Issue No. 2 | January 2026

This month, I present a special issue focused on a new framework for understanding donor motivations: The Nine Donor Archetypes. I also speak with hip hop legend and entrepreneur Trick Trick about his philanthropy and about the American Dream. Trick Trick epitomizes the Protector Archetype.

If you missed my inaugural issue of The Giving Report, you can find it here, and if someone forwarded this to you and you’re not yet a subscriber, you can sign up here. The Giving Report is free and sent monthly. Email [email protected] with comments or questions.

In the 13+ years I've been managing my family's philanthropy, I’ve partnered with hundreds of major philanthropists, individual donors, and foundation professionals whose views span the political and ideological spectrum. My modus operandi has always been to find areas of agreement when collaborating on a project, even if we disagree on other issues.

To create positive working relationships, I developed a heuristic for understanding donor motivations. I’ve now formalized this into a framework I am calling The Nine Donor Archetypes. In alphabetical order, they are:

The Collaborator - Collaborators are motivated by the process of joining together with other donors to address complex issues. Finding community through giving is key for this type.

The Competitor - Competitors are motivated by friendly competition within their peer group when making charitable giving decisions. This type responds well to live charity auctions at galas.

The Cultivator - Cultivators are motivated by fostering and strengthening relationships among their friends or within their business networks. This type enjoys fun, in-person events they can attend with their peers and meet new people.

The Embracer - Embracers are motivated by the desire to help care for individual people or animals and often want to personally interact with those they are helping. Alleviating or preventing suffering are key motivating factors.

The Illuminator - Illuminators are motivated by an idealistic vision of a society where everyone lives together in peace, with no interpersonal or intergroup strife. They focus their giving on supporting efforts to move this vision forward, such as psychedelic therapies, furthering the arts, or convening experiences which bring people together.

The Participant - Participants are motivated by the personal or family experience of philanthropy; it is the process of giving itself that matters to this type. In a family context, this could mean seeing one's family work together to make giving decisions. In a personal context, this could mean going on special trips or site visits to see how funds are used.

The Pragmatist - Pragmatists are motivated by using their charitable giving to provide intangible benefits to themselves, their families, or their businesses. Examples include donations to hospitals in their communities or donations to schools their children attend.

The Protector - Protectors are motivated by a sense of duty to protect their community, their people, or an aspect of the natural or built environment for which they feel responsible.

The Strategist - Strategists are motivated by the potential to use charitable donations to solve problems. They make their giving decisions in a rational way and are open to supporting a wide range of strategies to effect change. They focus on outcomes rather than on the giving process itself.

Donor Archetypes drive how a donor approaches giving, but do not determine which specific organizations the donor supports. The latter is usually determined by three factors: religious or spiritual influence, lived experience, or special personal interest. These three factors manifest in different ways based on Archetype.

It is also important to note that donors can reflect more than one Archetype, and Archetypes can change over time based on a donor’s life stage.

The key takeaway to remember about this framework is that regardless of Archetype, if donors find philanthropic opportunities aligned with their core motivations, they may be inspired to give more. This will ultimately result in greater benefit for society.

Simone Joy Friedman: It's an honor to be here with you, Trick Trick, in your studio and in your town, Detroit. I have so much respect for you, and you're a legendary hip-hop artist and producer and entrepreneur and philanthropist, which is the reason why we are speaking.

Trick Trick: I love it. 

Simone Joy Friedman: And we've known each other for about a year or so, right? And when I started my philanthropy newsletter, The Giving Report, I said to myself, I want to come up with a new framework for understanding why people give, what are motivating donors. And so I created a system of nine archetypes of donors. And one of them is called the protector.

And I realized that you are the epitome, you are the most ideal example of the protector archetype. And I wanted to talk to you about your work in Detroit and what motivates your giving.

Trick Trick: So my mother just was, my mother was a really giving person, God rest her soul.

 My mother let anybody that needed somewhere to stay, stay with us. Like if a mother and her children needed somewhere to stay the night, they came and stayed with us. We counted one time, like how many people stayed with us total when we were younger.

It was like 140 total, like of people that, so you grow up just in the, in the giving, you know, in a given environment. And then, you know, you get up, get older and learn the science behind giving this, you know, you reap what you sow, you know, and when you give, you know, I believe that's a, that is motivated by the power of the Most High God, by the Most High Creator. And, you know, for us all to recycle kindness, recycle, you know, initiative of loving something more than ourselves or helping somebody instead of always asking somebody to help you help people, you know, and it's just, it become a habit.

It's just become a, it become a lifestyle, not a habit, a lifestyle. It's a lifestyle. It's just, I don't, it is what it is.

I'm never understood no other way to be.

Simone Joy Friedman: So, you started the Christian Anthony Foundation. So, tell us a little bit about that.

Trick Trick: So, the Christian Anthony Foundation is a program that works with inner city youth with teaching music, film, television, writing, production, any way we can help. Like, we work with young artists and we find young artists and young people who are doing recording. So, we donate to them, you know, we buy the equipment for them or we shoot videos for them, use our production to do videos for, you know, people who wouldn't necessarily have a budget for the type of production that we could provide.

Outside of that, we work with other organizations and, you know, doing our part with other organizations such as New Era Detroit, Wish Upon A Team, which is another one of my favorite organizations. We go into hospitals and decorate hospital rooms for children who are, you know, ill or going through, you know, surgeries or whatever, you know, whatever their theme is, whatever they like, you know, whether it be football or, or what's it, what's anime or whatever, we'd go and buy a lot of stuff, you know, the beds, change the sheets and put stuff on the wall and games and books and boards and color, you know, something for them to do. As far as New Era Detroit, heavy in the community, heavy in the community, they have so many different programs from financial literacy programs, mental health programs, protection programs, and, you know, protection is my thing.

So, you know, when they're on the move when I have the time to donate and dedicate my time to assisting and sometimes when it's situations to come up in Detroit where there are, you know, there have been situations where elderly women were attacked and the suspect was on the loose and, you know, myself along with New Era Detroit teamed up with, you know, local authorities to make sure we do everything we did as a community to track down that piece, to track down that person that, you know what I mean?

Simone Joy Friedman: They are a piece of shit.

Trick Trick: Thank you. I was wondering, I was like, I don't know, I don't want to piss nobody off. 

We tracked a piece of shit down. I was seven minutes behind the marshals. I was mad at the motherfucker too, I ain't gonna lie.

I was pissed because I wanted a piece of that. I wanted to beat that son of a bitch so bad. Anyway, I mean, you know what I mean? It's just, it's the, I believe God, you know, I'm blessed to be a man.

I'm blessed to be a powerful man. God didn't create me to be none of us. No man, God didn't create us to be weak.

You're a man, you're born with position. You're born with a sense of authority that should be used for the benefit of the land. You know, a group like New Era Detroit, they already making it happen.

So you gotta pick up where you left off. What y'all doing this weekend, nephew? Oh, we about to go over to so-and-so and do this and buy the block back. You know, teaching people how to buy real estate, the old houses, you know, buy the whole block.

You can buy a whole block and there's no houses on it, just the land here. They teach people how to do that. I'm coming out too.

Coming out, I'm free. Put me on the calendar. That's it anyway.

If you're doing, if you had a righteous organization doing real work in the community, real work for people, I'm coming. There's no question at all. Somebody said to me, how much you trying to speak at a school? I said, alkaline water.

You better give me alkaline water. We all gotta do our part. And so I do my part back through the Christian Anthony Foundation just for the sake of, I've done so much and given so much money, but I've done it from the heart.

And people say, you don't have a non-profit. And I was like, nope, I ain't making no profit. I didn't understand.

It's just like, this is what God wants me to do. He wants me to give it. And they're like, you know, you need to put that on the books.

And I'm like, you put it on the books. I'm going to keep giving.

Simone Joy Friedman: When you bring young people to record or you bring people to do video production, how important do you think it is for them to be able to express their creativity?

Trick Trick: Very important.

Because I was that age once and I understood what, I understand now what a creative mind, the power of a creative mind and what that creative mind is giving the resources to expand on that creativity. Then, you know, it's like you're working with a life force. And as many of those as I can be a part of, just to know that I did my part.

You know, somebody looked out for me. You know, I had big homies that invested in my hip hop career back in the day with, you know, the wrongest money, but you know, they gave unconditionally that love, that protection and that finance. And they only looked in return was to make sure that I became successful and to make sure I stayed out of trouble.

So it's important that I continue that, you know, so making sure a young person has the resources that they have. Even our resources back then were minimal. Now we're expanded to the point to where we can help any child, young person do anything they want to do.

You know, they help them advance, you know, it just take one spark, one spark in a child's mind to say, Ooh, I like that. I want to do that. And because I know what happened with Trick Trick.

I know where I was sitting in the movies and watching Crush Groove and saw Run DMC do is like that. And then electrifying performance in that performance motivated me is the reason I'm sitting here today as Trick Trick the artist, you know, alongside people like being influenced by people like Ice Cube, who is a very good friend of mine now, you know, being influenced by the hip hop culture, I had people who supported me. And so people need that support to keep it going.

Simone Joy Friedman: Russell Simmons is a friend of mine.

Trick Trick: Listen, Russell Simmons told me one day we did a hip hop summit in Detroit. It was back in the early 2000s. It was like 2006, 7, something like that.

And I had met him before when I was somewhere with my former bodyguard and my former bodyguard used to work for Ice Cube. So he stopped to talk to Ice Cube and Russell Simmons and Kimora Lee Simmons passing and he stopped and I was like, this is it all. I didn't even get a picture.

I was just like, God, this guy right here, this is hip hop to me, you know. And so when he came for the hip hop summit years later, I told him about that experience. I said, now I want to know if I can get a minute with you whenever you get a chance.

You know, Russell's very front forward. He’s going to say what's on his mind. What you want? I said, I want to talk some business.

What kind of business? I said, well, I want to get rich. He said, what you mean you want to get rich? I want to be a millionaire, Mr. Simmons. He said, well, if you want to be a millionaire, you better get some millionaire friends. That's the smartest thing I ever heard. That statement. 

Look in the building and millionaires come in and out of the building all day. Entrepreneurs. I'm surrounded by entrepreneurs and we motivate and work with each other, you know, from one job to the next. We're there for each other.

Simone Joy Friedman: I wanted to get your thoughts on a bigger picture issue, which is this idea of the American dream. You know, I believe in the power of capitalism, the power of access to capital so that people can buy businesses, people can grow businesses, people can buy houses and pay for education for their kids and create intergenerational wealth.

And in the circles I'm in, you can't say that. You can't talk about that.

That's considered wrong or off trend to say. I wish people would normalize this idea that it's that it's good. It's a positive thing. It's part of helping the community grow.

In my opinion, the American dream is really just a combination of the Detroit dream, the New York dream, the Los Angeles dream, the Atlanta dream. It's all together. Is this ever something that you hear people talk about?

Trick Trick: Everybody that I've been around ever, that's our conversation outside of, you know, comedy and the brotherhood, the family environment to uplift each other when one is down or be there for one another for whatever reason. You know, a lot of our conversation is money. And it's more so at this point about sharing the resources and information.

So if we talk about money, whether it be, you know, doing a concert or starting a bakery or opening a dispensary or open a cultivation facility or selling fruit, you know, we have people to do everything, security, film, television, writing, production, painting, electrical, you name it. So it's like when it comes to the American dream, we're going to live it as individuals. You know, everybody's different.

And we're only responsible for the circles that we're in. I always tell my friends and family, I said, listen, you can't help the world. This is how you help the world.

 First, get your house in order. Make sure you're the best husband and the best father. Make sure your shit is together. Make sure your kids do what the fuck they're supposed to do. Make sure your wife is being part of that house and the society. Make sure your shit in order first, because you can't help a motherfucker do nothing if you ain't in order.

So first and foremost, we have to get ourselves in order. Then get our families, the closest amount of family to us, be it husband, wife, children, you know, stepchildren, whatever. Then you got parents, you know, the other parents, the grandparents, you know what I mean? They're important.

They're an important factor. You got shit like cousins, and aunts, and uncles, and you got friends, and associates, and people you work with. It's too many motherfucking people, but we come across that many people all the time.

We can only have dialogue with those who understand what we're talking about. So if it's somebody that don't, fuck them. I'm not doing what I'm doing because people expect me to do it or people want me to do it.

I'm doing it because I want to. I'm doing it because I love it. I'm doing it because I love it.

I have to live this in this suit, in this body. I got to live this until the clock is out. I choose to be helpful.

I choose to be respectful. I choose to be a protector. I choose to be a provider.

I choose to be a motivator. I choose to be a mentor. When somebody comes to me, I don't walk around, I don't got a business card that say mentor, philanthropist, businessman, producer, writer. No, no, no. When it's time to do something, what are we doing? Am I helping? Yeah.

How you make the world a better place? Do what Michael Jackson said, look in the mirror, because you can fix what's in the mirror. You just did. You just made it better.

Simone Joy Friedman: Starts with yourself.

Trick Trick: Starts with yourself.

Simone Joy Friedman: Thank you so much for speaking with me. I appreciate it.