Issue Number 1008 | Digging for Dollars | Advocate.com Digging for Dollars  |  | Advocate.com

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Digging for Dollars
In 2006 less than 9% of total funding for LGBT issues went to groups that work with blacks, Latinos, and other people of color. Conn Corrigan finds out why -- and what’s being done to resolve the imbalance
From The Advocate  May 20, 2008
Digging for Dollars

The Christopher Street pier is a favorite hangout for many gay youths of color in New York City -- a place they can “truly be themselves,” as the narrator of the documentary Fenced Out puts it. The film, produced in 2001 by a small LGBT nonprofit called FIERCE, is a major part of the group’s campaign to save the pier from Manhattan’s relentless redevelopment. Another FIERCE initiative? Training LGBT kids of color to be strong advocates for their rights through workshops on political education and activism.

But FIERCE’s work requires money, and securing funding is “challenging,” says its executive director, Rickke Mananzala. “Some philanthropic foundations choose not to support us because we don’t neatly fit into an LGBT issue or people-of-color issue,” he says. Many of the larger grant makers are “invite-only,” and FIERCE is “very much outside of their scope.”

According to a new report, that’s often the case for groups that help gay people of color. In its “report card” on race released this month, the philanthropic research organization Funders for Lesbian and Gay Issues reveals that only 8.8% of all funding for LGBT causes in 2006 went to groups targeting people of color like FIERCE -- even though blacks, Latinos, biracial people, and other minorities make up at least one quarter of the U.S. population, according to the 2006 Census. Out of 19 prominent foundations reviewed -- whether LGBT-specific ones like the David Geffen Foundation or ones with broader missions such as the David Bohnett Foundation, which finances social activism in general -- only nine awarded grants for race-related issues in 2006. Of the 10 who didn’t award a single grant to people-of-color groups that year, four hadn’t awarded any grants at all to these groups in the preceding five years.

Svati Shah, a specialist in race, sexuality, and gender at New York University, says the report should be a “wake-up call” for foundations. “Many of them need to realize that the groups they are funding may be predominantly white,” says Shah, who has been an adviser to Funders.

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