How The Center for Black Excellence met its $31M funding goal | Arts-culture

On Juneteenth, Rev. Alex Gee led tours through the construction site of The Center for Black Excellence and Culture to celebrate the south Madison project reaching its $31 million funding goal.

Gee beamed as he described to groups of investors and stakeholders how a lower level atrium will shine with pops of light and color from a two-story stained glass wall and how a performing arts center would be the “only Black-owned theater in the entire state.”

He said meeting the center’s funding goal made him “proud” to be a native son of Madison — a word he doesn’t use lightly.

“It makes me happy that I didn’t follow some of my inclinations to leave Madison because of how difficult it can be here,” Gee said.

Gee traded touring responsibilities with his sister, activist Lilada Gee, and the center’s programming lead, Jason Fields. They walked through rooms that will house spaces like an art gallery featuring Black artists, a senior center fostering intergenerational connections with young people (named after Gee’s mother and community icon, Ms. Verline Gee) and a coworking space called the Coworking Center for Black Innovation.  

The Center for Black Excellence will be a cultural and community hub for Madison’s — and Wisconsin’s — Black residents. The center announced it met the fundraising goal on June 19, exactly one year after construction broke ground on the 37,000-square-foot building at 655 W. Badger Rd.

Meeting the goal means building construction is fully funded and will be debt-free. The center owns the land and the building, which is slated to be completed by the end of the year.

“I feel like this is a win for Wisconsin. This is a win for our community, that we can work together … that the Black community can thrive here. We can flourish here,” Gee said.

Gee said like everything at the center, meeting the goal started with the Black community.

“This is about Black people building solutions, finding spaces to be, to heal each other, to be healed ourselves — so that we give more to society,” he said.

A Black-led campaign

Fundraising for the center, designed by Rafeeq Asad of JLA Architects, began in 2021, though Gee previously pitched a vision for the center to community members.

“Sometimes people forget that my day job is that I’m a pastor, and so that’s communicating hope and unity and transcendence,” he said.

Gee wanted the center to be more than just a good idea. He knew it needed to click for people for them to take action. “If the vision resonated, people would respond,” Gee said. 

Gee said Ray Allen, a former head of the Wisconsin Department of Workforce and Development and a board member for the center, challenged him to work within the community first.

“He said, ‘Listen Rev., if we want others to give to this, we must give first. Because if we’re building (a space for) Black excellence, the community needs to know we are committed to our own excellence,'” Gee recalled.

The first fundraising push started with four Black women: Frances Huntley-Cooper, the first Black mayor in Wisconsin; Kirbie Mack; Kesha Bozeman, and Gee’s sister, Lilada. Gee said this group of women “went to the broader Black community and said, ‘We need 300 donors to be the first ones to give.'” Within two months, the first phase of funding was complete.

“I don’t know if anywhere in Wisconsin history, 300 Black donors ponied up in a two-month period to say we believe in this Black vision, right? That’s why we say (the campaign) is Black-led,” Gee said.

The initial fundraising push seeded the next wave of donations. Gee said once businesses and investors saw that the community was behind the center, “the money just started coming in.”

He estimates about a third of campaign contributions came from individual donors, another third came from local businesses and the remaining third came from government funding. Over 1,200 entities (from individuals to foundations) gave to the project.

“We have 50 people that have given $50,000 or more,” Gee said.

Gifts of $1 million or more came from the state of Wisconsin, Dane County, Ascendium, American Family Insurance Dreams Foundation, Summit Credit Union and TruStage. U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Rep. Mark Pocan helped the center secure federal grants for the project, too.

The gift that pushed the campaign to meet its goal was actually a second donation from Ascendium, the Madison-based nonprofit that supports education and workforce training. Ascendium gave the final $626,000 to help the center meet its fundraising goal. 

‘Nothing like this exists’

Gee said Madison has long had problems supporting its Black residents and that has had a measurable impact on factors such as wealth and health outcomes. A 2023 report from the statewide antiracist advocacy group Kids Forward illustrated some of these gaps, such as disparities in mortality rates, access to mental health resources and economic well-being.

The center’s website says, “Year in and year out, Madison is recognized as an ideal place to live in the U.S. However, Dane County’s racial disparities are among the state’s most extreme.”

“How much do you have to pay Black people to come here and die sooner? Because those health disparities are not the same in Atlanta. They’re not the same in Dallas. It’s in places where there are such disparities of racial representation,” Gee said.

While the building is now fully funded, fundraising isn’t over. Donations moving forward will go to support programming and building maintenance at the center, Gee said.

Programming at the center will be led by Jason Fields, a former Wisconsin legislator who previously served as president and CEO of the Madison Region Economic Partnership.

The center has received attention outside of Madison. Gee recalled Lord Cultural Resources, which is working on the center’s operations, saying that “nothing like this exists” that combines “art and performance, leadership development, Black input, Black donations, Black design, (and) intergenerational space.”

“One of my donors and capital campaign members today said you need to get ready because people are gonna start calling you asking you how to do (this),” he said.

Gee imagines part of his role will be inviting others to witness the success of the center and learn from its funding and planning model.

“We designed a solution that will help the community be the kind of city and the kind of state it wants to be. But that didn’t happen until Black people set the table and made this happen,” Gee said.

“This (building) answers the question … ‘In Madison, what do we do to keep not a striving, but a thriving, Black community?’ Give us space to be ourselves, and we will make ourselves thrive.”