86. Where does Beyoncé donate her money?

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Today we’re going to be talking about where Beyoncé Knowles-Carter donates her money. I think that celebrity giving can be fun to talk about because it kind of gives a peek into what topics they’re thinking about, or what nonprofits their celebrity friends are doing that they want to support. It can be interesting to see if we are donating to the same places or even better, sometimes we can be inspired to check out an organization or an effort that maybe we had never heard of before, or considered for our own giving.

Most of us, celebrity or not, donate anonymously sometimes, so we may never know every single donation that Beyoncé has made, but I thought today we could talk about what we do know.

I’ll leave some links in the show notes in case you want to do a deeper dive.

Like a lot of celebrities, she has her own foundation. Hers is called BeyGOOD and looking at what she’s doing with it helped me to, in conjunction with looking at her other giving, get a more holistic picture of what’s important to her and what she’s trying to do with her giving.

Her foundation’s the focus is on economic equity for marginalized people and trying to achieve that through education, internships, supporting entrepreneurship and small businesses. You’ll see later when I review her giving outside of her foundation that she broadens the scope a little bit. But her foundation BeyGood seems to have a clear and defined focus. Back in Episode 72 we talked about Prince Harry and Duchess Megan Markle and where they give, they have a new foundation and it seems clear that they haven’t quite defined their focus yet. Contrast that to Beyoncé’s foundation that has a clear focus and a very organized approach to their outreach, especially here lately.

One really interesting thing that I had not been aware of is how she lined up her Renaissance Tour with her foundation’s work. When she announced the Renaissance Tour, she also announced that her foundation would be donating $1M to small businesses and $1M to students. And in addition to just writing checks, there would be an actual foundation tour. So for example, when she went through Washington DC and performed, that same week her foundation did an event in the same city. The concert tour is called the Renaissance Tour and her foundation’s tour is called the Black Parade Route. And they are doing small business impact luncheons. But calling them luncheons sounds so boring. This is Beyoncé, it’s not going to be boring. At each stop on the Black Parade, her foundation brings together 100 entrepreneurs and they have a guest speaker which could range anywhere from Beyoncé’s Dad to the president of the local NFL team to the head of a hedge fund. They always have a very cool musical guest, and in addition to panels and networking for the local entrepreneurs who have been invited, across all cities on the global concert and foundation tour, Beyoncé is giving 1,000 small businesses grants. I don’t see how this isn’t going to add up to more than the $1M she announced in giving to small businesses, because $1M for 1,000 small businesses comes out to only $1,000 each. Whereas, when I look at her other, recent and similar giving, she seems to usually give around $10,000. Here’s what I mean:

Also, as a part of the Renaissance Tour, Beyoncé has committed $1M to students at Grambling State University and Alabama State University. That’s $10,000 to 100 students. 

I noticed that during the pandemic in 2020 she gave 900 small businesses $10,000 each totalling $9M. So I wonder if $10,000 is the amount of money that her foundation has identified as being a meaningful amount that can really change things for someone. I remember when our government did the stimulus checks that year, the first round was around $1,400 the second round was $600 and that amount of money, was enough to change the lives of so many American families. The number of children that came up out of poverty. God, it takes so little. So $10,000 is significantly more than that. I do wonder how her foundation came up with that number and how much they will end up giving the thousand small businesses that win grants from her foundation as part of the Black Parade Tour.

So that’s not comprehensive, but that’s a taste of what her foundation is doing. I’m very interested to continue to follow their work and learn more. And I think there’s an opportunity for other artists to take a page from Beyoncé’s book and see how they think about coordinating their giving with their performances.

Speaking of aligning her art and her giving, I came across another interesting donation that Beyoncé gave. So back in 2009 Beyoncé was preparing for a film called Cadillac Records about Etta James’ life, and to prepare for that role, Beyoncé was introduced to a drug rehab center called Phoenix House. She was so moved by the work they were doing that she gave them the $4M she earned for being in the film, plus she opened a cosmetology school for Phoenix House residents training program.

When I looked at her other giving, outside of her foundation a lot of it had to do with supporting the arts. So those are donations to organizations including:

• Artists for Peace and Justice- this is a Canadian nonprofit that was launched after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Lots of celebrities seem to work with this nonprofit. They have opened a school and they renovated the Artists Institute for film and music artists.
• Entertainment Industry Foundation- this is a Los Angeles based nonprofit that was started by some old Hollywood folks like the Warner Brothers and Humphrey Bogart. In addition to doing some economic and health care assistance they also serve as an umbrella organization for other artists to create their own projects. Like Charlize Theron has a project, Panic at the Disco, etc. They used to do telethons even as recently as 2017.Who knew those were still going on?
• MusiCares- this was an interesting one I wasn’t aware of. It is a nonprofit created by by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. And it is to support musicians in whatever they need: financial, personal, or medical crisis, they’ve done things like offering hearing clinics backstage at several major festivals around the U.S. to help musicians protect their ears.
• Music Rising- this is an organization started by some musicians including producer Bob Ezrin and one of the musicians in the band U2. It was founded right after Hurricane Katrina and their focus is to restore the lives of musicians after disaster, and also to support music education in general.
• Save The Music Foundation- I believe they are based out of New York City. It was originally called VH1’s Save the Music Foundation and their focus is on public education music programs. 

So it’s clear that Beyoncé has a focus on promoting the arts in our country and abroad.

She is also known to have donated to other organizations including some of the big well known heavy hitters:

• Boys & Girls Clubs of America
• Clinton Bush Haiti Fund
• GLAAD
• Oxfam
• Save the Children
• American Foundation for AIDS Research
• United Negro College Fund
• United Way

Looks like she got got by the same folks at Kids Wish Network. In episode 85 we talked about former President Obama apparently donating to them too. They have a terrible reputation.

Which, while we’re on the topic of regrettable donations, and I’m not sure you’d consider this to be a donation per se, but Beyoncé along with the other members of Destiny’s Child were celebrity participants for this really strange teen abstinence campaign by Candie’s Foundation. Now the reason that I call it strange is because, well, this program was started in response to criticism that the clothing brand Candie’s was sexualizing teenagers. Like many clothing companies in our country. So this clothing brand Candies gets criticized for being a brand that sexualizes teenagers in the advertisements, in the clothing designs. So their response, is to start a teen abstinence education program in the US. And to have celebrities be their spokespeople for this campaign. So for example, Sarah Palin’s daughter, Bristol Palin, she’s a teen mom. She gets hired to be a celebrity spokesperson for this teen abstinence program. She gets paid hundreds of thousands of dollars. There’s a little scandal apparently when she gets pregnant out of wedlock again years later in her 20s, so Candie’s foundation made a public statement that they still supported her. LoL. It’s so weird. So Destiny’s Child were also spokespeople for Candies, as well as Fall out Boy, Macy Gray, Fergie, Bruno Mars, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Usher, Usher and Usher. Seeing Usher on the list took me out y’all.  

At the risk of running long today, I’ll skip ahead and talk about some of the charities where Beyoncé donates that I was not familiar with before researching this episode.

Small Steps Project- this is a UK based nonprofit focused on the children who work as trash scavengers and sometimes live in uh, in the US we call them landfills, in some countries I’ve noticed the trash isn’t even buried, so I’m not sure what to call it these large trash collection sites that can go on for miles. So this nonprofit is focused on those children and their families who are living and working there.

 46664- I think we have talked about this foundation before. This is former President Nelson Mandela’s foundation. Out of respect for the time he did on Robben Island, he is sometimes known, as a former respect as Prisoner 46664. So Beyoncé donates there too.

CHIME- ok Gucci! How did I never think about the foundations of these luxury brands. Not only does Gucci have a program for gender equality, but Beyoncé and Salma Hayek were the cofounders about 10 years ago! Apparently there was a huge concert in the UK and it raised like $40M, I just have no recollection of this. I also tend to wonder when I hear corporations talking about these types of fundraisers, how much of their own money do they donate? I get that lending your name and your platform can bring in tons of money from your customers and your fans and your partners, but I do wonder how much of their own money they donate.

There’s so much more we could talk about. Beyoncé is known for her disaster giving as well. Food drives in her hometown of Houston. Earthquakes in Nepal and Haiti. 

Let me know if there are other celebrities you’d like to learn more about, in terms of where they donate their money. Maybe you got some good leads today on places you might want to consider.

I’m going to leave lots of links in the show notes today so you can learn more if you want. If there’s another celebrity or a whole other topic you’d like to hear about on this show, please send an email anytime to spend donate invest at gmail dot com.

There’s also a whole catalogue of dozens and dozens of episodes on the show’s website which is located at spend donate invest dot world. 

I hope you enjoyed today’s episode, that’s all for now, let’s talk again soon!

Links from today's episode:

https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/local/Beyonce-beygood-foundation-entrepreneurs-small-business-charlotte/275-f418f117-955d-42f6-b306-bc1cfcae45b5

https://www.today.com/popculture/music/Beyonce-2-million-renaissance-tour-donation-students-entrepreneurs-rcna80706

https://www.essence.com/lifestyle/do-good-brothers/10-not-so-publicized-times-jay-z-and-Beyonce-gave-back/#144743