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Shuyi Deng
Indiana University, Bloomington, USA
When people talk about racial equity in philanthropy, the conversation often centers on one divide: White communities versus Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities. Accordingly, most racial equity initiatives in philanthropy have adopted a broad, dichotomous view of inequity, assuming that if funding for BIPOC communities increases, racial inequities will be reduced. As important as this approach is, it can also hide another layer of inequity. BIPOC communities are not a single, uniform group. When diverse communities are bundled together under one label, important differences in access to funding can disappear from view.
My recent study in Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly examines this less visible side of nonprofit funding inequity: disparities within BIPOC communities themselves. While previous research has documented the funding gap between White and BIPOC communities, I ask a different question: what if inequity also exists among the very communities that racial equity initiatives are intended to support?
What did I do?
Drawing on stratification economics, I analyzed a national dataset of more than 100,000 human services general support grants distributed between 2018 and 2022. Together, these grants totaled nearly $4.7 billion. I focused on human services general support grants because they fund nonprofits’ day-to-day operations and provide the kind of flexible, unrestricted support that BIPOC-led and BIPOC-serving organizations often have difficulty securing.
I looked at two types of disparities and one relationship:
- Intra-BIPOC disparities among Asian, Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people.
- White-BIPOC disparities.
- How Intra-BIPOC disparities relate to White-BIPOC disparities.
This approach allowed me to move beyond the usual White/non-White comparison and explore whether inequality within BIPOC communities may help sustain broader racial inequities in the nonprofit sector.
What did I find?
The findings confirmed what many in the sector have long suspected, but they also revealed something important that is often overlooked.
First, White advantage in nonprofit funding persists. Even after controlling differences in organization size, location, and other factors, nonprofits serving White populations received about 26% more funding than those serving BIPOC communities overall.
Second, and perhaps more striking, not all BIPOC communities are funded equally. Within the BIPOC communities, Latinx received roughly 40% more nonprofit funding than Black or Asian communities.
Finally, and most crucially, the analysis revealed that when intra-BIPOC disparities grow, the White–BIPOC funding gap also widens. In cities where the gap between Latinx and Black was larger, White population tended to pull even further ahead in terms of nonprofit funding. In other words, internal inequities among BIPOC communities may actually sustain or exacerbate the broader racial hierarchy in nonprofit funding.
Why does this matter?
These findings challenge a common but flawed assumption in philanthropy that “BIPOC” is a single, unified funding category. In practice, grouping diverse racial and ethnic communities together can obscure major differences in access, opportunity, and institutional support.
Once we pay attention to the dynamics within and beyond BIPOC communities, racial inequities in nonprofit funding appear even deeper than many people assume. Equity is not simply a matter of shifting more resources into a broad BIPOC category. It also requires asking how those resources are distributed among different communities of color.
The findings also suggest that even well-intentioned racial equity efforts can fall short if they ignore these dynamics. When limited resources are distributed unevenly across communities of color, they can produce a sense of delinked fate and weaken collective efforts to advocate for structural change. As one practitioner put it, “When BIPOC folks expend energy engaging in horizontal oppression against one another, white supremacy wins.”
What should be done?
For funders, these findings point to the need for a deeper, more data-informed approach to racial equity. Equity audits should not stop at comparing White and BIPOC communities. Funders should also examine disparities among BIPOC communities within their own grant portfolios. Based on that analysis, funders should consider targeted investments for specific BIPOC sub-groups to help level the playing field within BIPOC communities.
Just as importantly, funders should examine how intra-BIPOC disparities may affect White-BIPOC disparities in the communities they serve. Making these hidden disparities visible is a necessary first step toward addressing the deeper racial inequities embedded in nonprofit funding structures.
For nonprofit practitioners, the findings also offer a practical lesson. Building alliances across racial and ethnic lines is more than an expression of solidarity; it is a strategic response to unequal resource structures. Joint proposals, shared advocacy, and coalition-building across BIPOC communities can help reduce the harm of competition for scarce funding and strengthen collective efforts for equity.
Looking at White-BIPOC disparities remains essential. But if we stop there, we miss part of the story. To build a more equitable nonprofit sector, we need to pay attention not only to the visible funding gaps, but also to the hidden ones.
Click here to read the free full-text article: Deng, S. (2025). Intra-Group and Inter-Group Racial Disparities in Nonprofit Funding: Insights from Stratification Economics. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 0(0).
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