First Surveys of Foundation Funding

Archival materials on a survey I did of the LGBT foundation giving. PDF.

Seeking grant information.  When I first started work as a foundation program officer, I wanted to know how much money foundations were giving to LGBT groups. No one was collecting this information. Funders for Lesbian and Gay Issues (FLGI) was a small group and, at that time, they felt that collecting data on foundation funding was not part of their mission.  The sensitivities about collecting and publishing such data were complex.  In early 2002, I started asking other foundations for this data and collected it myself, using an MS database to analyze funding patterns.  

First batch of data.  The first round of data collection accounted for 12M in funding over 3 years (1999 – 2001) among 12 foundations. 

Second batch of data.  As the project moved forward, more foundations became interested in the project.  I thought FLGI was the perfect group for this project and eventually they agreed.   In 2002 I worked with FLGI to gather more data and test a coding system that they could use in the future.  In October 2002, we sent out a request to any US-based foundation who gave more than 100K in at least two states. We tracked 24M in giving from about 14 foundations.  This data, and the coding system we developed, formed the basis for the first FLGI report on funding.

Documents archived in the PDF. The attached documents are some of what I have found related to the first studies.   Attached are:

• A description of the entire study.

• Several reports on the first batch of data.  These are in black and green ink.

• Letters sent out in October 2002 for the second batch of data.

• Reports that included the second batch of data.   These are in blue and red ink.