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- [00:00]
Duane Ashley
Someone said to me once about a challenging job that they had and I remember turning to the person and saying, you won't die. It's not going to kill you to go through this experience. And so I would use that same sentiment, is that it may make you a little harder, may make you question, you know, things a little bit more, but you're not going to die. We're going to get through this and the world is going to survive.
- [00:31]
Jay Frost
Welcome to the PM Podcast brought to you by Donor Search, the show that takes you inside the lives of thought leaders, innovators and changemakers in fundraising, philanthropy and civil society. I'm your host, Jay Frost. Dwayne Ashley is the founder and CEO of Bridge Philanthropic Consulting, the nation's only full service black owned fundraising firm. A passionate champion for social justice, he has raised over $2 billion to support communities of color with more than 30 years of experience. He's a respected leader, author and advocate for equity in philanthropy. We spoke with Duane about his personal and professional journey, beginning with the family influence that first sparked his commitment to service.
- [01:14]
Unnamed Interviewer
Duane, thank you first of all for this conversation and I do want to ask you about something you were sharing before we started to record and that is about your journaling. And you said you journal copiously and now you're even using devices to record your thoughts and all of that. You wake up in the middle of the night, talk about the importance of those journals and how far they go back, but also maybe what you're journaling about today.
- [01:40]
Duane Ashley
Yeah, thank you. My journals go back to eighth grade. They are really important to me because I actually go back and read them. I like to see how I was thinking at that time, what maybe I kind of goals I thought about for myself had I achieved those goals and where had I gotten off course. So it's very important to me to kind of do a check in with life with my journals. They cover everything from my passion for work, my career, my education, my love life. All of that's in the journal. So I hope they're never discovered and it's okay if they do and someone wants to write a great book, but they do cover all of that. And what I'm journaling about today is what's happening in the world because there seems to be a heaviness on people and I believe in lightness. So I just kind of look at what do I see that's lightness through all this that we can better reflect in this great sector that we work in, social impact to do the work that we do. So that's what I'm journaling about now. I'm journaling about my nieces and nephews growing up, my aunts and uncles who passed on over the last few years, and my memories of them. So many, many things.
- [02:57]
Unnamed Interviewer
You said goals too. And you do revisit the old journals. I think those who journal do that. So when you look back at 8 year old Duane's journals, what were the goals that he had?
- [03:09]
Duane Ashley
Yeah, I said I wanted to own my own business. My mother was an entrepreneur, so I grew up around entrepreneurs. My grandparents were entrepreneurs, they owned stores. So I said I wanted to own my own business. I think at the time, as I got in high school, I thought it would become a restaurant because I was a restaurant hotel management major. I wanted to go into that business probably because my mother owned a jazz club and fired me. And so as I later evolved, I was clearly stating that I wanted to own some type of a business that operated within the fundraising social impact sector. And it became a reality.
- [03:51]
Unnamed Interviewer
That's not usually something that occurs to people, especially when they're 8, but even when they're 28. This journey, how early did that begin? Because did you go to college where you lived? I know your family originally comes generations back from Louisiana, I think, but then you mentioned Houston and now today it's New York. So where did your geographic journey begin, personally?
- [04:17]
Duane Ashley
So I was conceived in Dallas, Texas, born in Houston, Texas and grew up in Houston. I went off to college in East Texas and then I moved. While in college, I did internships in Washington, D.C. i was a fellow at the the National Judicial center, the Federal Judicial center for the Supreme Court. And then I interned for the Atlanta Falcons football team with Rankin Smith, who was the owner at that time. He hired me when I graduated to manage all of the team's travel. I thought I was going to go in and work in a restaurant, but I learned, you know, when you HR major, you learn about hotels, you learn about rooms management. What? One summer I interned at a Howard Johnson's and they put me in housekeeping when I was with this company. And so I knew all of that. I went there and part of my job was to manage the team's travel. As you can imagine, NFL players can be pretty rowdy when they travel.
- [05:23]
Unnamed Interviewer
I have no idea, but I'll take your word for it. It must have been some trip. But I'm also kind of, my mind is revolving between you working at the Judicial center and working with the Supreme Court, I guess, and then working with the Falcons. That must have been quite a difference in culture.
- [05:41]
Duane Ashley
It was quite a difference. But I was just young and budding and wanting every experience I could have. Enjoying every experience. And somehow I knew this journey was taking me in some direction. And so I left the Falcons, went back home to Houston and started working for the United Way. And that's where the doorway opened for me to be in philanthropy.
- [06:08]
Unnamed Interviewer
Did you have an image of what philanthropy was at that point?
- [06:11]
Duane Ashley
I did so while I was in college. Well, let me go a little bit further back. My great grandmother was a great midwife in Louisiana. She amassed about 200 acres of land and she donated the land for the first school in Heflin, Louisiana to be built that educated. At that time, they called them Negro children, which soon evolved to colored. There was not a school for black children to be educated. There were no teachers that were paid by the public system. They volunteered. Later the school was adopted by the public school system. It now sits as one of the oldest black churches in the state of Louisiana. It's called Carter Memorial Baptist Church. And so that was really when philanthropy got infused into the family.
- [07:04]
Jay Frost
Have you had a chance to visit there?
- [07:07]
Duane Ashley
Absolutely. It's our family church now. It still stands. The family takes care of it. It's set up as a nonprofit now. In fact, my mother just recently donated some more land for them to do some expansion from her land there. So we're very much involved with the church.
- [07:26]
Unnamed Interviewer
In each of those cases, your great grandmother through to your mother, those are donations that they've made not for something that's owned by the family, because they have chosen to make this something that's a non profit institution, something you've spent so much of your, almost of your professional life on.
- [07:43]
Jay Frost
What kind of effect has that had on you?
- [07:47]
Duane Ashley
I think it showed all of us in the family, my brothers, extended family members, about the importance of giving back to your community. My great grandmother not only donated the land for the school, but there was no place for children to play. So she donated the land for them to build a baseball field also for the children. And that baseball field was there throughout my childhood, but she donated it during the 1900s.
- [08:20]
Unnamed Interviewer
So you've got this big tradition, at least for a couple generations of people, creating things and also giving in a very substantial way to the communities where they lived. And then you yourself rise up. You go to a historically black college. Right. So Wiley, I believe, is one of the earliest founded and then decide to work for uncf, which is. Is that still the same name? Because they've gone through various iterations of their names.
- [08:49]
Duane Ashley
Yeah, it's now called the College Fund. Uncf.
- [08:52]
Unnamed Interviewer
The College Fund. And I'm sure we could talk a lot about the importance of names, especially in the current era, but the importance of the organization. Can you talk about that? Because I think that's something you sought out. You wanted that work. Why?
- [09:07]
Duane Ashley
So I attended a United Negro College Fund school. I received several scholarships, and I will name them because I'm very grateful. One was the UPS Scholarship from the UPS Corporation. I also received the Denny's Essay Scholarship, and I received one from my fraternity, the Phi Beta Sigma Scholarship. I think I got that one twice. And so I got to see the value of people giving so that someone else could get an education. That meant a lot to me and had a huge impact on me. In addition to that, we had an organization that raised money for students for uncf, and it was matched dollar for dollar by the national. It was called the National Pre Alumni Council, and it represented college students. I was elected the national vice president at the time, we raised $700,000 a year for UNCF, and that was done through these competitions they had on campus, called the Mission, UNCF Campus for Wiley College, for Morehouse College, Spelman College. All of the UNCF schools had one, and they were used to raise money. The young ladies would have to go out and raise money, and there would be all kinds of fundraisers on campus. And there was an elected body of students that also ran these fundraising campaigns. And so I thought, wow, this is fun. This is exciting to ask people for money and to hit these goals. And we won the competition twice at Wiley College, even though we were one of the smaller colleges. So I was very proud of that work.
- [10:45]
Unnamed Interviewer
It's not everybody's favorite thing to ask people for money.
- [10:49]
Duane Ashley
Don't I know that.
- [10:52]
Unnamed Interviewer
I know you've had a lot of experience in coaching people to do it and helping them through that process and doing it very successfully. But what about it attracted you that early? It's one thing to see in your family people giving. It's another thing to see people asking for money. That's not something we normally even see.
- [11:11]
Duane Ashley
Yeah, I think it was that feeling that you get that we all know about now as fundraisers, when someone says yes, and you get this feeling of, wow, this is a yes for me to make a difference. Not a yes because I'm going to make more dividends, I'm going to get a bonus or something. But yes, because it helped my college and we were a small Methodist school. It was not a wealthy school with a big endowment, but it was a wealthy school with a big heart for helping people and providing a nurturing environment. So I felt like every time I won for them at fundraising, I was winning for my classmates, who many of them were first generation college students, and for the faculty members who needed a lot of resources and just to keep Wiley alive and to build upon its legacy of sustainability.
- [12:03]
Unnamed Interviewer
Did you already have a sense about that kind of idea about legacy and the importance of sustaining a place like Wiley? Because sometimes when we're in school, no matter what our background is, we're just in school. And I know you were already engaged in raising money for the school, so that's a pretty special experience. You were obviously committed along with your peers, but we don't always know exactly what we are doing at a time like that. Did you already have a sense of the importance of legacy and maintaining a place like Wiley into the future?
- [12:33]
Duane Ashley
I can't say that I had that from, you know, my own parental experiences. UNCF trained us, they trained the students to fundraise. So you went through some training, and part of that training was they talked about the history of the United Negro College Fund, how it was founded to educate descendants of slaves, and how important it was to maintain these institutions so that more students who were non traditional students would have an opportunity to go to college. So we basically had our case for support trained. We were trained in that pitch, in that case for support. That's, I think, where I got a lot of that from. But then it became ingrained in me as I continue to be involved over the years.
- [13:19]
Unnamed Interviewer
That's a really important role that organizations can play, but also mentors play of that kind of training. And that's pretty extraordinary. Is that the reason why then you were attracted to working with the organization itself?
- [13:33]
Duane Ashley
I was fascinated by the telethon. I was fascinated by our local area director and the work that they did. And I just kind of felt like, wow, I want to be a part of this. This is fun, this is exciting. And I think I can make a difference at doing this work because I love it so much and I know what the college experience was like. So I felt like I could really be leveraged in going out and securing resources for them.
- [14:00]
Unnamed Interviewer
So you got out of school, you went and knocked on the door and what happened?
- [14:05]
Duane Ashley
They told me no. They said, you don't have any experience. We only hire experienced fundraisers.
- [14:19]
Unnamed Interviewer
And then your, your next move was then not give up clearly, because you're still in this field doing quite well. But. So what did you do after. After they said no.
- [14:27]
Duane Ashley
So I then was introduced to a family friend who serves as a mentor to me today. She was a vice president at the United Way of Houston, and she helped me secure an interview. She didn't give me the job because I had to prove that I could do this. And their interview process was. It was about maybe 70 fundraisers. And they had you in this big room, if you could only imagine, a huge room with all of the fundraising staff. That time, they called them Resource development. They all came into the room as a part of your interview. You, of course, went through one interview first, a second, but the third one, you had to meet with the entire team. So they knew if you had the guts to stand up against a football team like that of United Ways, you could survive being out there raising money for them. And I had to go through that interview, and Pretty likable guy. So I think that people liked me. I'm still friends with some of those people today.
- [15:28]
Unnamed Interviewer
That sounds almost like a traumatic experience to have a room with 70 people staring. That sounds more like a theater audition than a job.
- [15:39]
Duane Ashley
That way.
- [15:41]
Unnamed Interviewer
Wow. All right. So you somehow survived, I guess, maybe even thrived in that kind of environment. And then you. You did the work there. What was it like working in the United Way environment? Because today, of course, United Way has its own challenges. How was that experience as kind of a formative experience for you in fundraising?
- [15:59]
Duane Ashley
It was some of the best training, Jay, you could get. The way that they taught you how to approach fundraising, how to build relationships, and the way that we fundraise, as you probably know, back then, it was workplace fundraising. So I was assigned all of the corporations that raised up to $250,000 in their workplace campaigns. So my. My clients went from 250,000 to a million. So I had, like, Texaco. My father worked for Texaco, so I had Texaco. I think I had Exxon, a lot of the big, big companies, a Dresser corporation, a lot of big corporations like that. And I was assigned to meet with someone. Hr you then met with the senior leadership because they had to be involved. And the way the campaigns ran was you got senior leadership to commit first, and then you ran the campaigns for the employees. And companies gave us loaned executives. They went out to help us run the campaigns in the companies. So you got exposure to a lot of top executives and to the CEO of the company.
- [17:12]
Unnamed Interviewer
I'm imagining what it must be like not only to have that kind of role at that time of year, career, but then to be visiting a company where your dad is in the company, what was that like? What were the conversations like back home?
- [17:25]
Duane Ashley
It was great. He was proud of me.
- [17:29]
Unnamed Interviewer
And so you made that journey, I think, for a couple years before you revisited that door knocking.
- [17:37]
Jay Frost
What happened next?
- [17:38]
Duane Ashley
Yeah, I got the two years of experience. And by the way, I told the United Way when I interviewed with him that my goal was to go to work for the United Negro College Fund. I was very clear probably wasn't a good idea, but I did tell them, and they respected it. And so after about two years, I reapplied again to UNCF and was granted several interviews brought up to the headquarters. At that time, it was in New York City. They owned a building with the Urban League in New York City. So I came to New York, interviewed, and they hired me to be the assistant area director for the Philadelphia area, which oversaw all of Pennsylvania, Ohio, part of Ohio and Delaware. So that was the market that I was the assistant director for. And Faith would have it as it would be. I'd gone to Philadelphia to interview with my boss. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer during the time of my hiring and moving to Philadelphia. And by the time I got there, he could no longer come in the office. I went from being the assistant director to being appointed the acting area director. And I was 23 years old, so I was the youngest to hold a position like that in the company.
- [19:00]
Unnamed Interviewer
And that's a lot of responsibility and a lot of geographic territory, but also a lot of different cultures. So I know that today you're a person who's traveled a lot, but then you were a person who had come from Texas and with family in Louisiana. And suddenly you're thrown into New York and Pennsylvania. And they have their own unique personalities. What was the experience for you to be having that kind of responsibility with a lot of people from a very different kind of experience of what it was like to be in America and attending these historically black colleges and universities.
- [19:34]
Duane Ashley
Yeah. So the people were great. The community welcomed me in. I'm a people person, naturally. So I just went about and started meeting people, knocking on doors, saying hello, getting to know all the people. I was very fortunate that a woman by the name of Carol Fair Perry, I don't know if you ever heard of her, she was the director that had preceded James Cates, who was my boss that hired me, who then subsequently passed away. Within me getting a month, she had become the CEO of the Philadelphia Foundation. So she was very well respected in the philanthropic world, and she kind of ushered me around, mentored me, taught me everything I needed to know. She had run that office for about five years, and so I was very fortunate to have her to mentor and guide me and introduce me to everybody. And so that made my job a lot easier. She met with me once a week for about a year, offloading information, sharing everything with me. You know, I was just a vivacious researcher. So I was reading everything I could, you know, all the files, everything. Back then, we had these huge index card files in the office that sent the donor information. Each week, you and Seth would send them out. We have to put them in. That's where all the donor files were. I would look through those. But then I went off on embarking to central Pennsylvania, I built a committee in central Pennsylvania, an advisory board committee to help us. I went to Eastern Pennsylvania, Amish country, traveled to Pittsburgh, developed a committee there, and pretty soon we were off and running and thriving. The challenge was I wasn't an experienced manager, so I had to go through the hazing of learning how to manage. And thank goodness my managers believed in me. I had an incredible boss by the name of James Austin, who has now passed on, but he was an executive at uncf. And one of the things I learned from Jim, he would always say, I'm sorry I made a mistake. Even when he didn't do it, he would always frame it as if it was his fault. And he was teaching me something about management that you kind of disarm people if you take the responsibility for it. And it's a lot easier to get through to people when they don't feel like you're coming at them, blaming them. And so he was just an incredible manager. Johnny Parham, who was a great manager of mine also. And then, of course, Bill Gates. Bill Gray became CEO, and he's from Philadelphia. As he leaves Congress, he closes his district offices and brings all the staff over to uncf. So they all start to work for me. These are all people who are way much older than me, and I'm their boss now. So it was. It was probably one of the best experience I had because there was one woman that I didn't particularly care for and wanted to probably look at how she could exit. And Bill Gray liked her a lot. She had worked for him a long time. He trusted her. She was really good. And he said, you will not fire her, and you will learn how to work with her, because you're going to Be faced with this throughout your career, where you won't always be able to select your staff. So you better learn now how to work with people that you may inherit and how to make it work. And I'm so grateful to him to this day because I did learn that, and she and I were able to work together. And I have been faced with that throughout my career.
- [23:26]
Unnamed Interviewer
Yeah, no kidding. And that's navigating not just the world of politics, but all these things. And one of the things I love about these stories is you're recognizing these people for the lessons that they offered and you chose to accept, which is pretty remarkable, too. But also, it's a way for us to remember people who have done so much. And Bill Gray is one of those people who had a lot of influence for a very long time. And. But names often get lost in the mix. When you think about these kinds of organizations and then the role that they play in the community, how important is it that they have leaders like Gray and these other people that you've cited to bring in, people, frankly, like yourself when you were younger, and then to help an organization go from where it was to where it's trying to go, how important is it to have leaders of that caliber?
- [24:33]
Duane Ashley
Yeah. I think we both know that at the end of the day, a leader is what makes the difference in whether an organization continues to thrive. It makes a difference in whether people are willing to invest. Because I say this to my clients, and when I speak, I tell people, people give to people, not to organizations. You can have the best mission in the world, but if people don't feel confident in the leadership, they're not going to feel confident investing in the organization. And so it's really important for the organization's future health and for a leader to have vision. And I also think it's important for the community also that you have leaders that are willing to invest in the next generation and prepare them, because that's how we all get this. It takes a village, and you learn lessons from others even when you may not realize you're learning lessons. So it's something that we practice. At my company. We believe in bringing in interns every year, and we're all about making sure they get a great experience and they're not just doing something that's not going to contribute to them being a better leader and a better person in the sector, regardless of what they do.
- [25:45]
Unnamed Interviewer
And I'm excited to talk to you about your company, but there's a lot that happened between that time back at UNCF and then, of course, founding the firm in 2016. So where did your journey take you next? Why did you leave this place that you so desperately wanted to be, and what did you do?
- [26:02]
Duane Ashley
Well, I wanted to get promoted to run the New York office. I had done extremely well and grown in my campaigns every year, and I wanted that flagship office. It was the biggest in the country. And Bill Gray told me no. He said, dwayne, I've. I believe that you have supported your career. I don't think you're ready for New York. And so I started to interview, and I got offered the position to be the first national executive director of 100 Black Men of America.
- [26:34]
Unnamed Interviewer
And for people who don't know that storied an important organization. Could you describe what it is?
- [26:39]
Duane Ashley
So 100 black men of America is one of the nation's largest mentoring organizations. It was founded in 1963 by a group of black men who were policemen and entrepreneurs in New York City. Charlie Rangel was one of those early founders, along with Percy Sutton, Dave Dinkins, who became ultimately mayor of New York City. They were founders of the organization, and they founded it to be an advocacy organization because a woman had been arrested by the police on Lenox Avenue. And the police commissioner who later became a member of the organization got involved, and the charges were racially based. At that point, they formed the organization and continued to do advocacy work and later expanded to mentor the next generation of leaders. It has more than 100 chapters, thousands of members. They do a national conference every two years and do great work. And it's some of the most influential men in the country that are involved in it.
- [27:51]
Unnamed Interviewer
And so at that point, and, oh, I wonder, were there a lot of people from your frat in there? Now I'm thinking about it because you were a fraternity member, right?
- [27:59]
Duane Ashley
Member of Phi Beta Sigma. They do crossover. We did have quite a few members from the fraternity who are active even today.
- [28:07]
Unnamed Interviewer
Yeah. So, again, there must be kind of a mentorship element in all this, where people kind of recognize other people who have, you know, kind of not necessarily just similar backgrounds, but kind of similar interests, similar commitment.
- [28:21]
Duane Ashley
You know that old saying, Jay, 20% of the people do 80% of the work. I think that's the same in every community. You've got the leaders who are involved in multiple organizations because they're the people that make a difference in the community. So you tend to see people crossing over into various organizations. What was interesting, though, is when I got offered the job, Bill Gray came back and offered Me, the New York position. Wow. I didn't take it, though.
- [28:46]
Unnamed Interviewer
No, too late. Oh, but I'm sure you don't have any regret about this. That must have been quite great. Again, you were, again, pretty young, and as the first executive director of that age running that organization, that must have been quite. Quite an extraordinary experience. Plus, it was, I guess, the scope of work was a little different. Right? I mean, a lot of your. You've talked broadly about social justice being important to you and certainly to the work of the firm, which we're going to talk about in a moment. It seems like that must have been really aligned with 100 black men.
- [29:25]
Duane Ashley
Very much so.
- [29:27]
Unnamed Interviewer
So doing that work then, I think, was it.
- [29:31]
Jay Frost
Next you went to jazz.
- [29:34]
Duane Ashley
So I took on 100 black men. We had myself and an assistant. And from there, I was recruited to run the Thurgood Marshall Fund by my old boss, Johnny Parham, who was my boss at UNCF with Jim Alston. So he told me he was the first CEO of the organization. And he said, well, Dwayne, when I retire, I want you to. I want you to come and take this job. Of course, they went through a search, and I competed and was then hired to be the CEO. At the time, it was located in the headquarters of Philip Morris, right on 39th and Park Avenue. So I went into the Philip Morris headquarters every day to my office. When you called our number, you got through the to switchboard of Philip Morris, and then they transferred you to the Thurgood Marshall Fund. Little do people know. The reason why that happened was because Philip Morris, Philip Miller Brewing Company, which was owned by Philip Morris, gave the founding donation to set up the Thurgood Marshall Fund. So there was a very close tie with the corporation and the organization because they were going through the tobacco legislation at that time. The company, in its own wisdom, wanted to bring in a leader that could separate it. Part of my job was to grow the board to bring in more donors so we would not be so dependent upon Philip Morris and Miller Brewing Company and a few other donors who had been involved for many years. That's what I went about the business of doing. Within three years, we moved out of that headquarters into our first independent office.
- [31:25]
Unnamed Interviewer
I'm trying to remember my history now, and when Justice Marshall passed, when he.
- [31:32]
Duane Ashley
Was with me, when I took the job, I went to meet with him.
- [31:35]
Unnamed Interviewer
So you were, oh, wow, that must have been something. What was it like working. Working for him or working with him?
- [31:42]
Duane Ashley
Well, it was an interesting situation because, you know, Supreme Court Justices Are not supposed to be engaged in fundraising. And so we were a fundraising organization for historically black public colleges. He was a graduate of one lincoln university in Pennsylvania. And so what he said was he signed a letter to the founder, Dr. Joyce Payne, saying that he would not object to his name being used to raise scholarship dollars for students attending public hbcus. So he never. That went through the ethics committee. They said that that was okay. And that was really the genesis of the organization became named the thurgood marshall college fund. What was scholarship fund? Dr. Payne approached him for the use.
- [32:29]
Unnamed Interviewer
Of his name, but on a day to day basis. Besides the use of his name, were you or others of the organization able to engage with him to conduct any kind of engagement or outreach?
- [32:44]
Duane Ashley
He kept that very much hands off. He was one of the most ethical justices we've ever had. He's like, go do what you do. I given you guys clearance through ethics. Do your work. But what I did do was I went and met with consulate baker motley. I met with all of the people around. At that time, the naacp legal defense fund was being run by Lorraine, and I should be able to remember her last name. She was a great leader. I went and met with her. I met with all the leaders and they gave me advice and just talked with them about what were some of their challenges. Raising money for social justice. And really I had been hired from their competitor because uncf raised money for private historically black colleges and thurgood Marshall raised money for publics. So I brought that energy of knowing how to go out there and raise money for hbcus. But I have been doing it on the private side.
- [33:43]
Unnamed Interviewer
The case statement for those two things overlaps, but it's quite different. Talk, talk about that. How those two things are both important, even though they are very distinct. How are they important?
- [33:59]
Duane Ashley
Both are important because you're educating the future generation of leaders. However, there is a distinct difference. UNCF supports private HBCUs, which are not funded by the states. So those schools tend to be smaller. You're talking about a baseline of about 47,000 students at that time compared to 250,000 students attending the public colleges. So you're talking about a vast difference in terms of impact on students. That was the message that we carried. We never, ever, because I'm a uncf grad, I would never tell a donor, don't give to unzip. But I did want them to understand the difference. Why we needed them to invest in both because they both carried the same historic mission, which was to educate descendants of slaves and to provide a nurturing environment. It's just that the ones I represented, we had four medical schools, five law schools that we also had to raise for. And that was all a part of our branding and a part of our case for support.
- [34:59]
Unnamed Interviewer
And so you did this work that was another, another way of looking at the same puzzle to provide that, that opportunity, that, that support for these institutions. And then I guess was when you moved on too, Then I moved to la. To la? Okay.
- [35:14]
Duane Ashley
I went to run a celebrity foundation for three years.
- [35:17]
Unnamed Interviewer
Oh, I didn't know that. So what, what caused you to go to LA and do that?
- [35:23]
Duane Ashley
So I was recruited to run the Material Girls philanthropic work that she was doing around the world. So I went to work for Madonna. I moved out to Los Angeles. I was brought in by the board of directors because like many people, when you start doing your philanthropy and you don't really know philanthropy, what do you do? You do it through your church. So she practiced Kabbalah and she was doing most of her philanthropy through Kabbalah. The church was very controversial. I don't practice Kabbalah. I do consider myself a spiritual person, but I'm not a kabbalist. And so they needed someone to do similarly to what I did at Philip Morris and Thurgood Marshall, which was to separate the two entities, even though they had a connection. And so I came in to build the board of directors to separate the institution. We had about maybe 100 employees around the world because she was doing work all around the world, not only building schools in Malawi, but she was teaching social emotional learning in schools all around the world. And so we built an infrastructure for our staff, hr, finance, all of that, to separate the institutions. So we had a New York office, offices all around the world, really.
- [36:45]
Jay Frost
When was this?
- [36:46]
Unnamed Interviewer
When were you doing all this?
- [36:47]
Duane Ashley
This was 2009 to 2012. Because I started with 100 Black Men in 2012 with Chaz Lincoln Center 2012.
- [37:01]
Unnamed Interviewer
The experience of working with celebrities is something that I know. Some people are just, you know, starry eyed when they hear about it. Other people are dismissive, you know, because people don't often know these people. They're. They have to be protective of themselves because they're under siege, not just for money, but for attention and stalking and everything else. What was it like for you to work not just with Madonna, but presumably with others as well, who are in this very challenging position of maintaining their brand and therefore, you know, of course earning a living from it, but then also trying to do good in the world, but without being exposed to everybody all the time when a lot of people want a piece of them.
- [37:46]
Duane Ashley
Yeah. Well, I'll say this first one. She's an amazing philanthropist. I love working with her. I have great respect for her. I was not a starry eyed person, you know, because I work with a lot of celebrities. We had all kinds of celebrities on the Lee Rawls parade of Stars at the uncf. When I went to Thurgood Marshall, I engaged a lot of celebrities with our annual gala and with things that we did. So I had a lot of celebrities involved. By the time I left the Thurgood Marshall Fund, we were very engaged with celebrities at 100 Black Men also. And so I worked with all kinds of influencers. And so I didn't walk in the room being someone who was starstruck. I walked in the room being someone who understood she needed, someone that she could trust, who could get the work done. And so that is why I think we both clicked. Because she recognized that I wasn't going to be going to an event, snapping photos and all that kind of stuff. I was going to be really doing the work. And so we went about doing the work and it really was about trust, you know, and that's the same thing when you work with a donor. They've got to trust you. And I just appreciated that she walked the talk. She may not have publicly, you know, didn't publicize all the giving that she did. She just did the work. And she really was committed to making a difference in the world with the resources that she had. And I think she wanted to make the world a better place. I think when you look at her as I think about other people I've worked with, we all get to that place where we self actualize and we get money. We got the house, we got the car, we got all those things you think that you wanted when you were younger. And then for some people there's an emptiness. And I think that was part of her journey with, you know, when she went to the Kabbalah center looking for a greater meaning because she had been so successful and her journey to philanthropy was how can I use this incredible platform to make more of a difference in the world? World.
- [39:50]
Unnamed Interviewer
What was the biggest learning for you out of that experience? Because as you say, while that kind of fame may be a little different from, let's say the fame of a, of a CEO or an ultra high net worth individual who's not in show business, there is, there are some differences. Was there Anything that particularly surprised you about that world or spending so much time in that world?
- [40:10]
Duane Ashley
Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, there was something she said to me that changed my life and made me be probably where I am today and running my own company. We were having a conversation just about risk and life and pursuing your passion. And she said, you know, Dwayne, being who I am has gotten me into trouble, but it has made me who I am today. And I thought, wow, here's someone who embraces fully being who you are, accepting everything about yourself and acknowledging who you are as a person and not apologizing for it. And I said, if she can do this and be a global superstar and be as wealthy as she is, and I know I can do it in my own way. And that's a quote I never forget. I remind myself of it all the time. But it really was life changing for me when she told me that.
- [41:11]
Unnamed Interviewer
So is that the beginning really of your journey? Because I know then you went, as you just said, to Jazz at Lincoln center, which we can talk about for a sec. That's a very important storied place as well. But it must have been crystallized in your journals if nowhere else that you wanted to have your own gig. It was letting you self actualize be you talk about that.
- [41:32]
Duane Ashley
I had started a business along the way. So my father and I opened a development company. My goal was just to acquire 10 properties. We acquired 50 in central Louisiana. I owned that while I was working for her and expanded it even more. I just decided I didn't want to be in the rental business anymore. It's a lot of work. And so that was a business. I grew very successfully. And so I had already started dabbling in entrepreneurship. Even when I was in Philadelphia. I owned five properties that I bought while I was there in the art museum area in working with one of the savings and loans company who was going out of business and they had all of those repos when the crisis happened. And so the journey of entrepreneurship had already started. Just knew at that point it was only going to be one more job before I was on my own. And the job that I took at Jazz at Lincoln center to go and work with Wynton was because one is from Louisiana, looked me right in the eyes and said that because he knew my mother was from Louisiana. And he said, so we have a spiritual connection to Wayne and I need you to come and help me build an endowment for this music that came from our community. And so I've been offered two other jobs at the same time. And they were CEO positions. My job at Jazz and Lincoln center was vice president of development. And I was like, I've been a VP of development. I'm not trying to go back. But what Wynton agreed and he kept his promise is that you'd be able to run it almost like it's your own subsidiary. I just need you to manage me as a fundraiser. Greg will run the operations. I need you to run the fundraising and support both of us. And so it was the three of us as a team, because Greg Scholz was the executive director. He really ran the day to day operations of the organization, which I had no interest in running an arts organization, to be candid with you, but I was interested in running the campaign and working closely with Wynton in doing that. And that's what we did. And we raised $75 million, which was the largest endowment ever raised for jazz. And in year four, we were supposed to do it over five years. Well, really four years after I started, and we finished in three. And I was ready to go at that point, and I told him that I was ready to go. And he asked me if I would stay one more year. And I did. But I knew it was time and so passed the mantle on to the next person.
- [44:21]
Unnamed Interviewer
Well, part of this is also it must be a love of jazz. You mentioned that very early in this conversation with your mother. Owning a jazz club, I think you said. So where does music fit in in your family and in your life?
- [44:36]
Duane Ashley
Oh, it's the fabric of my life. Yeah, I listen to music every. All, every day. All kinds of music. It's not just jazz. I'm a huge fan of house music. I love some pop music. I'm a huge hip hop fan. In fact, one of my clients is the Hip Hop Museum right now. So I love all kinds of music because when you look at a lot of this music, it emanates some jazz. And so if you love jazz, you gotta love other forms of music. What that experience taught for me, you know, being around my mother, and even more so being at jazz is being able to understand and hear an instrument in the music. And so it gave me a much more greater appreciation for the music itself and the impact of the music.
- [45:25]
Unnamed Interviewer
There's something about listening which I know so many people in fundraising talk about. And you've kind of alluded to it by people saying things that you've remembered. They're stuck in your brain, sort of like notes on sheet music. I wonder if that's part of It. There's a part of jazz which is also very much ensemble playing. I mean, I know there are soloists, but they have to play together as a group, and often that's off the sheet. So was there something about working, let's say, with Winton and others there that contributed to this next thing that you did, which has been pretty extraordinary in this course of 10 years? What was the biggest learning that you took from that into what then what you founded with Bridge?
- [46:07]
Duane Ashley
Well, the music was great. I mean, Wynton is an extraordinary artist, and the Jazzlyn Orchestra all became friends. And, you know, we traveled the world together, did a lot of great work together. More extraordinary were the donors and the board members of the organization. They were deeply, deeply vested in jazz music and in the arts. And some of them became very close friends of mine. One in particular, one of the board members who was a major investment manager. And he had a huge influence on me starting the business. When I started to talk to people and say, I'm doing this, I'm leaving to go and start my own business. We met on the Upper east side at a coffee shop. He took a napkin and wrote on the napkin and told me how to structure my company. I still have that napkin to this day, because he literally wrote it out. He said, well, Dwayne, you gotta get a lawyer. You gotta get ahead of hr, you gotta get a technology person, and you need someone to run your business development. And he told me how to structure that in terms of giving people minority ownership. So he was a great, great mentor. And then there was another woman who was one of our donors who became a very close friend of mine, one of the most respected women CEOs, because she was one of the first, Linda Wachner, who I count as a great friend, who ran Warnico Industries. And she would mentor me. I would go to her home. I told her about the business. She gave me guidance, lots of advice, and was just an extraordinary friend and a great mentor and many, many, many other board members just guided me. And back over the years, as I look back at Tommy Dortch from 100 Black Men, who was the chairman and a mentor who guided me, they all played a little bit of the role in showing me what it takes to lead something and to believe in it and to not give up on it. Because regardless of what, whether it's a business or an organization, one thing I see common with people who lead things is they have this insatiable commitment to ensure the organization or the company is successful. And, you know, they don't sleep, like my team would probably say about me.
- [48:39]
Unnamed Interviewer
I was just going to ask you, do you sleep?
- [48:41]
Duane Ashley
I do sleep. Six hours is all I need, though. I don't need eight hours of sleep.
- [48:48]
Unnamed Interviewer
You said that you wrote these notes on a napkin. It sounds like the structure of the company was there, but the mission, that was, I guess in your head, you didn't need somebody else to say, here's the mission you should try. So what was the original vision and mission of Bridge Philanthropic?
- [49:03]
Duane Ashley
So the original vision was to create a full service fundraising firm because there were no black owned firms. But I looked across the market, several people had tried and you know, for one reason or another, they didn't succeed. But I wanted to build one that was sustainable and I knew that you had to have people who experience it couldn't just be me. And I think that may have been maybe one of the challenges before people decided, let me get some consultants together. And let's just say you gotta have an infrastructure. So, you know, with that mission, I recognize having had a mother who owned her own business, you gotta have infrastructure. And also you gotta realize, Jay, I run several businesses, so I knew about how to run and grow a business. And so I brought that learning with me. And also, you know, I think I'm pretty good at fundraising. So if you know how to do fundraising, then you might want to sell a product that you believe in.
- [50:02]
Unnamed Interviewer
Well, so, but why fundraising? Because as you said, you'd already been chief development officer in a couple of places, you were offered CEO roles, you'd been a business owner already. You could have gone in a hundred different directions. Why choose this? I mean, I understand what you meant about the lack of the absence of black owned firms. There are black led firms, which I'm only making the distinction for our listeners because I think that's an important distinction. We want to honor those people, people of color who run firms. But you're talking about a black owned firm, black owned and led, which is different and I think still unique in the marketplace. Is that right?
- [50:38]
Duane Ashley
That is correct.
- [50:40]
Unnamed Interviewer
So why that? Why? Because you could have gone 100 different ways to take everything you learned and make money and do lots of things. Why that?
- [50:48]
Duane Ashley
Yeah, because there is a connection to the same type of environment that HBCUs provide. We bring nurturing, we bring honor to and a sense of duty to our clients. So when we take on a client, we are here to help them win. Which is why I don't take all clients because I know that my clients play a special role in social justice in the arts, you know, in preserving historically black colleges and universities who I represent. So we bring to that that same kind of cultural understanding I've learned throughout, that's been woven throughout my career to the work that we do with our clients. And then we bring, you know, the commitment to help them win, to make sure that we can get them across the finish line with the campaigns. So if, you know, I meet with the client and I assess that, you know, I don't think this is going to work in the marketplace. I don't think you're going to be able to raise what you may envision you can raise. You know, we're pretty candid to say this is what we think you can do. We don't think that we're the right firm to lead you in this effort. However, here are some firms, you know, some individual consultants we might recommend to you. So, you know, it's a. It's a. It's a spiritual connection that we bring, but it also is that social justice commitment that we bring to the clients that we serve. And the other firms don't do that, including the ones that are black led.
- [52:20]
Unnamed Interviewer
So it's a commitment that's stated. It's right on your website. For people who haven't looked at the website, which I hope they will after this conversation. But could you just hit us the numbers? Because when you start a company, especially a consulting company in any field, it often, even with the right infrastructure, starts small and may be kind of, well, moderate in its growth over a period of years. You started in 2016, I think, is that right?
- [52:49]
Duane Ashley
That's correct.
- [52:50]
Unnamed Interviewer
So how many people today on the staff? How many clients? How much money raised?
- [52:55]
Duane Ashley
Yeah, so we started with about 20 people in year one. That was in 2016. We opened the doors. We opened the doors with business from day one because they already capitalized, apparently.
- [53:08]
Unnamed Interviewer
Yes. Okay, that's important.
- [53:09]
Duane Ashley
Capitalize from. Again, an investment from a family member. My brother passed away and left my three brothers and my mother inheritance. And I took that inheritance and put it into the business. And so that was again, family giving back to invest in the next generation. And so we started with 20. We had about 10 clients in the first year. And we continue to evolve from there. By 2018, we started to diversify the business because I recognized that there was a lot of need on the public sector side. So we got certified to do work in government with the city first, then the state, and then eventually we became recognized as an 8A firm. And we got our GSA schedule. So you might say, well, Dwayne, what would happen? What were you guys doing with the government? And I'll tell you, my other peers will tell me they don't do that kind of work because I'm a member of the Giving Institute. We are a very unique firm in that, as I said, we are a social justice, social impact firm. We run campaigns as a portion of our business. We also do community engagement. So if you run a city, state or federal agency and you need a program to reach the audiences that we serve, they would hire us to come in and to manage that project for them. And in some situations we were hired to be the grants manager to distribute money to communities of color and underserved communities. One such example of that now is we're running the Harlem African Burial Ground Project, which is where ancestral remains were discovered under the MTA bus stop on the East Harlem side. And they're going to be re interned into a beautiful memorial, a community center and an affordable housing building that will be built on that site. And we've been handling all the community engagement with that. We just had about 300 people at the Schomburg center where we did a panel discussion around African burial grounds around the country. That's the kind of work that we do, that we bring that kind of understanding how to work with the community and a cultural identity to the work that we do.
- [55:33]
Unnamed Interviewer
And then in the aggregate. So now how many organizations have you worked with and about how much money has come as a result of these partnerships?
- [55:41]
Duane Ashley
So we've raised about $2 billion since we've been starting, which is not a lot of money when you think about a $6 trillion budget for the federal government. However, it's a lot for our firm and for fundraising firms. So we've done extremely well. We've served about 250 clients. We now have 105 consultants that work with us. 53 of those are full time. We have 10 people that run the firm on a day to day basis. And we have partnered with more than 300 small businesses that we've subcontracted to and with some of the work that we do. And we built about 50 teaming partners that we work with on various contracts.
- [56:28]
Unnamed Interviewer
It's a lot to manage. It's a lot more than you fit in that original napkin.
- [56:32]
Duane Ashley
Yes, but I knew it though, and I still see it going even bigger.
- [56:37]
Jay Frost
So.
- [56:37]
Unnamed Interviewer
Yeah. What is the vision? Where do you go from here?
- [56:41]
Duane Ashley
Well, we see our growth trajectory in a couple of ways. We're going to continue to grow throughout the US and do work. But we also see an opportunity to help developing countries of color as they develop their social impact structures. We have been positioned to be able to bring our expertise and help them build out their philanthropic infrastructure, teach philanthropists how to give in countries like Nigeria, where they're building out their philanthropic infrastructure. We were invited to come to Saudi Arabia, who had a goal by 2030 to develop 3,000 nonprofits, and they were halfway there. They invited us to just come and speak about, how do you do this? And I was one of the speakers invited over, along with speakers from around the world. But we look at doing work in a lot of the African countries. I just came back from Colombia, where I met with two prospects about doing some work with them. So we're also looking at how we might work in Central and South America also.
- [57:47]
Unnamed Interviewer
I hope you can help me with discussing language for a moment. You talked about this right now by using terms like social justice and talking about communities of color. And when we talked earlier about United Negro College Fund, you know, you alluded to the names that have altered over time, even back to the school that your great grandmother built. We're in a time where it seems like there's a lot of challenges between where the government is and where the nonprofit community is. And part of that challenge is in the way we talk about these things. I'm wondering if you can help unravel that a bit, because I've heard you talk in other interviews about how we can weather this storm and that the challenges we're facing now, they may be different, but they're not new. So maybe we can start with just social justice.
- [58:49]
Jay Frost
What does that mean to you?
- [58:51]
Unnamed Interviewer
For those who don't use these terms in their everyday discourse, what does that mean, and why is that important?
- [58:57]
Duane Ashley
Yeah, so I'll share with you. I just got back from a meeting, and one of my friends, former clients, and someone I've known for a long time, who is a civil rights attorney and the CEO of the Southern Education foundation. And I think he laid it out so beautifully in the way that I always describe it. DEI is policy. Social justice is law, Civil rights, and social justice is the law. There are laws that guarantee people those rights. And so what we're on the front lines every day maintaining is to make sure those laws are upheld in the work that we do to serve our clients so they can carry out their missions. Because you can change policy, but the law would have to be changed in order for you to have the impact on some of these other things. Areas that we really focus on. And so while DEI made a lot of progress for many people, especially white women, who benefited the most from it. And I know that because we are a certified minority owned business and normally it says MWBE because the women and we describe ourselves as MBE because we're minority business owned and not certified as a woman business owned. And so, you know, times change and we weathered those storms. As I said, you have to dig in deeper to your mission. Don't apologize for who you are, but understand the difference in what civil rights and social justice means in terms of it being the law versus policy. Because policies can be changed, we know that. But those also, those policy changes can be adjusted to align to support us in the times that we're in right now. I believe all people at the end of the day have a need to do something to help their communities. We may approach it in a different way, but I think in every way that we approach it, no one is trying to hurt their community. Even in the times that we're in right now, they may just see it with their values differently than some of the values of other people. And so what we have to do is find how we meet in the middle to make sure that we achieve those goals to keep our community strong. People want their kids to be educated, they want it to be at jobs and they want to be to take care of the elderly and they want their health care taken care of. That is no different than whatever party you're in. And I think that that is what we are challenged with right now, as many people in our sector have been doing is for many, many years, is how do we find that happy medium and work together. I have a lot of friends that are members of different parties and we have been friends for years. We may not always agree, but we will continue to be friends because at the core of who they are, they are good people who want to take care of their communities and believe in giving back.
- [62:03]
Unnamed Interviewer
You said earlier that you kind of lean into the light, I think was the expression you used. And you have definitely been up positive here and other places where I've heard you. But in the middle of the night during those six hours of sleep when you wake up with an idea and you're journaling about it, what have you been writing about the last few months that have kept you leaning into the light? Because these do seem to be a challenging era for maybe the generations that you've been a part of your lifetime that we've gone through a lot. But this is a particularly kind of uniquely challenging time.
- [62:41]
Duane Ashley
Yeah. I think about how I can take all the experiences that I've had in life and how I can help people to see the hope, to see that, the pathway, that there is an end of the road, you know, as you go forward. And that someone said to me once about a challenging job that they had, and I remember turning to the person and saying, you won't die. It's not going to kill you to go through this experience. And so I would use that same sentiment, is that it may make you a little harder, may make you question things a little bit more, but you're not going to die. We're going to get through this, and the world is going to survive. And I think I just hearkened back, I mentioned you earlier about when I bought the properties in Philadelphia and the whole savings and loan world fell apart, and it was a tough time for this country, and we were torn. We were deeply divided, and we got through it. I remember being in my office when I worked for the UNCF and we had the TV screens on every day. We're watching the O.J. simpson trial. The country was deeply divided. We got through it. The Broncos stopped being made for a while, but now they're back.
- [64:15]
Unnamed Interviewer
I didn't remember that. What about this?
- [64:19]
Duane Ashley
I actually own one myself. Okay, you think about that, and then you have just go forward just a little bit more, and you think about the hanging chad. We were deeply divided, and the country came together. President Bush and Laura Bush did a lot for HBCUs. I was in the White House a lot. You know, at the end of the day, good people do good things and want to make a difference in the world. We may not have always aligned on some of his policies, but he, to me, was a great president for HBCUs and did a lot of great work for our schools. And so we will continue to go through this, and somewhere along the midpoint, we're going to find our way back to come together and realize that this, too will pass and we will go on and America will continue to be strong. And people are still giving, too. I just looked at the latest numbers that came out for 2024, and through all of this, even after the election, people still gave more in 2024 than.
- [65:26]
Unnamed Interviewer
They did in 2023, right before we went live. Getting together with family, I think, for your mother's birthday last week. So when you go back and you all get together, all the things that you work on and that probably they all work on the family, I have a feeling you're not alone and being enterprising and and philanthropic. What is it like to get together with them? What do you all talk about?
- [65:52]
Duane Ashley
Yeah, so we had a lot of laughter, I'll tell you that much. We all like to drink red wine for those who are of age. So I'm a great, I love red wine. A Cabernet, a good Cabernet will win me over any day. So we do some of that also when we get together. But I have these meetings with the younger people in my family that are called legacy meetings. They are calls and sometimes we'll get on teams and I talk about the importance of making sure you get whole life insurance before you're 40. My mother did something extraordinary when we were younger. She told each of us we could put a million dollar life insurance policy on her and she would sign it and go through all the health exams. She said, because I don't think I'll ever pay to leave you a million dollars. So go and buy the policy and you pay it and I'll go through the health exams for it. Two of my brothers, we purchased them, but I thought that was an extraordinary act of looking at how do you pass on wealth? So I'm trying to teach that to the next generation of my family. I'm also hiring some of them and seeing if they can cut it because not all of them can or maybe it's not the right fit for them. And that's just being honest with you. You bring people in and family, whatever, and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. So. But I'm hoping that I'm going to at least get a few of them that are going to become a part of the business and work to have and work their way on up the ladder here. There are two family members that work with me now. So we laugh, we joke, we talk about the future. We're deeply vested in maintaining the gift that my great grandmother and my grandmother left. They left us a lot of land in Louisiana and so we maintain that land.
- [67:40]
Jay Frost
Well, that's it for this episode of the PM Podcast. You can learn more about Duane and his firm@bridgephilanthropicconsulting.com Our thanks to our sponsor, Donor Search, the world leader in AI powered fundraising intelligence solutions for the nonprofit world. Our producer is Jack Frost and our theme music is Moving Out, Moving in by Jay Taylor and is provided courtesy of Epidemic Sound. If you like what you heard, make sure to subscribe. Wherever you like to listen, check out Our Sister Shows Front Lines of Social good and how to raise. And come back next weekend for another conversation with a leader in the world of social good. Until then, this is Jay Frost.
- [68:20]
Unnamed Interviewer
Thanks for joining me.