Candid is the largest source of data about the demographics of nonprofit leaders, board members, and staff. Between July 2019 and December 2023, over 66,000 nonprofits reported some data about the race/ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, and/or disability status of their leader, board members, and/or staff via Candid’s nonprofit profiles. Here I will share how this data has evolved over the past five years and what this may mean for the future of the data set.

Candid typically shares organizations’ “latest available” demographic data, i.e., their most recent submission. While this is useful to those who want to understand a nonprofit’s current demographic information, it doesn’t tell the story of how the data has changed over the years. For this, we need to dig into Candid’s data archives.i Here are four things we learned from the archival data:  

  1. More nonprofits are sharing demographic data each year
  2. Most organizations have updated their demographic data at least once
  3. Nonprofits are sharing more demographic information each year
  4. Nonprofits are sharing more data for each demographic category (though gaps between categories persist) 

Candid’s demographic data offers a valuable historical record of the leadership and staff of nonprofit organizations. A look at the past five years of data suggests the potential of this data set to enable richer, deeper trend analyses in the future. Each year, we find more organizations sharing more complete data about more demographic categories. As more nonprofits continue to share this information, the more transparency we will have about the makeup and diversity of the sector.

Read the full article about demographic data in nonprofits by Mantin Diomande at Candid.