With Racial Equity Under Fire, Will Grantmakers Sustain Their Commitments?

lev radin/shutterstock

Today marks 159 years since Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, to free the last remaining slaves in the U.S., two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. This is also the third year that Juneteenth, sometimes known as America’s second Independence Day, has been celebrated as an official federal holiday.

While that day over a century and a half ago was one of the most important in this nation’s history, the fight for racial equity is hardly over. Our own times have played host to historic developments in that struggle, such as what happened four years ago, when George Floyd’s death at the hands of police officers sparked what promised to be a national reckoning with America’s systemic racism.

In the months that followed Floyd’s death, amid a convulsive, nation-straddling protest movement, a vast array of philanthropic funders made pledges to increase their support for racial equity and justice — and not just with reactive, one-time contributions. 

Inside Philanthropy broke down where some of those biggest commitments stood after two years in a series of three articles in mid-2022. Most of the pledges we looked at adopted timeframes of five years or less — some grantmakers committed for longer periods, but for the most part, the multi-year commitments funders made in 2020 have expired or will expire soon. 

At the same time, as we reach year four, the backlash against racial justice efforts is only getting stronger, with conservative activists, lawmakers and media personalities attacking a range of equity-related efforts, including affirmative action (in place since the 1970s, now ended in college admissions by the Supreme Court), diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and public school classes that deal with race. 

The big question going forward is whether funders will maintain or increase their support for racial equity and justice, or if the 2020-era surge in funding for those causes will slowly trickle away, philanthropic promises and rhetoric notwithstanding. 

Recent data from the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) sends mixed signals. CEP’s report, “State of Nonprofits 2024: What Funders Need to Know,” found that a quarter of the nonprofit respondents to a survey conducted in early 2024 said that their foundation funders made new commitments to advancing racial equity over the past year, and 39% said their funders would continue their existing commitments. On the other hand, 30% of respondents said their funders had no commitments to advance racial equity at all, and 5% said their funders had either reduced or ended their commitments.

CEP’s survey didn’t come without its limitations. Of the 239 respondents to CEP’s survey, 74% described themselves as white, with only 10% describing themselves as Black, 9% as Latino or Hispanic and 6% as Asian or Asian American. More broadly, 75% stated that they do not identify as a person of color. Research has shown that nonprofits led by people of color receive less funding than white-led organizations. Many Black-led and Black-serving organizations still struggle with accessing funds.

Other indicators pose questions about the strength of philanthropy’s racial justice commitments in particular fields, like education, which has increasingly been the site of battles related to racial equity. When it comes to K-12 funders, the Schott Foundation for Public Education’s latest “Justice Is The Foundation” report from earlier this year found that only 14% of K-12 education philanthropy grants went to racial equity and 0.3% went to racial justice. In fact, grant dollars to support racial equity and racial justice have declined in the K-12 space since 2020.

Some of the funders whose commitments IP analyzed in 2022 have increased their work. The Democracy Frontlines Fund, for example, recently recommitted to its cause. Initially conceived as a three-year initiative to support 10 Black-led organizations, the fund is extending its work for another three years, with 13 of its funding partners continuing their support and a new funder — the Heising-Simons Foundation — joining. The California Black Freedom Fund, which was meant to be a five-year initiative, announced it was fundraising for an endowment to establish itself as a standalone foundation earlier this year. The California Black Freedom Fund is also leading a new initiative to provide legal education, resources and tools to counter the spate of legal attacks against race-conscious programming that have followed the Supreme Court’s decision to end affirmative action.

There’s still much we don’t know about how the funding landscape for racial equity and justice will hold up in the coming years. There’s a lack of comprehensive data on how funders are reacting as attacks against racial equity and racial justice increase, and as clocks tick away on time-limited commitments from 2020. The question remains: Will funders bow to the pressure, will they stay the course — or will they ramp up their funding to counteract these attacks?