I love black history month. It is an incredible time to review and analyze the strength of a people who fought to grab hold of something they believed was a deserving and fundamental human right — freedom. From slavery to civil rights, you can hear the feet of our ancestors advancing towards a finish line marked liberty.
If we take an honest look back, we have to admit that even slavery itself began with a movement. Though wrong, there was a group of people who created waves to obtain free labor from another group of individuals. The news of such caught on, and before we knew it, 388,000 slaves were shipped and arrived in the U.S. alive between 1525 and 1866. [1]
Several movements awakened within this distorted norm. Runaway became a well-worn label, the Underground Railroad carved out a path that pointed north, wars broke out within our nation to defend opposing definitions of morality, sit-ins accelerated amidst college students, and marches forged forward against rapid-fire. An outcry of freedom sparked our land. A sound that we continue to hear today, beckoning for action.
THuS Marketing is a fan of movements. If we pay close attention, we see them taking on many forms and protesting many of the causes that impact our communities, our world, and our lives. Each one calls for change and, if executed correctly, creates it. Whether its foundation is a political, social, or religious base, the goal remains the same.
Movements ignite to see some upsidedown part of our world, turned right side up. They take hearts of passion dedicated to a specific truth, and its commonality unites people to do the impossible. It is one of the most marvelous elements to behold.
Movements are one of the many reasons we at THuS Marketing admire and work with nonprofits so closely. Day in and day out, nonprofits create movements among like-minded people who rally together to end injustice in our world. Whether that injustice takes the form of governments, diseases, poverty, or lack of opportunity or resources, your nonprofit is a movement.
More than 1.5 million nonprofit organizations operate in the U.S. [2] These organizations include public charities, private foundations, associations, chambers of commerce, fraternal organizations, and civic leagues. No matter the mission and who or what our nonprofits are fighting for, one thing is clear. The charge is to make a difference!
This month as we salute all those who took action and flipped our world on its right side, let's never forget that movements begin with us. Today, there is so much more still worth fighting for, and we thank every nonprofit that stands tall in changing the wrongs one movement at a time.
~ Nona A Phinn
Resources
1. Gates, H. Jr., (n.d.). How Many Slaves Landed in the U.S.? Retrieved February 1, 2020 from https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/how-many-slaves-landed-in-the-us/.
2. (n.d.). How Many Nonprofit Organizations are There in the U.S.? Retrieved February 1, 2020 from https://grantspace.org/resources/knowledge-base/number-of-nonprofits-in-the-u-s/.