Service Never Sleeps Whitney Parnell, Founder & CEO and Samson Girma, COO
This year, The Community Foundation is highlighting ‘Leaders of the Future’ – individuals and organizations who inspire us to look towards a brighter future for the Greater Washington region.
In honor and celebration of Black History Month, we are lifting up the incredible contributions of Black leaders – specifically those who are leaders in the movement for economic justice and community empowerment. We are excited to feature Whitney Parnell and Samson Girma, co-founders of Service Never Sleeps (SNS), who engaged in important research on Black leadership supported by The Community Foundation which will be released this summer.
Service Never Sleeps is a Black-Led racial justice organization working toward a world where equal rights, justice, and opportunity are available to all. We empower justice-minded individuals and institutions with the tools and posture to be effective allies, and to create equity within their spheres of influence.
We believe that we all have the responsibility to pursue justice in the areas where we hold privilege. We provide trainings that equip participants to be enduring allies in this “forever work”— understanding that there is no arrival point.
Since 2015, SNS has built a reputation as a go-to organizational teacher in allyship, providing training to over 10,000 people.
In 2020, we navigated the trials of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter uprising together as two Black leaders, during a time when the external demand for SNS’ work multiplied tenfold. It led us to a decisive point where we declared that we are proudly and unapologetically a Black-led organization. We now intentionally name and identify as “Black-Led” -- making it clear that our work is rooted in that identity.
What does it mean to be ‘Black-led’?
The “racial reckoning” that began in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd brought an onslaught of public individual and institutional declarations of commitment to racial justice work at large, and specifically to supporting Black-Led organizations. Funding for Black-Led organizations significantly increased during that period, and there seemed to be more opportunities than ever for financial support of our work.
However, when SNS began to apply for funding, we received feedback that we were ineligible for funding because our work did not directly support Black people. We were also told that our organizational leadership did not meet the identity requirements.
We felt (and still feel) that this feedback was not only inaccurate – it also seemed misguided in fully defining what it means to be “Black Led”.
Our experience is that the value of being Black-Led is not just in the representation numbers of our staff and board, but goes far deeper into the implications about culture, priorities, and values that extend from the inside, out.
So, over the past two years, we have been leading our own internal research project: What Does it Mean to be Black-Led?
The project engaged over one hundred Black leaders, and dug past the traditional qualifiers of leadership demographics to help identify:
How lived experience positions Black leaders for equitable leadership that benefits everyone;
The internal/external challenges faced by Black leaders; and
What actions and resources promote the success of Black-Led organizations.
The participants’ insights are powerful and educational. We were deeply moved by the validation of our own experiences as Black leaders -- including the systemic challenges that Whitney faces as a Black woman leader. As an organization, we processed how to apply these learnings into culture and policies as we grew our team.
The Black-Led Report
The more we learned about the values of Black-Led organizations and how to center those values, the clearer it became that this information needed to expand beyond our small team, so that as many people as possible could learn and grow from this synthesis of invaluable wisdom. We are excited to use our findings to develop new SNS trainings and resources – starting with a report to be launched this upcoming summer.
As we prepare for the new Black-Led Project content and programming launch, we continue to be grateful for the experiences that led us here. Our research has shown us that Black leadership is very-much a journey, one that is reflected in the paths that we have been on as Black people, and that SNS has been on as an organization. All of it has informed the season that we are in.
We are excited to invite others into this shared journey of growth and liberation with us when we publicly release our long-awaited report this summer. Stay tuned!