More than a year after protesters around the world responded to the tragic deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and other people of color, U.S. donors of all backgrounds are still responding to calls for an end to deep-rooted racial inequities.
To learn more about these giving patterns, the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy teamed up with the nonpartisan research organization NORC at the University of Chicago to survey 1,535 Americans from September 14 to October 6, 2020. Our survey, which has a margin of sampling error for all respondents of plus or minus 5 percentage points, indicates that giving to racial and social justice is on the rise — especially among donors of color.
We highlighted these findings in a recent report that also draws on insights from focus groups convened with diverse donors across the country and prior research.
Diverse Racial and Ethnic Backgrounds
Giving to social- and racial-justice causes — including groups tied to the Black Lives Matter movement, the Smithsonian’s Latino Center, other cultural and arts institutions, and colleges and universities primarily attended by Black, Indigenous and other students of color — has grown in recent years. The share of Americans who said they are doing this rose from 12.6 percent in 2019 to 15.7 percent in 2020.
Even larger shares of people within communities of color support these causes: 30.7 percent of Asian Americans, 19.3 percent of African Americans, and 13.8 percent of Hispanic Americans donate to social- and racial-justice causes, compared with 12.6 percent of white people.
In addition, we found that donors to social- and racial-justice causes are more likely to be single and young and less likely to attend religious services frequently compared with donors overall.
Informal Giving
Donors of color who fund charitable organizations also tend to give informally. For example, they were more likely to say that they give money and goods to their relatives and friends than were typical white donors.
In addition, many Asian and Black people said they had donated more goods to others rather than money. Notably, from our research, we also see that African Americans are the most likely to give to strangers of all racial and ethnic groups, holding other variables constant.
These findings reinforce earlier research regarding how donors of color often give directly to members of their communities, including people outside their families and circles of friends.
Fighting Racism
U.S. philanthropists from marginalized groups have used giving as a means of self-help for people of color to fight racial oppression for centuries. For example, the African American entrepreneur Mary Ellen Pleasant helped finance the Underground Railroad.
With the spike in anti-Asian racism that began when the Covid-19 pandemic arose, the Asian American community has started to give more to causes that tackle the root causes of discrimination and xenophobia. Many Asians are turning to crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe and to established charities to fund these efforts to stop hate crimes.
One notable result: the 2021 launch of the Asian American Foundation, which advocates on behalf of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. By mid-2021, the new foundation said its funding had exceeded $1 billion.
Editor’s note: This article is part of a partnership the Chronicle has forged with the Associated Press and the Conversation to expand coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits. The three organizations receive support for this work from the Lilly Endowment. The Conversation is responsible for the content in this article.