In 2013, the Philadelphia African American Leadership Forum (PAALF), with funding from the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania and Southern New Jersey, commissioned a study of African American-led nonprofits in Philadelphia. PAALF was interested in understanding whether the experiences and needs of African American-led nonprofits in Philadelphia differed in important ways from white-led nonprofits.
In 2014-2015, Branch Associates, Inc., a Philadelphia-based research and evaluation firm, conducted a survey of leaders of human service-oriented nonprofit organizations in Philadelphia. The survey research was supplemented with qualitative research with African American Executive Directors and local funders. The findings from this research are presented in this report.