Community Foundations Say Report Undercounts Support for Groups That Serve Blacks

A new report about community-foundation grants to organizations that serve Blacks has angered several of the funds featured in the study and underscored the difficulties of assessing how good a job philanthropy is doing in meeting the needs of Blacks.

The report, by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, “Black Funding Denied,” found that from 2016 to 2018, only 1 percent of the grants from the 25 community foundations it studied were specifically designated to “benefit Black communities.” The report continues: “Put another way, these 25 foundations together distributed $78 in funding per person in their communities, but only $6 per Black person in their communities.”

The committee studied community foundations in cities where NCRP’s Black-led nonprofit member organizations were located.

Leaders of several of those community foundations vigorously objected to the report’s findings, saying it drastically undercounts their support for groups that serve African Americans.

Rose Meissner, president of the Community Foundation of St. Joseph’s County, which serves the South Bend, Ind., metropolitan area, said NCRP’s report was reckless and called for it to be retracted. Her group was identified as devoting none of its grants explicitly for the benefit of African Americans.

“I wonder how people at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy could look at those percentages and not question anything,” said Meissner, who is white. “It’s incredibly irresponsible.”

She noted her community foundation has a more than 20-year-old endowment focused on African Americans governed by an all-African American committee, a college scholarship program exclusively for African American students, and several other programs that significantly benefit the city’s African Americans.

Rejecting ‘Trickle-Down Equity’

Ryan Schlegel, research director at NCRP, a nonprofit that monitors philanthropy’s response to poverty and inequality, acknowledged the data has shortcomings, adding that the report was upfront about that.

NCRP researchers used information from a grant-making database maintained by the nonprofit research organization Candid to identify grants that were determined to benefit “people of African descent.”

Responding to criticism from some community foundations that the criteria were too narrow and disregarded philanthropic support for charities that serve majority African American clientele, Schlegel said NCRP was “not going to accept trickle-down equity.”

“It’s not going to be enough to say that we’re funding the Y or we’re funding any other community organization without an explicit strategy,” said Schlegel, who is white. “Unless you are being explicit in your strategy to invest in marginalized people, then we’re not going to count it as part of this metric of accountability.”

Candid classifies its grants data in several ways. For the majority of grants in its database, it uses an algorithm that analyze IRS data from nonprofit and foundation informational tax returns, such as the mission and clientele of the recipient organization. Others are manually classified by Candid staff or classified by foundations that provide data directly to Candid.

Candid officials said the group was not an active participant in the research effort.

Schlegel said Candid’s data is an “industry standard” and fair game for analysis.

“You’ll hear foundations respond to Candid’s data by essentially saying these data are imperfect and therefore we should not use them. And if you ask them to provide their own grants-level analysis, they’ll decline. They’ll say it’s too difficult or we don’t have time to do that kind of work,” said Schlegel. “NCRP and our Black-led member organizations are just not satisfied with that answer.”

Challenging the Data

The Black Belt Community Foundation, which serves a 12-county region in central Alabama with a 58 percent African American population, devoted the biggest share of its grants — 9.4 percent — to organizations that serve Blacks, NCRP said.

Despite topping the list, Black Belt Community Foundation President Felecia Lucky said the NCRP report was misleading and that her community foundation’s support for organizations that serve Blacks was significantly higher.

Lucky, who is Black, says she believes that charities serving African Americans are chronically underfunded, but she took issue with NCRP’s data.

“When you see this kind of information that says we’re only serving 9.4 percent of the funding to Black communities, I have a hard time understanding what that even means in reality,” said Lucky. “It’s gotta make somebody sit down and think, if they know the region, who in the hell are they serving?”

Jane Alexander, CEO of the Community Foundation for Mississippi, also objected to the report’s findings, which said none of its grants were explicitly designed to support Black people despite the community foundation operating in an area where 49 percent of the population is African American.

“This report does not reflect in any way, shape, or form the percentage of grants that we give to support Black communities or to support nonprofits who provide direct services to Black communities and Black people,” said Alexander.

After the report came out, Alexander’s staff conducted a quick analysis of its grants of more than $5,000 made during the period NCRP studied. According to that analysis, the group estimates 65 percent of its grant making from 2016 to 2018 went to support Black people. But she conceded that the group could do a better job of categorizing its grant-making activities.

“Perhaps the takeaway for me from this is we are certainly happy to and probably should be tracking our grants in different ways than we have typically done it,” said Alexander, who is white. “A lot of this does reside in my head, and we probably need to document a little more clearly what projects these grants represent and who they are supporting.”

Call for Better Reporting

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Other community foundations have issued statements on the report.

Among them: the East Bay Community Foundation, which serves Oakland, Calif.. and is led by James Head, who is Black. It said that while itapplauds NCRP for drawing attention to inequitable philanthropic funding for African Americans, the data underlying the report was misleading. NCRP’s report said 0.8 percent of its grant making was designated explicitly for African Americans, who make up 9 percent of the metro area population.

“While the point of the NCRP report is both timely and well-intended, errors in data accuracy reveal that there is a tremendous need for improvement in reporting — throughout the sector. We are acutely aware of this problem and are actively taking steps to address it,” said the statement.

Similarly, officials at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation said in a statement the data used in the report was misleading but emphasized that philanthropic underfunding of people of color is a problem that needs to be addressed. The fund is run by Nicole Taylor, who is Black.

NCRP’s report said 0.4 percent of Silicon Valley’s grants went to serve Black people in an area where they account for 6 percent of the population

“SVCF believes that the methodology used to create the NCRP results is an oversimplification that does not give a nuanced portrayal of the many ways that community foundations fulfill the needs of their communities,” said the statement. “The NCRP report is based on grants made to a single category of nonprofits and excludes grants made to a wide range of organizations with missions that support Black communities and communities of color.”

Similarly, the Chicago Community Trust also said NCRP’s report addresses a pressing issue for philanthropy, but the group said the report’s methodology fell short. The trust is run by Helene Gayle, who is Black.

“While we have serious concerns about the methodology used to analyze and interpret the data, we agree that community foundations can and should be doing more to create equity and opportunity for all, especially in communities that have been impacted by decades of underinvestment,” read a statement provided by the foundation.

The statement went on to highlight a 10-year commitment, announced in 2019, to closing Chicago’s racial and ethnic wealth gap.

“Since that time, the vast majority of our current discretionary grant making is in pursuit of closing the gap, as is our added focus on policy reform and systemic change,” the statement said.

‘We Can Do Better’

Two organizations named in the report did not comment on the methodology when approached for this article.

“While we are proud of the progress we have made to strengthen the Black community in New York City, we also operate from the belief that we can do better,” the New York Community Trust said in a statement. “We will continue to review our internal data and are identifying more ways to amplify our commitment.” The New York Community Trust’s president is Lorie Slutsky, a white woman.

NCRP’s report said the New York Community Trust devoted only 4.2 percent of its grant making explicitly for Blacks, even though Blacks account for 15 percent of the New York metropolitan population.

Likewise, Seattle Foundation officials did not comment on the methodology of the report. Instead, they pointed to a statement by Tony Mestres, its chief executive, that was included in NCRP’s news release announcing the report, which called the report “important and timely, highlighting a historically persistent problem across the philanthropic sector.”

According to a spokeswoman for the group, Tony Mestres identifies as multi-ethnic.

NCRP’s report said the Seattle Foundation devoted only 1 percent of its grant making explicitly for Blacks, despite the fact that they represent 6 percent of the area population.