President John Palfrey shares our approach to demographic reporting on ourselves, grantees, investees, and others as part of our steadfast commitment to racial justice.
Since the summer of 2023, we have received more questions on one topic than nearly any other: how will MacArthur approach racial justice as the legal landscape shifts?
Our commitment to racial justice—and justice more broadly—has not changed, and it is at the center of our work. It is built into our mission, our values, and our Just Imperative. It centers racial and ethnic equity. We also apply an intersectional lens, taking into consideration how overlapping identities make some individuals more vulnerable to multiple systems of oppression.
As we make grants that are consistent with our values and mission, we will continue to collect demographic information on a variety of organizations we support and do business with. We do this so we can be accountable to our goals and measure our progress while also complying with legal requirements in today’s evolving environment. We do this with the understanding that we can’t change what we don’t measure.
Our commitment to racial justice—and justice more broadly—has not changed.
We will use demographic data to better understand the organizations we work with and are considering working with. Our goal is to—over time—fund a more diverse set of organizations.
Since we shared the results of our first demographic survey of U.S.-based grantees and impact investees in 2020, we have continued to examine our grantmaking policies and processes for biases and barriers to access. This year we summarized the results of our most recent demographic survey, administered by the Urban Institute, and continue to use demographics to better understand our investment managers, vendors, and contractors, as well as our own Staff and Board.
Given this range of activities, we wanted to formalize and share our rationale for collecting and using this data.
What Demographic Information We Collect
We currently collect data on a voluntary basis on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, and disability status from U.S.-based grantees and impact investees, as well as investment managers, vendors, and contractors, and MacArthur’s Staff and Board.
Why We Collect Demographic Information
In addition to helping us be accountable to our goals of addressing inequalities and measuring progress to our strategic goals, there are several important reasons why we gather and examine this information.
First, MacArthur’s values include a commitment to Creativity; Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Empathy; Integrity; and Learning. In seeking to honor our values, we can look to demographics as a tool.
Second, we recognize that many of the traditional practices in philanthropy unintentionally have resulted in inequities in the distribution of resources from foundations like MacArthur. We, like many other foundations, have aspirational goals to help address such historical disparities, whether related to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, or disability status.
And finally, demographic data, along with other information we consider valuable to our business decisions, provides insight on an organization’s leadership, management, values, strategy, organizational health, approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion, hiring and retention, and effectiveness.
Our goal is to minimize the burden required to provide data. Moving forward, MacArthur will encourage grantees to update their demographic data on their Candid’s GuideStar profiles, rather than fill out a survey. This will enable all funders to access the information and, hopefully, save organizations from sending the same information to multiple donors.
We look forward to the lessons we will learn from continuing to collect demographic information, as it goes hand in hand with our work to dismantle the systems, structures, and practices that uphold racism and other forms of injustice—a commitment that will endure until this work is finished.
