The gap is real

Report finds that philanthropic support for Black nonprofits isn’t keeping up with their impact

With their experience, resilience, and resourcefulness, Black nonprofit leaders often create high-impact, high-performing organizations that philanthropists want to fund. So why do white-led nonprofit organizations receive 76 percent more revenue than Black-led nonprofit organizations on average and have 24 percent more assets?

That’s the question raised by new research produced by Giving Gap, the largest free searchable platform of Black-founded nonprofits in the United States (The Pivot Fund is one of them). 

“Despite their unwavering commitment to addressing our country’s greatest social challenges, Black leaders and their organizations are forced to navigate a funding ecosystem that unfairly advantages their white counterparts and restricts their own capacity for growth,” the report states. 

The findings mirror what is happening in journalism philanthropy. Our research, “Architects of Necessity,” co-authored by Dr. Meredith D. Clark, Ph.D., found that 87% of respondents to a survey of BIPOC news publishers saw funding decisions as inequitable. 

For instance, the American Journalism Project launched in 2019 with $42 million from leading foundations. Comparatively, the Racial Equity in Journalism Fund at Borealis Philanthropy, which surfaced eight organizations AJP later went on to fund, launched with $3.6 million in 2020. The Pivot Fund, despite our founder’s track record at Borealis, opened its doors in 2021 with just $300,000 in the bank.

Giving Gap (formerly known as Give Blck) was founded in September 2020, during the height of the racial uprising following the murder of George Floyd, when pledges to support racial equity abounded. Its new report highlights the disparity between Black nonprofits’ high impact in their community and their low level of access to philanthropic support.

“The report also focuses on the unique characteristics of Black nonprofit leadership and how, in many ways, their contributions—their experiences, resilience, and resourcefulness in approaching the work—actually lend themselves to creating high-impact, high-performing organizations,” said Heather Infantry, CEO of Giving Gap. 

Infantry, who joined the organization in 2022, added that many Black-led nonprofits in Giving Gap’s database were founded by people who had experienced the issue they erected their organization to address. “So they come to that work with a sense of humanity, not just stats and numbers,” she said.

Giving Gap’s research is based on survey responses from Black nonprofit leaders and organizations. The survey sample of 168 was combined with data from Giving Gap’s intake form and 990 data provided by Candid, a nonprofit information database, for a total sample of 1,222 Black nonprofit organizations. Giving Gap defines a Black nonprofit as a not-for-profit organization founded or co-founded by a Black person(s). Organizations led by a Black person or those serving Black communities but not founded by Black person(s) were excluded from the study.

2020’s societal crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, significantly impacted fundraising for 78% of organizations surveyed. However, 22% of the leaders surveyed did not experience increased funding. The study found that increased support is usually short-lived for organizations with strong fundraising success.

While the primary aim of philanthropy is to address inequality, research reveals that race is a determining factor in not only who gets funding and how much but who is redlined by inequitable funding practices.

The report underscores the urgent need for sustained investments in Black nonprofits to enhance their organizational capacity, leadership development, and the breadth of their influence within the communities they serve.

The Giving Gap calls on donors, grantmakers, and funding platforms to collaboratively align opportunities for equitable investments to create a more just future in which we can all thrive.

“There is this commitment, this duty, and obligation that Black nonprofit leaders have to the community, which is why it’s such a privilege, I think, as a donor and funder, to come in and partner with these organizations because this work will be done with or without them,” Infantry said. “But I think it would be better if it were done with them being on the right side of this work.