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Grantmaking with a Racial Justice Lens: A Practical Guide centers the perspectives of racial justice activists first, and then of funders working on change in their institutions, to identify best practices for driving philanthropy beyond racial equity toward racial justice.

For a decade, Knight Foundation has been intentional about identifying high quality, diversely-owned asset managers when investing its endowment. In response to frequent questions from a variety of stakeholders into the performance of the charitable sector regarding this issue — the questions arising from the general lack of data — Knight Foundation asked Global Economics Group to assess the representation of diverse asset managers among foundations.

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. In the process, the organization realized that it 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, Funders for LGBTQ Issues 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.

An increasing number of foundations are embracing racial equity/equity as a core value, and it is influencing how they see themselves and operate. However, evaluation has for the most part remained untouched. Knowing how race/racism has influenced both, philanthropy and evaluation, deepens our understanding of how philanthropic evaluation practice may unintentionally reinforce racism. Equitable evaluation shifts the current evaluation paradigm to one that centers equity/racial equity, so that it is more aligned with the values and intentions of current day philanthropic endeavors.