If you’ve written a grant proposal in the last few years, you have watched the equity section grow. It started as a sentence about who you serve. Then it became a paragraph. Now, at a growing number of foundations, it’s a scored section with its own reviewers.
I want to be useful about this rather than preachy, so let’s talk about the specifics of what has changed on the funder side, and what that means for the proposals sitting in your drafts folder.
Bogor Botanical Gardens, Bogor, Indonesia © Tonya Hennessey
The Gap that Started All of This
The research most program officers have read is the Echoing Green and Bridgespan study on racial funding disparities. Among organizations that reached the semifinalist stage of grant review processes and beyond, Black-led organizations had revenues 24 percent smaller and unrestricted net assets 76 percent smaller than their white-led counterparts.
Within the Black Male Achievement cohort, where the issue focus was identical, the gaps widened to 45 percent and 91 percent. That last detail matters. Same issue, same stage, same competitive pool. The variable was the leader’s race.
Candid’s reporting adds another piece: a Nonprofit Finance Fund survey found that “white-led nonprofits were nearly twice as likely to receive unrestricted grants.” Unrestricted money lets an organization hire, plan, and survive a bad quarter. The impacts of losing that race compound every single year.
Funders have read these reports. Their applications have evolved as a result.
What Funders are Asking for Now
A place to enter demographic data, once. More foundations now pull demographic information from Demographics via Candid rather than asking you to fill out a fresh table for every application. You enter board and staff demographics one time in your Candid profile, and participating funders read it there. If you have not updated yours since 2023, that is a one hour task with real consequences, so make sure your organization’s Candid.org and Charity Navigator profiles are current.
Charity Navigator just instituted an Impact Report section in their profiles, and it’s substantive, so stay on top of this one too.
Allie VanHeest, community investment officer at the Kalamazoo Community Foundation, explains why funders bother: “Only by gathering and analyzing demographic data about our funded partners can we assess and make progress towards racial equity.”
Evidence that the community shaped the program, not just received it. This is the section that too many proposals still fumble. Reviewers want to know what your mechanisms are, not your organization’s sentiment on the matter. Who from the community sat in the room? How did they engage and what changed? Are they compensated for their time?
Fewer barriers, and therefore fewer excuses. The Trust-Based Philanthropy Project has pushed a six-practice philanthropy framework that includes multi-year unrestricted funding and a commitment to “Simplify & Streamline,” because “Streamlining paperwork frees up nonprofits to focus on their mission while creating opportunities for dialogue.”
When an application gets shorter, keep in mind that every remaining question carries more weight.
Three Tested Moves for your Next Proposal
Name the decision, not the demographic. Instead of saying “we serve a predominantly Black community,” write “our parent advisory council in South Minneapolis voted to move clinic hours to Saturdays, which raised attendance 34 percent.” Reviewers can find your service population in your data. They can’t find your decision-making anywhere else.
Pay your community advisors and say so in the budget. A line item for participant stipends is the most persuasive equity statement in a proposal, because it can’t be added after the fact. It is either in the budget, demonstrating you respect your constituents’ time and expertise, or it isn’t.
Retire the deficit narrative. This is a big change. The old Problem Statement formula asked us to describe communities at their worst so the need would feel urgent. It still wins some grants, but it costs the community something every time. Lead with a community’s assets and resilience, then name the specific gap your program fills. Think documentary, not telethon.
The Honest Caveat
Not every funder is sincere. Some equity questions are compliance theater, and you will recognize them because nothing downstream has changed at all: not proposal package, not the reporting, not the grant term, not the unrestricted-funding level.
Answer those questions well anyway. Then spend your real relationship energy on the funders whose applications got shorter, whose grants got longer, and whose program officers ask what you need instead of what you promise.