Please note: an applicant to the Peaceful Pathways program must be nominated by a diversity-focused funder.

What is a Diversity-Focused Funder?

Focus on a specific community
Diversity-focused funders are closely affiliated with the communities they support. Examples of diversity-focused funders would include Hispanic Philanthropies, Black United Funds and Women's Foundations.

Additional resources regarding some types of diversity-focused funds may be found on the website of the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers in the Racial, Ethnic and Tribal Philanthropy Knowledge Center and at the Diversity in Philanthropy Project. A sample list of diversity-focused funders can be found on the givingforums website.

Diversity-focused funders concentrate their grantmaking on projects in specific communities that are traditionally underserved by mainstream philanthropy and are sometimes referred to as diverse communities or communities of color.

Connection to the community

Such funders may represent donors who share a specific charitable interest in their own under-resourced community. Examples might include a rural funders’ collaborative that supports projects in their frontier community, or a private foundation whose mission is to fund programs for Asian Pacific islanders, or a designated fund within a community foundation that focuses on serving immigrants from East Africa. A donor-advised fund that only makes grants in the lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) community would be a diversity-focused fund.

Typically these grantmaking organizations function in partnership with their communities and are committed to supporting the work of community-based nonprofit organizations. They award grants based on community needs, gain buy-in on the part of community members, and often support projects that mainstream institutions do not fund. Usually the leadership includes members of the community to be served. 

Diversity-focused funders may be the first to identify critical health or health care problems in their communities. They may readily engage community members in creating and implementing effective solutions that build upon their linguistic and cultural assets, strengths and resources. These grantmakers can help to ensure that support goes where the community itself places its highest priorities.

Diversity-focused grantmakers as LFP local funding partners
Local Funding Partnerships (LFP) welcomes nominations and funding partnerships from grantmakers who are actively engaged with racial, ethnic, tribal, gender, LGBT and other traditionally under-resourced communities. Diversity-focused funders may:

• serve as the nominating funder for the LFP Annual Grantmaking program;
• serve as the nominating funder for Peaceful Pathways: Reducing Exposure to Violence; and/or
• contribute matching dollars and participate as one of the local funding partners for any LFP project.

Different types of grantmaking organizations

Many types of philanthropic organizations may concentrate on diversity-focused funding. They may be structured as donor-advised funds, field-of-interest funds, designated funds, ethnic funds, endowed funds, diversity funds or special interest funds. They may be independent funds or affiliated within traditional philanthropies such as community foundations. Similarly an employee affinity fund may exist as part of a corporate foundation. Types of funders are described at Grantmaking Organizations.

LFP Special Solicitation to Diversity-Focused Funders
Given the emergence of more community-based focus funds created by people who share common places, experiences, language and culture, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) welcomes the opportunity to partner with these funders. In 2009 the RWJF Local Funding Partnerships program launched a Special Solicitation to Diversity-Focused Funders. RWJF invites diversity-focused grantmaking organizations to recommend projects for these funding partnerships.

An applicant to the Peaceful Pathways program may only be nominated by a diversity-focused funder that concentrates grantmaking in the community to be served by that application. For example, the New York Women's Foundation nominated Girls for Gender Equity to fund a program to eliminate sexual harassment in the New York City public schools.