Does Your Community Foundation Support the Latinx Community?

Simple question, right? How can you tell? There are public statements and messages during Hispanic Heritage Month, those are nice and then there are facts.

For example, how many grants does the foundation make to Latinx-focused nonprofits in your community? Do they have senior staff that are Latinx people? How about their Board of Directors? One could even go further in communities where there is a large Latinx population and ask if they are intentionally creating specific funds, and campaigns to support those communities.

Sadly, most of the time the answers to those questions are disappointing. This is from my experience there is no study on this subject. You can look at community foundations all over the nation and see the Latinx community underrepresented in funding, staffing, intentional support, and much more. We know that in nonprofits in general under 3% of their Boards of Directors have Latinx people on them. We know that Latinx are 20% of the population nationally (and growing), many places we are 30-50% of the population. And we also know, pre-pandemic that foundations gave only 1.8% of their grants went to Latinx-focused nonprofits. That’s not a specific measure of community foundations but foundations in general. Taken together these data points give you a sense of the landscape.

I use a simple and generous measurement for what I define as a Latinx-focused nonprofit. They service a population of over 51% more Latinx. Or you can be more conservative, say they serve a population that is over 75% Latinx.? Plus, there are organizations, easy to spot, that are heavily focused on our communities. Community organizations centered on education, immigration, farmworkers rights, cultural organizations and the classic civic Latinx organization. There are thousands of them all over the US. You can be almost anywhere in the US and there will be a type of Centro Hispano, Latino Cultural Center, or something to that effect. They help people with a wide range of services. They don’t serve by race the community just happens to be overwhelmingly Latinx. You will also see all kinds of people involved with them, not just Latinx Spanish-speaking people.

So here is a simple approach:

1. Make a definition of what you consider a Latinx-focused nonprofit.
2. What is the percentage of Latinx residents in the population you serve?
3. Take a look at your community foundation's grants and ask the question, does this reflect our community?
4. You can do the same for the Board of Directors and Senior Staff

If your population is 42% Latinx and only 8% of the grants are going to support that community directly, then ask why.

It can get blurry here. People can say that the local symphony serves the entire population though the attendees are overwhelmingly mostly not Latinx. Foundations may say they support the Latinx community in other non-monetary ways. There is also the factor that Latinx nonprofits might need to do a better job of reaching out to funders. Conversely, foundations might need to do a better job in actually reaching out and learning about the Latinx community and who is doing what. You can find community foundations where the only Latinx staff are administrative. Who generally don’t do Program or Community Relations. It can be very hard to see bias internally because most staff and the Board are well-intentioned. Nevertheless, it's there, and it's damaging. Don’t support the vocal and well-funded part of your community, fund the whole community.

The main message here is to recognize Latinx in your community. Over my years in nonprofits, I have come to the opinion that the nonprofit world largely ignores 62 million people. Those stats I mentioned earlier are the tip of the iceberg. In racial justice reporting in the US Latinx are only mentioned 7% of the time. Many folks working hard to advance racial justice, opportunity, and equity in their communities look right past us. If you have a fund for racial justice and equity, or a funding focus count how many Latinx-focused organizations received support?

So, find the courage to raise your hand and ask the question. It’s a tough thing to do. There are great examples of community foundations across the country that have Boards and Senior staff that reflect the Latinx community. That intentionally recruits folks who reflect the entire community. There are even a few foundations that established funds to support their Latinx community. I am aware of 4 in the US. Nothing like putting grants behind your words to make your commitment clear.

I hope you go beyond thinking about this, I hope you will take action. Make any measurement you want and take a hard look at where you can improve. Thanks for reading this, and thanks for thinking about it.