About MATCHSTICK
OUR VALUES, STRATEGIES, AND VISION
The MATCHSTICK Group is a nonprofit agency that helps individuals invest social and financial capital in Black individuals, families, and neighborhoods. MATCHSTICK employs strategies that engage everyday people in re-directing their own power and wealth to benefit others in their own communities. Founded in October 2006, The MatchStick Group is headquartered in Philadelphia, and has cultivated partnerships with regional not-for-profit agencies, private sector corporations, faith-based institutions, governmental entities, and grassroots activist groups.
What We Value
- Ingenuity: We push the status quo to create new ways of thinking and implementing change
- Communities as Assets: We believe that all people should be engaged and valued as vital resources to community growth
- Social Accountability: We believe that business in any industry and at all levels can operate as vehicles for transforming communities
- Legacy: We prioritize sustainability as an important measure of success
Our Current Strategies
We believe that when a community creates wealth through business ownership and recycles wealth and resources through philanthropy and service, it gains power to determine and sustain its future. The MATCHSTICK Group contributes to this process by engaging Black individuals and families in:
Social Entrepreneurship
We support Black-owned businesses that use profits to achieve social goals
Citizen Philanthropy
We connect marginalized and disengaged people to practices of giving and service that ultimately benefit their larger communities
Our Vision
Our work will ultimately:
- Ignite widespread change that creates shared wealth, growth, and self-sufficiency in Black communities
- Establish a pipeline of Black leaders and entrepreneurs equipped to affect change in Black communities
- Cultivate a legacy of entrepreneurial spirit, service, and philanthropy that transforms, engages, and inspires Black individuals and families across the U.S.