Foundation Giving and Communities of Color. By Will Pittz and Rinku Sen.

Race matters, now more than ever.

As the challenges facing organizations that promote justice and equity for immigrants and established communities of color mount, funding streams for many such organizations have been reduced to a trickle in recent years. These realities raise several key questions: What does the available data on grants to communities of color and to justice-based efforts reveal about overall funding trends? What factors hinderfunding for racial justice within the foundation community,and which foundationefforts to support racial justice have been particularly effective? Given the fact that there is not a clear consensus among foundation leaders about the definition of racial justice, what can we say about the future of racial justice funding overall?

This report discusses ways foundations concerned with social justice have supported efforts targeting communities of color. An assessment of the numbers presents an unpromising picture: although people of color make up nearly one-third of the general U.S. population, grants explicitly targeted to benefit them constituted only seven percent of foundation giving in 2001.

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