One in four Americans and an estimated 1 billion people globally experience some form of disability, but foundation funding for disability causes receives only about 2% of philanthropic funding. That’s the starting point for a rigorous new study commissioned by the Disability & Philanthropy Forum. But the report goes beyond big-picture dollar figures to point out key imbalances within philanthropy, most notably the minuscule amount of support and action to advance social justice for people with disabilities across the spectrum of funding.
As a result, the report is a must-read for disability rights advocates and backers, but also for any funder aiming to drive social justice and address complex and overlapping issues of racial, gender and other inequities.
“Foundation Giving for Disability: Priorities and Trends” is the first study of its kind to map philanthropic giving for disability causes. It worked from Candid’s “Foundation 1,000” data sets for 2019, the latest year for which complete grant data were available; the author also compared 2019 data with 2016 to illuminate patterns and changes in grantmaking among these foundations. While the data covers only a fraction of the total number of philanthropic givers, it accounts for an estimated 45% of overall foundation giving.
The idea that philanthropy is underfunding disability causes is not news. For many years, disability funding has been a small sliver of the philanthropic pie, with few major national funders having dedicated disability rights programs, while funders concerned with social justice and equity often overlook people with disabilities and the intersectional nature of entrenched inequities.
What is new here is that a researcher has taken the time to crunch thousands of data points to arrive at solid estimates of philanthropic giving for these causes. As a result, the report includes findings even more glaring than the overall dearth of support — namely, that issues of disability rights and social justice received just 0.1% of philanthropic giving. This includes funding for disability justice, ensuring legal rights for people with disabilities, and challenging ableism and other intersecting forms of oppression.
“Until now, we haven’t had a baseline to look at funding around disability rights and justice, but now, with this report, we have the information and data we need to more accurately measure things in the field,” said Emily Harris, executive director of the Disability & Philanthropy Forum, which commissioned the report. “We’ve heard from philanthropy that they’d like to be more disability-inclusive, but we’ve also heard from the community that the door is still not really open.”
The rigorous study “offers a first-ever, detailed examination of how U.S. foundations focus their support for disability communities, spanning priorities ranging from health to education to arts and culture to sports and recreation.” In the report, disability is defined broadly, from mental, behavioral, and chronic health conditions to physical, intellectual and developmental disabilities.
The Disability & Philanthropy Forum was created by the Presidents’ Council on Disability Inclusion in Philanthropy, launched in 2019, and which now comprises 17 foundations committed to disability rights and needs, including the Ford Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The Ford Foundation, in particular, has been a leader on this topic in recent years, starting a program and hiring a program officer dedicated to disability rights. The forum’s mission is to expand and guide philanthropic commitment to disability rights and justice, largely by calling upon philanthropy to include and center the leadership of the disability community, which has long been excluded from funding decision-making. The Forum is fiscally sponsored by Proteus Fund.
Evolving from the medical to the social model of disability funding
The Disability & Philanthropy Forum hired an independent consultant to produce the extensive, 80-plus page report. An executive summary is also available.
Key findings of the study:
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Only 2% of funding supports disability, and most is for services and supports.
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Just one-tenth of 1% of funding supports disability rights and social justice.
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Just 10 funders give 84% of disability rights and social justice grant dollars.
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Nearly all — 90% — of disability funding is focused on the United States.
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Human services and health are the top priorities.
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Few grants focus on intersecting systems of oppression or overlapping identities.
The study also makes a few basic recommendations for grantmakers across the funding spectrum:
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Engage the perspectives and leadership of disabled people.
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Be intentional about addressing disability.
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Recognize connections to disability in all funding.
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Fund disability inclusion, rights, and justice.
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Sign the Disability Inclusion Pledge, a roadmap for organizations seeking to advance disability inclusion.
One of the guiding concepts that disability community advocates would like philanthropy to internalize as a basis for grantmaking strategies going forward, Harris said, is to shift from the traditional medical and charitable models to a social model of funding. In other words, rather than viewing and addressing disabilities as medical problems that need to be fixed or assisted, grantmakers must also focus on giving people with disabilities full access and agency within all aspects of strategy and funding.
To accomplish this, says Harris, people with disabilities must be part of the philanthropic and grantmaking process. But their participation and voices can’t be limited to a narrow idea of disability issues, she said, but must be included as funders seek solutions for all the issues that impact society. Funding must, in particular, take into account the intersecting identities of race, poverty, gender and sexuality and the systemic barriers that hold people back, in order to work towards an erasure of that discrimination.
Such work is an ongoing process that owes much to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, which helped advance the societal process of disability inclusion as a basic recognition of civil rights.
“The ADA generation of people with disabilities grew up knowing they have the right to be full members of society,” said Harris. “Funders must collectively seek out disability community groups all over the world working for rights and justice and invite those voices to the table.”
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