Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Grant Making

This guide was originally developed to support grant makers at the Open Society Foundations seeking to actively incorporate the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in their grant-making practices. The guide draws from experiences of Open Society grant makers and peer funders as well as the scholarship, research, and activism of social justice leaders. Further, the guide asks grant makers to consider how to adjust their grant-making practice so they can better support activists fighting for change and open societies around the world. Finally, the guide includes questions to facilitate conversations within teams, as well as an index of additional learning resources from across the philanthropy sector. While this resource primarily deals with situations related to organizational grant-making, the authors also spoke with a number of individual grant makers to inform this work and many of the principles can be applied to individual grant-making practices.

At Open Society Foundations, we know that everyone is learning, including us, when it comes to understanding and addressing historical legacies of oppression and discrimination. We have made a long-term commitment to building the capacity within our own foundation on these issues, and to learning with and from colleagues and experts leading this work.