As Candid hopes diversity data will help promote racial justice

Candid, the major philanthropy research group, is leading a coalition of funders and grantees looking to standardize the collection of demographic information to support targeted donations to minority-run groups.

Using such data could help advance racial justice, said Ann Mei Chang, CEO of Candid, which is launching a nonprofit initiative to gather more such information.

The initiative — dubbed Demographics via Candid, or DvC — hopes to create a survey that’s as easy and accessible as a philanthropy’s 990 form for the Internal Revenue Service. If successful, nonprofits would no longer need to provide specialized diversity information for each of their donors. And it would be easier for the philanthropic sector to measure how much money goes to minority-run groups.

“Everyone talks about justice,” Chang said. “But if you have no idea where you are, you can’t track your progress.”

Businesses and foundations have pledged billions to racial justice after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. However, statistics show that philanthropic funds flow unevenly to white-run and minority-run organizations.

A 2022 survey by the Nonprofit Finance Fund found that white-run nonprofits were more likely to receive corporate donations than minority-run groups. Donations to white-led nonprofits were almost twice as likely to be unrestricted gifts, allowing them to use the grants at their discretion rather than for specific programs.

Last month, several major philanthropists — including Melinda Gates’ Pivotal Ventures, Rihanna’s Clara Lionel Foundation, and the Ford and MacArthur Foundations — released an open letter asking for more donations to the Black Feminist Fund to address underfunded groups to correct who serve black women and girls. The fund estimates that only about 0.5% of philanthropic giving goes to these groups, even though black women and girls make up about 7% of America’s population.

“Organizations that reflect their communities are much more likely to be successful,” Chang said. “They understand these communities in a way that outsiders can’t.”

Candid’s initiative has attracted 36 partners to date, ranging from local donors like the Lehigh Valley Community Foundation to giants like the WK Kellogg Foundation.

PEAK Grantmaking, a non-profit organization that advocates for equitable giving practices, was keen to join the initiative, Satonya Fair CEO said. PEAK promotes the survey across its network of 6,000 members and 500 organizations.

“We enjoy just being an amplifier for what makes sense and changing things that don’t,” Fair said. “Nonprofit organizations already have a lot of work to do. Don’t make your process the main thing, make it the core of your mission.”

Kelly Brown, CEO of Viewpoint Consulting, which works with philanthropists, said she believes the initiative will fill an important need.

“The data collection system in the social sector is super, super fragmented,” said Brown, who works with Candid on the initiative. “This makes it extremely difficult not only to engage with the data, but also to learn from and understand it.”

The initiative will ask donors to set grants based on the data collected in the standardized survey, even if it doesn’t include all the details the initiative wants. It will attempt to convince grantees, particularly those at small nonprofit organizations, that completing the survey is worth the time and effort.

Beginning next month, the Kalamazoo Community Foundation, another early partner of the DvC initiative, will require its grantees to complete the standardized demographic survey and make it publicly available in order to receive grant funding, said Allie VanHeest, the foundation’s community investment officer.

The Michigan-based foundation has been working with its more than 100 grantees for the past year to prepare for the transition, offering workshops and support services to help gather the information.

“We’re really prioritizing racial justice,” VanHeest said. “We hope and dream of a future where race is not a predictor of quality of life and life outcomes. And we believe that racial justice can be promoted.”

But to measure the foundation’s success as it works toward its goals, it needs deeper demographic information about the organizations it supports, VanHeest said, which is why she jumped at the chance to join Candid’s initiative.

“We will work towards this together,” she said.

She added that during that first year, her foundation would not immediately disqualify a grantee who failed to collect the required demographic information.

“We’re still learning about this partnership with Candid,” she said, “and we know our partners are, too.”

Candid is inviting nonprofits to join the movement at a webinar on Feb. 14 in hopes of persuading enough donors and grantees to use this survey to get it widespread adoption, Chang said. She said she hopes government agencies will also adopt it as part of their grant applications. She plans to approach them after the initial stage is complete.

“I think you can build momentum for that,” she said. “Our hope is to work towards a common baseline application and grant reporting to ease the burden on nonprofits to devote more of their valuable resources to the important work they do.”

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The Associated Press’s philanthropy and nonprofit coverage is supported through AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US and is funded by Lilly Endowment Inc. AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

Glenn Gamboa, The Associated Press

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