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Throughout its history, social justice philanthropy has generally remained organized around siloed identities, such as gender, race, and sexual orientation. The sector has largely ignored the ways oppression plays out across intersecting or fluid identities. In the 2022 report, Funding for Intersectional Organizing: A Call to Action for Human Rights Philanthropy, the Human Rights Funders Network provides a benchmark: less than one-fifth of grants explicitly benefit more than one population. The report is “the first comprehensive and global analysis of when and if grants for human rights reach beyond a single issue or community,” according to Alliance. The report’s very existence indicates how far behind the donor community is when it comes to acknowledging identity.
Three decades ago, in 1989, recognizing that discrimination can be complex and cumulative for groups with multiple identities, academic and activist Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” to explain the effect of intersecting forms of oppression like racism and sexism. White-led, traditional philanthropy is only now beginning to understand that those most affected by exclusion often have more than one marginalized identity, and this increasing awareness is thanks to activists for racial, gender, and disability justice. But recognition and action are two different things.
What Can Donors Do Right Now to Embrace the Edges?
Philanthropic efforts to address injustice must account for the multiple and fluid marginalized identities so many of us hold. We can have the most impact here because the need is the greatest, and the creativity in surviving and thriving is the highest. If there is money for women, it should prioritize women living at the margins, whether due to gender, race, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, Indigeneity, poverty, or all the above. In addressing human rights, such as violations of bodily integrity, we can be most effective when we connect all those most affected: persons with disabilities, trans and intersex people, women, and more.
As practitioners of participatory philanthropy say, the work is the process. We are all on a learning curve because times, people, and identities change. And we cannot wait; we must learn while doing.
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