More than 3,400 Asian American business leaders and their supporters have pledged $10 million over the next year to fund nonprofits that serve Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
The campaign, called Stand With Asian Americans, has partnered with the Asian Pacific Fund, a community foundation, and will make grants throughout the next year to nonprofits such as StopAAPIHate, AAPI Women Lead, and Asian Americans Advancing Justice.
“We are tired of being treated as less than American, subject to harassment, and now every day we read about another member of our community being physically attacked — simply for being Asian,” the leaders wrote in an open letter.
The grants will support work to advance data collection on hate crimes against Asian Americans, produce scholarship on the Asian American experience, and provide legal representation to victims of hate crimes, among other efforts. The coalition also plans to create workplace affinity groups for Asian Americans to provide support and a means to report on-the-job harassment. The business leaders also pledged to boost Asian American representation within their companies, from entry-level jobs to the board room.
The new fundraising drive was announced in a full-page ad in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal.
The founders of Peloton, Stitch Fix, YouTube, and Zoom were among the more than 1,000 business leaders who lent their names to the effort, pledging to lead a “national awakening” and start a conversation on long-standing biases and racism against Asian Americans.
The ad closed with an appeal for more people to sign onto the effort to promote the equity and well-being for Asian Americans. Since the ad was published, 2,000 more Asian American business leaders and their supporters have heeded the call.
The open letter from corporate leaders comes after another one, from nearly 500 philanthropy leaders, pointed to foundations’ long-running underinvestment in nonprofits serving Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Individuals have recently stepped in to fill that gap, with almost 30 donors kicking in $25.8 million since March 16, when a man shot and killed six Asian women and three others in Atlanta.
