History
The Black Man's Think Tank, Inc. (BMTT) was founded on February 11, 2008 and is a tax-exempt, non-profit, non-partisan, non-sectarian organization. The idea for its conception arose out of discussions that were had at the Black Man's Think Tank Conference at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, OH. Since 2000, the conference has illuminated issues pertaining to the African American community and Black men in particular. It was evident that we needed to involve ourselves in the community on an on-going basis in order to facilitate growth and development on all levels especially in the areas of education, training, and business development. To that end, the BMTT was founded.
We owe sincere gratitude to Omar Powell for his leadership in originating the BMTT conference in Dayton and in his tireless efforts to educate, inform, and inspire us to excel.
Mission
Our mission is to develop and support the educational, business, and social activities of African American organizations. In all our activities, Black men and boys are paramount.
Vision
We will develop and strengthen predominately African American educational, business, and social organizations because we believe that they have the greatest potential to allay negative environmental factors that disproportionately affect Black people. We believe that they have the greatest potential to ensure prosperity for them via greater employment, greater access to healthcare, and greater access to educational opportunities. Ultimately, we will help them to become more organized, more productive, more resourceful, more interdependent, and more responsive to the needs of Black people at home and abroad.
We aim to affect our mission and vision by the systematic use of research, strategic alliances, solid business practices, and the pragmatic use of technology.
Values
We value team work, collaboration, integrity, strategic planning, and professionalism in all our organizational activities.
Objectives
- To support the community and both public and private organizations by training individuals in the areas of healthcare provision, educational mandates and resources, and business development.
- To reduce violence and to increase educational attainment among male adolescent youth by sponsoring mentoring and educational activities.
- To develop and support predominately African American entities such as colleges, universities, school districts, local governments, industry, social institutions, and professional organizations by establishing support programs and strategic alliances among them.
- To develop and support financial and information technology (IT) infrastructures that support African American organizations by marshaling committed, talented organizations with financial and IT expertise.
- To measure our progress by documenting and reporting our successes and failures using quantitative and qualitative methodologies.
Message from the Founding President
Past civil rights efforts such as the 1964 Civil Rights Amendment were instrumental in ameliorating societal level problems within the African American society since only nationally condoned and instituted actions could significantly affect problems at this level. In contrast, contemporary African American thought focuses on solving societal level problems with individual, family, and community-based programs. We posit that societal level problems like poverty, miseducation, criminality, high unemployment, poor healthcare, etc. cannot be solved with programs of the latter type or by appeals to personal responsibility. Therefore, we resolve to affect societal level problems with societal level solutions. For us, this means transforming our critical social institutions so that they are interdependent and highly organized to fulfill their current missions.
We are not disillusioned or unrealistic and know that our work will be tough and at times disappointing, but we also know that not adapting in an optimal way leads to dysfunctional behavior and premature death. Can anyone deny that this is not the case?
If you believe as we do, we would love to have you work with us to affect progress within our community.
Best regards,
Marlon R. Aldridge, Sr.
President & CEO
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