Opinion: California Bill on Foundation Diversity Misses the Point

A bill passed by the California Assembly to require foundations with assets of more than $250-million to publish information on the race, ethnicity, and gender of their officials and grant recipients is misguided, write the editors of the San Jose Mercury News.

They say the real issue up for debate ought to be, “Are foundation grants effective?”

While the editors acknowledge that “there is a belief among many in the nonprofit community that large foundations in California don’t give out enough money to organizations that serve, or are managed by, minorities,” they say the bill, AB 624, is a “crude yardstick” for dealing with issues of diversity and foundation work.

The main problem with the bill is that “what constitutes ‘serving minorities’ defies facile formulas.”

Although “foundations must be transparent about who gets their dollars,” they write, “they shouldn’t be required to spend their money and their recipients’ time collecting demographic and personal information, based on dubious assumptions.”

(Read an opinion piece in The Chronicle about this measure.)