Survey Seeks Better Sense of How Much Grant Makers Give to Minorities

In an effort to gain a better idea about how many philanthropic dollars go to causes that serve minorities, the Foundation Center for the first time has asked grant makers what steps they take to collect information on the ethnic, racial, and gender composition of their beneficiaries.

In the past year or so, foundations’ giving to minorities has been under scrutiny, with federal and state lawmakers pushing them to provide more information about what populations they support.

In part because of the increased attention, the Foundation Center, a New York research organization supported largely by grant makers, began asking questions about diversity.

Its nationwide survey received more than 1,200 responses, and the center will publish its findings in a report in November, said Lawrence T. McGill, the center’s senior vice president for research.

While Mr. McGill said it was too early to discuss specific results, he did say that nonprofit leaders who think that foundations routinely collect such information from their grantees will be disappointed.

“Not as many foundations are actually systematically collecting this information as we might expect,” Mr. McGill said.

Measuring Progress

The survey also asked whether foundations gather information on the types of people — such as minorities or disabled people — their beneficiaries intend to serve, if the grant makers themselves have policies governing the makeup of their boards and employees, and if they have grant-making guidelines designed to help specific groups of people.

“In order to figure out whether foundations are making progress with respect to any diversity goal you might set, you first have to find out whether they are tracking information that is relevant to those goals,” said Mr. McGill. “We’re trying to assess whether foundations are in a position to answer those questions with any specificity.”

Currently, the Foundation Center does report on what types of people foundations say they assist, information that grant makers disclose as part of the informational tax forms they file with the Internal Revenue Service. But Mr. McGill said that information is too sketchy to lead to any good conclusions.

“Existing data does not tell the complete story,” he said.

In response to political pressure faced by grant makers in California, the Foundation Center has tried to dig deeper.

Earlier this year, a California state legislator proposed a measure that would require large philanthropies to disclose information about the diversity of their giving, staff members, and boards.

The legislation was withdrawn after the California Endowment, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, and seven other big foundations pledged to make multimillion-dollar grants to charities that assist minorities.

As part of the negotiations, the California Regional Associations of Grantmakers asked the Foundation Center to examine domestic giving by 50 large foundations in the state. The center found that, in 2005, at least 39 percent of the grants — and 33 percent of the dollars — primarily helped minorities, while an estimated 75 percent of grants intended to benefit poor people also helped minorities, even if the grants were not explicitly designed to aid such people.

Mr. McGill said his organization is working with other regional associations to provide similar data, and he said he hopes that the November report will be the first step toward a comprehensive national study of grant making to minorities similar to the California one.

But such an effort will depend on foundations and whether they give funds to such a project.

“The question is: Does the field want us to make an effort to design a data-collection system that collects [diversity] information systematically?” he said. “We have to see if the field is ready to do that.”