DEI/DEIB in grantmaking

Audrey Kidwell

Hello everyone! I wanted to ask what your agency is doing around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion when it comes to your Blackbaud Grantmaking. Any tips, websites, resources, etc would be helpful. My agency is working to make our grant process equitable and inclusive for our grantee partners but is looking to find out what is currently happening in the field.

Audrey Kidwell

Here is a website that is good to start thinking about your grantmaking as a whole:

Breanne Nugent

Hi Audrey,

It's not Grantmaking-specific, but we added DEI questions to our application since it has become a goal for us to increase the number of BIPOC grants we award. The added questions are included in our application review scoring, so if the project provides a benefit to a BIPOC community, it can receive up to 10 points that a non-BIPOC project would not be able to receive. We also reduced the match required of BIPOC applicants in an effort to reduce a barrier that they may have had previously.

Interested to hear what others are doing.

Thanks for the post!

Breanne

Rifka Khalilieh

Hi Audrey,

We have found that it is not only important to identify and support organizations that serve BIPOC communities, but specifically to support those that are BIPOC-led. We include DEI questions on both their communities served as well as their internal leadership and whether their programming staff reflect the communities they are serving. Additionally, part of our grantmaking process and evaluation includes targeted outreach for those communities that have been identified as having low engagement/submission rates with our RFPs.

Ashleigh Allessio

Could you share the questions that you are asking on your grant applications related to DEI?

Breanne Nugent

Sure!

For data-gathering purposes we ask:

• Does your organization serve the BIPOC community?
• Does your organization’s board include people who identify as BIPOC?
• Does your staff include people who identify as BIPOC?
• Does your mission statement address diversity, equity and inclusion?

And our scoring questions are:

• Does your project primarily support BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color)?
• BIPOC Communities supported:(Drop down selection)
• Prefer to self describe:
• How will community(ies) benefit from this project:
• How have these communities participated in the development of your grant application?
• If awarded, how will they be involved during the project?

Note: If the first answer to the scoring questions is NO, applicants are supposed to skip to the next section. If they select NO and still fill out this section, they do not get any points for filling it out even if they can make connections to BIPOC communities.

Hope this helps!

Breanne

Ashleigh Allessio

Thank you so much Breanne!

John Sharples

This is from the UK, but may help?

DEI Data Standard | Funders Collaborative Hub

Audrey Kidwell

Thank you John!