Newswise — The Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at IUPUI is creating a new digital resource, The Equitable Giving Lab, that will bring an equity lens to philanthropy by measuring funding for under-resourced groups. The Equitable Giving Lab will address the current lack of centralized data on charitable giving to diverse communities and is made possible through anchor funding from Google.org.
The Lab will provide information about charitable giving to nonprofits focused on the LGBTQ+, BIPOC, military veteran, and women’s and girls’ communities. It will be the first resource to measure charitable contributions from individuals, foundations, and corporations to these organizations, including trends over time.
The Equitable Giving Lab will be a one-stop source for high-quality, publicly available data about charitable giving to organizations focused on each of these under-resourced communities. It will help nonprofits, journalists, researchers and the public understand giving patterns to these organizations. The Lab will also better equip donors and funders who want to prioritize equity and inclusion with data to inform effective strategies and to create greater impact.
“The Equitable Giving Lab will serve as the gold standard for understanding the current funding landscape and where gaps exist. The COVID-19 pandemic, along with the movement for racial justice, brought renewed attention to vast disparities among diverse populations. Measuring the scale of under-investment in specific communities is the next step needed to better align resources with society’s most urgent needs,” said Una Osili, Ph.D., Associate Dean for Research and International Programs and Dean’s Fellow for the Mays Family Institute on Diverse Philanthropy, both at the school.
The Women & Girls Index (WGI)—the first comprehensive index that measures charitable giving to women’s and girls’ organizations in the United States—was created in 2019 by the Women’s Philanthropy Institute, part of the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, and is updated annually. The WGI will serve as the model for creating and updating similar indices for the LGBTQ+ community, racial and ethnic groups, and military veterans over the next few years, and will be incorporated into the Equitable Giving Lab. In addition to informing practice, data from the indices will help scholars of nonprofits and philanthropy apply an equity lens to their research.
“While there is growing awareness of the equity gaps in philanthropy, there is a significant lack of research on this topic,” said Amir Pasic, Ph.D., the Eugene R. Tempel Dean of the school. “Most philanthropy data is in aggregate form; the Equitable Giving Lab will bring a more nuanced lens to this information. We thank Google.org for supporting this advancement in understanding and addressing these equity gaps.”
“The expertise needed to analyze and share high-quality, longitudinal data can be costly and time-consuming, and only a handful of organizations have the requisite interest and skill,” said Andrew Dunckelman, Head of Impact and Insights at Google.org. “We are impressed by the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy’s research accomplishments, especially their development of the Women & Girls Index, and we are pleased to support this important innovation in measuring charitable giving to these communities.”
Community leaders and sector experts will be recruited to provide insights on research and development of the Lab and the individual indices.
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