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By Laura Wilson

This spring, CHANGE Philanthropy released the 2022 Diversity Among Philanthropic Professionals (DAPP) report, the third iteration of a wide-reaching survey originating in 2018. The DAPP report provides a much-needed snapshot into the diversity of grantmaking organizations in the United States. In February, I attended a webinar to get the author’s perspectives on the findings. Read the full report here.

An overview of the survey results is included beneath the graphic. My takeaways? The philanthropy sector has made some positive strides in diversity over the past four years to be certain. Women are slowly inching their way to men-dominated supervisory and board roles. Disability and Indigenous representation are also on the rise.

However, there are still holes, primarily centering around a workplace’s perceived safety to marginalized communities (specifically those with disabilities, uncertain immigration status, and LGBTQ+ identifiers). If the coordinators of this survey are able to reach more foundations that fill out the statistical weaknesses, this report will become even more valuable as a diversity snapshot tool.

This year’s survey reached 77 organizations (with 48 returning from the previous 2020 DAPP) with a 43% response rate—a decrease from the 2020 survey which reached 124 organizations with a 54% response rate. Nevertheless, this year’s DAPP reveals important information on the state of diverse philanthropy, particularly concerning people with disabilities and non-heterosexual sexual orientations.

The first major shift noted by the report’s authors was a significant increase in people identifying with a disability. Those responses “nearly doubled over 2020 findings, from 12.6% (n=302) in 2020 to 34.2% (n=509) in 2022” with the majority of that increase attributable to an increase in mental health disabilities.

However, with that increase, disclosure of disabilities in the workplace still remained quite low: more than two thirds. All other identities surveyed saw some manner of increase in disclosure over the cumulative six years of the DAPP survey.

The authors noted a rise in the use of “decline to state” and “multiple” identities” in both the disabilities section as well as the sexual orientation section indicating increasing complexity and cross-sections among identities.

Other shifts include a drastic increase in the percentage of Indigenous individuals serving as board members (1.3% in 2020 to 6.6% in 2022). There was also an increase in women in supervisory staff roles—a 10% increase from 2020.

Notable categories that remained steady include the number of LGBTQ+ identifying people who remained “in the closet” at work and the selection of “decline to state” category when referring to immigration status (remaining near 12%).

In terms of type of foundations, across most sectors, public funders lead the way with the most diversity in all roles with the best POC, genderqueer, and disabled representation. Corporate funders reach the top with the best representation of people born outside the US. Left behind in second and third are community and private organizations.

During the webinar, the authors acknowledged there are clear data weaknesses when it comes to organizations in the south and corporate organizations (out of 77 total foundations, five were based in the south and three were corporate) that may skew the gains or losses of both categories. In their survey distribution for the 2024 DAPP, they hope to reach more organizations that fit these descriptors to get a more accurate picture of geographic and organization type trends.

Graphics from the report