Furard Tate, Senior Director of Business Development at the Greater Washington Urban League and co-lead for the new Elevating Black Fatherhood Initiative
Earlier this year, The Community Foundation’s Health Equity Fund announced $25.8 million in multiyear investments in five transformative projects focused on collaborative approaches to increasing economic mobility and wealth building.
We are excited to share with you a special feature on one of these projects – Elevating Black Fatherhood: Creating Brighter Futures for Children, Families, & Communities – a partnership between United Way of the National Capital Area and the Greater Washington Urban League to provide a robust set of services and supports for Black Fathers navigating the child support system.
Furard Tate is a man who wears multiple hats. A proud 3rd generation Washingtonian, Tate is well-known in DC as a seasoned entrepreneur with more than twenty years of experience.
When he’s not advocating for the food services industry as the co-founder of DMV Black Restaurant Week, Tate works tirelessly to impart wisdom to future entrepreneurs through the Greater Washington Urban League’s Entrepreneurship Center.
However, Tate says that the role he cherishes the most doesn’t have anything to do with a commercial kitchen or entrepreneurship. It has everything to do with being a Black Father.
“Being a father is one of the most important roles I have,” Tate said. “My love for my children is part of what drives me to strive for excellence in my professional and personal life.”
“I want to be the best man I can for my children – because I know my two children are better when they have relationships with both their parents in their lives.”
The Challenges of Black Fatherhood
Fatherhood – especially Black fatherhood – has long been subject to scrutiny and even prejudice in modern society as policymakers have increasingly treated Black fathers as an obstacle, rather than an asset to family stability. For example, within the child support program the federal government has implemented harsh punitive policies ranging from garnishing up to two-thirds of noncustodial parents’ wages to suspending drivers’ licenses and incarceration. These policies – coupled with the war on drugs that has largely targeted and incarcerated Black men – have added a new level of stress to an already difficult situation (family separation) – creating an economic burden that few low-income parents can afford.
“Right now, there are more than 24,000 noncustodial parents living in DC who are in arrears on their child support payments,” shared Rosie Allen-Herring, President & CEO of the United Way of the National Capital Area. “Many of these parents were already living paycheck-to-paycheck before their family separation. Criminalizing them for failing to pay their child support only causes further harm to the families.”
The impact extends far beyond the financial. In public policy, the media, and the legal system – even in traditional family settings -- the stereotype of the “deadbeat dad” has increasingly become associated with the Black father– despite multiple studies proving otherwise.
“The world treats Black men like they are dangerous – that they are a hazard to the mother and must be removed from the family for the safety of the parents,” Kimberly Corbin, Chief Administrative and Financial Officer of the Greater Washington Urban League added. “We have laws that will give mothers all the support that they need – as long as the father isn’t living in the same house.”
“Who told us that Dad’s were optional?”
The Power of Therapy
United Way and the Urban League have been partners since 2020, when United Way NCA tapped the Urban League to operate a Financial Empowerment Center to provide individuals and families in DC with free resources, tools and support needed to improve their financial wellbeing. That lead to the creation of the Urban League’s Center for Financial Inclusion (CFI) – which focuses on financial wellness and entrepreneurship for DC residents through financial training and one-on-one coaching to help community members reach their goals.
However, over the past four years, Corbin says the CFI instructors have increasingly found themselves drawn to an unexpected field – financial therapy.
“People spend their dollars with their heart,” Corbin explained. “We realized that if we could help people understand what ails them, emotionally, we could help them find motivation to become stronger financially.”
The Center began providing participants with access to Financial Therapists who worked with participants to uncover the ‘why’ behind their financial decisions. The result was an outpouring of positive feedback – particularly from Black men.
“What we found was that this process uncovered pain points that many men had suppressed,” Corbin explained. “You can’t heal the heart or the soul with a class or a dollar. What these men needed was therapy and a solid support system.”
“You can’t heal the heart or the soul with a class or a dollar”
For Tate, the program reminded him of his own personal journey, as he navigated his divorce while still trying to be there as a father for his two children.
“When you say, ‘I do’ with someone; it rings in your head for years,” Tate explained. “Nothing prepares you for the pain that happens in separation; it produces a hurtful fear and activates a survival mode that can bring out the worst in both parents.”
Tate credits his family, including his in-laws, who provided emotional support to him, his former partner and his children throughout their separation. He was also fortunate to have a friend who – as an attorney – was able to help him navigate the child support system so he could provide for his children without suffering financial hardship – a luxury that he now realizes that most Black men in his family situation don’t have.
“The court doesn’t see a man’s desire to be a great father,” Tate recalled. “All they see is another statistic.”
“We often remind the fathers that we work with that their love for their children isn’t predicated on how big their child support payment is. They’re worth more than that.”
“It’s not enough to just throw money at people,” Allen-Herring added. “If we really want to make a difference for Black fathers, we need to provide them with the infrastructure and support they need to succeed.”
Repairing Harm, Elevating Fatherhood, & Fostering Economic Mobility
United Way of the National Capital Area and the Greater Washington Urban League came together to launch Elevating Black Fatherhood - a two-year pilot designed to provide a robust set of services and supports for 150 fathers who reside in DC, are currently earning below DC’s AMI (Average Medium Income), are under a court order to pay custodial support, and are behind in making those payments.
Funded by The Greater Washington Community Foundation’s Health Equity Fund, the pilot will apply a three-pronged approach to support the emotional, structural, and financial development of participants – especially for Black fathers living in DC’s Wards 7 & 8.
In addition to providing participants with up to $2,000 towards their child support payments, the program includes individual and family therapy sessions, providing fathers with access to health services and legal advice, a hotline to call for emergency emotional support, and healing circles so they can be in community with other men going through similar situations.
“Trust building is the bedrock of our community work,” Allen-Herring shared. “By establishing an environment where these fathers feel safe enough to be open and emotionally vulnerable, we are able to more effectively evaluate what their needs are and what resources we need to bring to the table to address those needs.”
Some of those resources include child development classes, parenting mediation, daddy day and visitation support, and mentoring opportunities to help fathers become better parents and co-parents with their former partner.
“Real life isn’t like parenting on TV,” Tate added. “Parenting is sewing a quilt with your former partner that will encompass all that your child needs – you’re still a family, even if you’re not together.”
To help provide that support, United Way and the Urban League have developed partnerships with nationally recognized fatherhood groups including the South Carolina Center for Fathers & Families, Washington DC Concerned Black Men Inc, and the DC Office of the Attorney General’s Fathering Court.
This is in addition to the expertise that United Way and the Urban League already bring to the table through the CFI and the broader Financial Empowerment Center initiative including career advancement and financial empowerment workshops.
The program also includes a savings incentive that encourages fathers to save 5% of their net income – which the initiative will match and apply towards their child support payments (in addition to the $2,000).
“The end goal is to create a self-directed path for fathers to find their full brilliance – whether that be through helping them find emotional stability, start a new business, or just believe in themselves,” Corbin shared. “Once they are able to catch that vision, the money and the financial stability will come – because they’ll finally be in a position to propel themselves to even higher levels of brilliance for themselves and their families.”
A Roadmap For Stronger Families & Communities
While the full impact of this pilot may not be seen for several years, Allen-Herring and Corbin are optimistic that the holistic structure of Elevating Black Fatherhood could have major implications for the region.
The CFI, which will serve as the primary hub for this pilot, houses just one of five Financial Empowerment Centers (FEC) operated by the United Way of the National Capital Area across DC, Maryland, and Virginia.
“We want to better support families in a way that not only helps them solve their day-to-day challenges, but that gets to the root causes,” Allen-Herring said. “We hope that this pilot can provide us with the proof of concepts we need to scale this into the day-to-day of our other FECs.”
The pilot could also have a national impact, as both Urban League of Greater Washington and the United Way NCA plan to share findings from the initiative with their broader national networks.
However, all agree that perhaps the greatest impact will be seen in the lives of the future generation – whether or not they are directly related to the participants.
“To get to the wholeness of the father is to get to the wholeness the family,” Corbin concluded. “When you strengthen that family, you strengthen the community and everyone who comes into contact with that father. That is what makes this work transformative.”
The Community Foundation is proud to partner with the United Way of the National Capital Area and Greater Washington Urban League on this important innovative project. For more information, visit https://www.gwul.org/fec
