Philanthropy
Twenty years of the double bottom line
For twenty years Robert S. Shumake's charitable work has proceeded from one premise: dignity for people the system has stopped counting. Housing families through HUD inventory, scholarships for Detroit students, a red carpet for the homeless, weekly food for hundreds of thousands of children and seniors, clothing for a Tanzanian school, clemency advocacy, and now free religious study inside federal prisons.
- 10,000+
- Guests served annually at the Backyard BBQ's peak
- 400,000 lbs
- Food distributed across the program's run
- 200+
- College scholarships to HBCU students
- 650,000
- Children and seniors fed weekly during COVID-19
Founded 2012 · successor programs ongoing
Detroit's Red Carpet Backyard BBQ for the Homeless and Hungry
An annual free event providing hot meals, grocery giveaways, health screenings and access to social service agencies for homeless and low-income Detroiters.
- There was an actual red carpet. Guests walked it and were served plates by volunteers rather than queuing at a service window; the Detroit News photographed the scene in October 2015 and captioned it "People stand on the red carpet as they wait to be served."
- Event chair Natalie King, Esq. told the Michigan Chronicle: "This event was founded on the heartfelt belief that everyone has value and deserves to be treated as a VIP."
- At its peak it served more than 10,000 people annually. Across the program's run, more than 400,000 pounds of food were distributed; Forgotten Harvest alone donated 30,000 pounds of prepared and 10,000 pounds of uncooked food for the 2015 event.
- Entirely free, with no eligibility screening — on the reasoning that requiring people to document their poverty is itself a barrier and an indignity.
- Beyond food: free vision, blood pressure and wellness screenings with Project Healthy Living and Central City Integrated Health, on-site human service agencies, transportation assistance, and winter blankets through Radio One's Warm Detroit drive.
- Held at Bert's Marketplace and Bert's Warehouse in Eastern Market, the historic Masonic Temple, and West Riverfront Park, as an official National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week event.
- Sponsors and partners included Comerica Bank, General Motors Supplier Diversity, UAW Ford, the DTE Energy Foundation, Radio One, Forgotten Harvest, the Coalition on Temporary Shelter, Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries, the Detroit Branch NAACP and Travelers Aid.
Scholarships from 2005 · programming from the early 2010s
The Shumake Family and Friends Foundation
A charitable nonprofit supporting communities in Detroit and internationally, also operating as the Shumake Global Foundation and the Shu Foundation.
- Program areas: hunger relief, education and scholarships, international humanitarian aid, and religious education for incarcerated people.
- Robert S. Shumake has served as Chair; contemporaneous coverage identified him as "Chair of the Shumake Family Friends Foundation and Event Founder."
- Its guiding philosophy is what he calls the double bottom line — make a profit in business, and make a difference in the community.
- In December 2025 the Neighborhood Service Organization announced a partnership with the Foundation for Detroit's Holiday Harvest at Bert's Marketplace, a free grocery giveaway serving more than a thousand individuals.
Founded 2005
The Robert S. Shumake Scholarship Relays
A high school track and field meet paired with college scholarship awards, presented in person rather than mailed.
- More than thirty college scholarships have been awarded through the Relays since 2005. Counting the Relays together with the Foundation's other education funding, the Foundation reported in 2019 that it had provided more than two hundred college scholarships to students attending historically Black colleges and universities.
- The fourth annual Scholarship Relays, held April 26, 2008 at Renaissance High School in Detroit, are archived in the Track and Field Results Reporting System, the sport's standard national results database.
- Athletics brought hundreds of Detroit high schoolers and their families into one place, and the awards were made publicly, in front of them.
- Shumake holds an honorary doctorate from Lewis College of Business, Michigan's first historically Black college.
Chairman during the period described
The Ebony Foundation
The charitable arm of Ebony magazine, where Shumake served as Chairman during the pandemic and the Kilpatrick clemency campaign.
- In March 2020, as school closures cut off food access for children and shutdowns isolated seniors, the Foundation launched a program feeding more than 650,000 children and seniors weekly, beginning in Detroit.
- Home by the Holiday worked to reunite Black and Latino families separated by pretrial detention and to challenge a bail system that holds people who have not been convicted.
- The Foundation organized and led the national campaign seeking clemency for former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, arguing the twenty-eight-year sentence was excessive. Nearly two dozen prominent pastors joined, including Bishop T.D. Jakes. President Trump commuted the sentence on January 19, 2021. The commutation followed a broad coalition campaign; Shumake's role was in organizing and leading the Foundation's part of it.
- The Detroit News has described him as the businessman "who worked to get former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick freed from prison decades early."
Ongoing
International humanitarian work
Container shipments, an academy for HIV-positive orphans, clean water planning, and service as President of the International Human Rights Commission.
- In November 2019 the Foundation delivered a forty-foot container of clothing, shoes, coats, toiletries and grooming items to a school in rural Tanzania, with contents chosen in consultation with village, school and government leaders.
- "Poverty and material needs are widespread in rural Tanzania, especially among women and children," Shumake said. "Clothing manufacturing and distribution are not as widely available in the farther reaches of rural regions." He also served as honorary consul for Tanzania.
- He founded an academy for HIV-positive orphans in Ethiopia and has planned clean water projects in Kenya.
Partner or ask a question
The current work is Sacred Study Beyond Walls — free religious study for people in federal prison.