Little Big Fund’s Commitment to Racial Equity in Funding Access
While financial systems around the world teeter with uncertainty and work to avoid collapse as a result of the global pandemic, inequity gaps around the world are quickly becoming wider and more pronounced. The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, among others, have served as horrific, but effective catalysts to reignite the collective conversation around race and its insidious manifestations in institutions.
The philanthropic sector is not excluded from this conversation. In fact, inequality in funding opportunities for POC-led organizations and ideas is interwoven with the necessity to create long-term systems that are fair and just. Most philanthropic organizations have well-intentioned missions and visions of, broadly, making the world a better place so they are not always examined or held accountable for racial bias.
The Bridgespan and Echoing Green released a detailed study on the ‘disparities in funding for leaders of color’ that brilliantly states: “Two of the biggest factors holding back philanthropy’s efforts to help advance social change are rooted in race. One is understanding the role of race in the problems philanthropists are trying to solve. The second is the significance of race when it comes to how philanthropists identify leaders and find solutions.” This two-part problem is rooted in the same systemic racism that permeates other sectors of society: first there is a lack of acknowledgement of racial bias which leads to continued inequality in opportunity for people of color. The report illustrates the issue of racial inequity in philanthropic inequity saying that across Echoing Green’s own applicant pool white-led organizations had raised around $61 million dollars while black-led organizations had raised around $40 million dollars. Meaning that there is a $20 million funding gap between white-led and black-led organizations. This is a brief but powerful example of the unbalanced scales facing POC raising money for their ideas.
Now that the conversation has started and is front and center in the minds of leaders, activists, and funders, the real work begins. As the report concludes, “funding leaders of color is a significant piece of the puzzle, because these leaders often bring strategies that intimately understand the racialized experiences of communities of color and the issues these communities face.” At the Little Big Fund, we have always encouraged international social changemakers from joining our community.
Of all the grantees that Little Big Fund has financially supported through micro-grants, 65% of grantees come from outside of the United States of America, and 93% of the changemakers are working in the communities that they represent. A core element of our selection process includes looking for locally based leaders who have a deeper understanding of the context and trust required to lead delicate projects towards success. In 2019, we also expanded the reach of our courses, taking the programs to communities around the world increasing the accessibility of our courses and micro-grants to nonprofits around the world.
In fact, this year, we are running a course consisting of seven social changemakers from Nigeria, Kenya, Bangladesh, Uganda, Armenia, Morocco, and South Sudan. One could say that the onset of COVID-19 has allowed us to make our programs more accessible, and even though internet access is limiting for many of our participants, we make all of our efforts to ensure that they get uninterrupted access (providing data packages to participants).
More than ever, we believe the work the Little Big Fund does is critical to catalyzing social venture growth – and the personal learning experience and experimentation of young founders. During this time, we see ourselves on a climb that lacks a summit as we diligently work to examine our privilege, internalized racism, and ways in which we have perpetuated racism as an organization. Little Big Fund fundamentally believes that big change starts with small action - and the same could not be more true for our own evolution and improvement.
To read the full report visit: https://www.bridgespan.org/insights/library/philanthropy/disparities-nonprofit-funding-for-leaders-of-color