2020, the fund was created as Colorado’s first statewide fund dedicated to investing in Black-led and Black-serving nonprofits. While many organizations were responding to a national racial reckoning with temporary commitments, Sullivan and community partners envisioned something different, more permanent.

Since its founding, the BRIC Fund has invested millions of dollars into hundreds of organizations across Colorado. It also strengthened nonprofit leaders through coaching, technical assistance, leadership development, capital access, statewide convenings, and policy advocacy.

Sullivan resists reducing BRIC’s impact to numbers. Yet, the grants matter – over $6 million awarded. The loans matter – over $250,000 funded. The leadership programs matter – 350-plus leaders of color cultivated.

What excites her most is what those investments represent: trust.

“When we invest in Black leadership,” she says, “we’re investing in people who already know how to solve problems. They don’t need to be rescued. They need to be resourced.”

That sentence captures much of her approach to philanthropy. Too often, traditional philanthropy begins by asking communities what they lack. She prefers asking what communities already possess. The answer is usually everything except sufficient investment.

Black neighborhoods have always contained entrepreneurs, artists, educators, healers, organizers, pastors, caregivers, innovators, and dreamers. They have always possessed cultural wealth, social capital, and collective wisdom. What has too often been missing is equitable access to financial capital. Closing that gap is not charity; it is justice.

Each August, communities across the country celebrate a movement that has steadily grown since its founding in 2011. Black Philanthropy Month recognizes the countless ways Black communities invest in one another—not simply through financial gifts, but through mentorship, advocacy, volunteerism, leadership, storytelling, faith, and collective action.

For Sullivan, the month serves another purpose—it corrects history.

“People often imagine philanthropy as something wealthy people do,” she explains. “Black Philanthropy Month reminds us that philanthropy is something communities (specifically Black folks) do.”

Long before formal foundations existed, Black families pooled resources to purchase freedom, establish schools, build churches, create mutual aid societies, support historically Black colleges and universities, and care for neighbors navigating impossible circumstances.

“The receipts have always existed. They simply weren’t always recognized,” she explains.

That is why the 2026 Black Philanthropy Month theme, “Many Voices. One Movement,” resonates so deeply with her. In it, she hears her grandmother’s voice, her mother’s voice, the voices of countless nonprofit leaders working long hours without public recognition, and the voices of donors making recurring monthly gifts because consistency matters more than headlines.

She recognizes the voices of volunteers preparing meals, mentoring young people, serving on boards, organizing neighborhoods, coaching new executive directors, preserving Black history, supporting Black businesses, and helping families weather difficult seasons.

Sullivan believes the theme also challenges a dangerous misconception – that effective movements require everyone to look the same or contribute in identical ways. Communities don’t need uniformity. They need participation.

That belief inspired one of BRIC’s most recognizable frameworks: the Five Ts – Time, Talent, Treasure, Testimony, and (Social) Ties.

Every contribution and voice strengthens the movement

The framework reminds people that everyone has something meaningful to contribute. Some give financially. Others mentor emerging leaders. Others tell stories that preserve community memory. Others introduce people who become lifelong collaborators.

The Five Ts also reflect Sullivan’s own life. She has given treasure through fundraising, talent through decades of nonprofit leadership, and time through countless evenings, weekends, and community meetings. She has offered testimony by publicly championing Black philanthropy, and created social ties through a passion for, and long record of, connecting people across sectors, generations, and geography.

“I never met a stranger I couldn’t turn into family,” she jokes. Beneath the humor sits a profound truth: communities grow stronger when relationships grow stronger.

That relationship-centered approach explains why she invests as much energy in leadership development as she does in grantmaking. Through the Executive Directors of Color Institute, she has helped cultivate hundreds of nonprofit leaders who now serve communities throughout Colorado.

“Strong organizations require strong leaders. Strong leaders require strong communities. Strong communities create lasting change. It is all connected,” she explains.

Perhaps that is why she refuses to separate philanthropy from her everyday life. Giving isn’t something she turns on during business hours. It is how she moves through the world.

As the mother of two Black sons, she thinks often about legacy – not as something written in biographies but as something lived through daily decisions. Every conversation, every investment, every introduction, and every opportunity created for someone else contributes to the inheritance future generations will receive.

She wants her sons to understand what their great-grandmother and grandmother understood and demonstrated: success means very little if it stops with you. Real success multiplies. It opens doors, leaves resources, and creates pathways others can travel.

In that sense, Sullivan measures wealth differently than many people. To her, wealth is seeing a nonprofit leader secure funding that keeps their doors open, watching young leaders discover their confidence, helping Black organizations purchase buildings instead of renting them forever, and ensuring that future generations inherit institutions – not just memories.

That philosophy continues to shape BRIC’s work as it invests in Colorado’s future. The organization is helping build something previously imagined but inhibited by the lack of resources to sustain it: permanent Black philanthropic infrastructure.

Infrastructure that leads to change

Strong institutions preserve culture, protect community memory, respond during crises, and invest during opportunity. They remain long after individual leaders retire. Sullivan understands that no single person builds such institutions alone.

The 2026 Black Philanthropy Month theme is deeply personal for her. “Many voices. One movement,” is the story of her family. Grandmother Ruth raised her voice for educational justice and civil rights. Mother McKenzie raised hers in courtrooms where fairness mattered. Sullivan raises hers in philanthropy, striving so that communities have the resources to pursue the futures they deserve.

“Three women. Three generations. One continuous movement toward justice,” she proclaims.

Her mission is to ensure that movement extends far beyond a single family to everyone. It includes every donor making a first gift, every volunteer serving communities, every foundation choosing trust over control, every nonprofit leader refusing to give up, every young person deciding to come home and build instead of leave, and every elder passing wisdom to the next generation.

Each voice matters. Together they create something far greater than any individual could accomplish alone.

For her, that is the enduring promise of Black philanthropy. “It has never simply been about giving money. It has always been about giving possibility, that once shared, has a remarkable way of becoming legacy,” she says.

The legacy that Denny quietly modeled around a kitchen table now echoes through conference rooms, community centers, neighborhood organizations, board meetings, and classrooms across Colorado. It lives in every BRIC Fund investment, every emerging leader encouraged to stay in the work, every donor reminded that generosity is measured by commitment rather than income, and every community strengthened because someone chose to give.

“One enduring belief that has carried Black communities through every generation is: when we invest in one another, we build far more than programs or institutions,” Sullivan says, “We build the future, BRIC by BRIC.”

Editor’s note: For more information about the Black Resilience in Colorado (BRIC) Fund, visit https://www.bricfund.org/