The nonprofit sector is racially and socially diverse, but the pool of grant awardees is not.

Studies continue to show that nonprofits led by people of color and members of other historically marginalized communities receive less grant funding and fewer total grants than their white, non-marginalized counterparts. In fact, a Nonprofit Finance Fund survey found that white-led nonprofits were nearly twice as likely to receive unrestricted grants than their BIPOC counterparts.

This inequity persists despite many grant makers’ recent creation of funding opportunities focused specifically on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in response to the social justice movement. This is because the very nonprofits exhibiting the diversity that grant makers seek to bolster with these focused funding opportunities have historically operated on much smaller budgets than their non-marginalized peers, and their resultant lack of resources (i.e., staff, time, expertise, finances) continually forces them to choose between preparing low-quality grant applications and not applying for crucial grant funding at all.