Racial Equity Knowledge Center

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Grantmaking with a Racial Equity Lens

May 30, 2007

GrantCraft; Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity;

A focus on racial equity can increase your effectiveness at every stage of the grantmaking process. Blending experience and candid advice from grantmakers, this guide explores how a racial equity lens can help you scan your field or community, cultivate new leaders, encourage creative approaches, get people talking, and nourish change inside your own foundation. Highlights Three tools for activating a racial equity lens Your Race/Your Role Questions to ask inside your foundation What's in the Guide? What Is a Racial Equity Lens? For grantmakers and foundation leaders, using a racial equity lens means paying disciplined attention to race and ethnicity while analyzing problems, looking for solutions, and defining success. Some use the approach to enhance their own perspectives on grantmaking; others adopt it as part of a commitment endorsed across their foundations. How a Racial Equity Lens Works: A racial equity lens is valuable because it sharpens grantmakers' insights and improves the outcomes of their work. People who use the approach say it helps them to see patterns, separate symptoms from causes, and identify new solutions for their communities or fields. Applying a Racial Equity Lens: Skills and Strategies: Where, specifically, does a racial equity lens get put to use by individual grantmakers? The answer is simple: everywhere. A keen awareness of race and ethnicity, and of their impact on access to power and opportunity, is a distinct asset when applying the classic skills of effective grantmaking. Implementing a Commitment to Racial Equity: Policies and Practices: When a foundation decides to focus on racial equity, how does that commitment get translated into the organization's goals and routines? Foundation leaders and program staff share examples of what they have learned about applying a racial equity lens to their programming, operations, and external affairs. Looking Inward: Using a Racial Equity Lens Inside Your Foundation: Grantmakers who have championed racial equity within their foundations describe a handful of tactics for getting over the predictable hurdles. Ground the discussion of racial equity in the foundation's mission, they say, be open to learning, and be upfront about your goals. But don't lose sight of the possibility of resistance and setbacks.

The 2018 Diversity Among Philanthropic Professionals Report

Nov 21, 2019

Funders for LGBTQ Issues; Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy; CHANGE Philanthropy;

In 2018, Funders for LGBTQ Issues set out to survey the board and staff of foundations in order to identify how many LGBTQ people worked in philanthropy — which resulted in The Philanthropic Closet: LGBTQ People in Philanthropy. In designing the survey, we realized that we had an opportunity to not only ask about sexual orientation and gender identity but also to inquire about a range of personal identifiers. With the inaugural Diversity Among Philanthropic Professionals (DAPP) Survey, we asked participants to identify their role within their foundation, their age, gender identity, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, and disability status. This report lays out the results of the DAPP survey in aggregate form. Produced in partnership with CHANGE Philanthropy and Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy (EPIP), the report and accompanying infographic explore diversity in the philanthropic workforce. Overall, the report finds a statistically significant difference between funders with a social justice focus and all other funders. Social justice funders were much more likely to have higher representation of LGBTQ people, people of color, and people with disabilities. The report finds: People of color accounted for 37.8 percent of people on the staff or board of participating foundations. However, the percentage varied depending on a foundation's focus. People of color made up 45.6 percent of the staff and board at foundations with a social justice focus, while they accounted for 33.0 percent of staff and board at foundations with another focus. While women accounted for nearly 70 percent of the staff and board at all participating foundations, only 44 percent of board members were women. Nearly half of women at foundations with a social justice focus were women of color; only a third of women at foundations with another focus were women of color. Among lesbian, gay, and bisexual people in philanthropy, 43.1 percent of those at foundations with a social justice focus were people of color, compared to one-third of those at foundations with another focus. Among transgender people, 57.1 percent of transgender people at foundations with a social justice focus were people of color, while 25 percent of transgender people at foundations with another focus were people of color. At foundations with a social justice focus, people with disabilities made up 8.8 percent of staff and boards, compared to 4.8 percent at foundations with another focus. Across all participating foundations, 10.3 percent of staff and board were born outside of the United States.