By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated
I read Michael D. Smith’s reflection on philanthropy’s renewed interest in boys and men with both appreciation and recognition. In the piece, published in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, he offers these warnings, which are well taken: Announced dollars are not the same as invested dollars, projects are not the same as fields, and public attention is not the same as sustained commitment. He calls for philanthropy to invest in boys and men for the long haul rather than for the moment, and that idea deserves serious consideration.
I read his perspective from a unique seat at the table.
I was deeply involved in the conversations and work surrounding My Brother’s Keeper (MBK), but I arrived there from the Responsible Fatherhood field. Before MBK was launched in 2014, the Obama administration had already built a significant national conversation around fathers, Responsible Fatherhood, family stability, employment, personal responsibility, and the barriers facing men trying to remain connected to their children. In 2010, President Obama launched the Fatherhood and Mentoring Initiative, and by 2012 the administration was publicly documenting its broader Responsible Fatherhood agenda.
Then the country confronted the killing of Trayvon Martin and the painful national conversation that followed. That experience became an important catalyst for My Brother’s Keeper, which the White House formally launched in February 2014 around the challenges facing boys and young men of color.
That work still matters, but those of us working specifically with fathers also watched something else happen. As the national conversation moved toward boys, young men, mentoring, educational attainment, violence prevention, and pathways to opportunity, the adult man began disappearing from the frame.
That distinction may sound small.
It is not.
A 15-year-old boy who needs a mentor, academic support, exposure to careers, and protection from justice-system involvement has a very different set of needs from a 38-year-old father trying to maintain employment, manage child support, repair a damaged co-parenting relationship, secure parenting time, address his mental health, find housing, and remain emotionally present for his children.
Our direct work with fathers repeatedly addresses needs related to legitimation, child support, housing, parenting time, family legal matters, and employment. The Responsible Fatherhood field developed precisely because adult men often needed services built around jobs, relationships, parenting skills, and navigating child-support and family systems.
Mentorship is not fatherhood services. Youth development is not adult male development. And serving young men is not the same thing as building the capacity of men who are already fathers, partners, workers, caregivers, returning citizens, veterans, or co-parents.
That is the additional lesson I hope philanthropy learns in this new moment.
Smith argues that funders should “widen the tent cautiously” while protecting investments in boys and young men of color. I would add that widening the tent must also mean being honest about who is actually inside it. If philanthropy begins using the language of “boys and men,” then men and fathers cannot be afterthoughts while the money, strategies, metrics, and infrastructure remain concentrated on youth.
Funding adult men requires looking toward different outcomes. We should be asking whether men are becoming more economically stable, healthier, less socially isolated, better equipped to navigate institutions, more capable of sustaining healthy relationships, and, where they are fathers, more dependable, nurturing, responsible, and engaged parents.
The lesson from My Brother’s Keeper is not that we should choose between boys and men. It is that we should stop assuming that investing in boys will eventually substitute for investing in the men they become.
If this philanthropic moment truly intends to be about boys and men, then this time we should build both fields intentionally, fund them distinctly, connect them where appropriate, and make sure the man does not disappear before the work even begins.