(Archana Sridhar is associate director of the Hennick Centre for Business and Law at York University in Toronto and a regular contributor to the South Asian Philanthropy Project blog. This post was written for the "Overheard” column in the September issue of Thought > Action > Impact , an e-journal published by the Council on Foundations, and also appears, in slightly different form, on the SAPP blog.)
We often think of South Asians in the United States as newly wealthy, super-educated, and professional. While this is certainly the case for many South Asian Americans (and thus the focus of many of the SAPP's own efforts to encourage philanthropy), there are also pockets of need within the South Asian American community beyond what we normally think about the population. Our community faces issues of poverty, class, immigration status, language access, and gender inequality.
For a grantmaker then, diversity in grantmaking means -- most obviously -- increasing the flow of grants to beneficiaries in need within the South Asian American community. For this to happen, though, program officers themselves need to be more diverse and connected to the community -- intimately understanding its dynamics in relation to the overall health of the larger population. For example, the South Asian community faces some special needs for funding and services, such as immigration counseling, legal aid, certain types of health care and education (such as heart disease and diabetes), domestic violence care, and small business start up and education. On the flip side, diverse grantmaking would leverage special talents in diverse communities -- in our case, perhaps our strengths in the health care and computer technology fields, our strong connections abroad, and our commitment to education more generally.
But these are the obvious answers, right? Reframing the question a bit helps to see a bigger issue that I've mentioned before when blogging about the Greenlining Institute controversy: Rather than thinking about diversity in grantmaking only on the grantmaker side, what about thinking about diversity on the grantseeker side, too? There are many agencies that have a long history of successful foundation fundraising that need to examine their own practices when it comes to diversity -- here I'm thinking of established community organizations that are also large grant recipients, such as museums, orchestras, private schools. This may mean diversifying their boards and staffs, but also (more importantly in my opinion) diversifying their outreach to beneficiaries.
Grantmakers can play an important role in promoting diversity by advocating for it as a stakeholder with grantees. Grantmakers can ask applicants questions like:
- Who benefits from your programs and services?
- What is the breakdown of your beneficiaries by race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, etc.?
- What steps are you taking to reach out to diverse communities in your programming and access to your services (such as language, board representation, location of activities, etc.)?
A final point. Our work at SAPP so far has shown that while there are tons of organizations serving the needs of South Asians abroad, there are not many focused on the South Asian population here in North America. And of those, most are focused on discrete, small-scale approaches -- so small-scale that grantmakers may not find them attractive. There aren't that many larger-scale organizations providing multi-layered services to South Asians nationally or even regionally -- SAALT being the main exception. Diversity in grantmaking may also mean that grantmakers targeting diverse communities need to prepare a different set of criteria for evaluation, consider awarding more seed funding grants, and provide advice to small nonprofits about scaling up and replicating their services.
-- Archana Sridhar
