Since 2014, Candid has been collecting demographic data about the people who work at U.S. nonprofits through Candid’s nonprofit profiles. To date, over 54,000 organizations have shared some data about how their staff and/or board identify by race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and/or disability status.i

We anticipate a steady increase in organizations sharing demographic information as a result of our recently launched Demographics via Candid campaign. This initiative aims to standardize and centralize nonprofit demographic data collection. It also seeks to provide a common baseline of the diversity of the field, as well as ensure that demographic data is available to those who can make use of it to evaluate their programs and assess progress around equity.

To help uncover what this demographic data can tell us about diversity and representation in the U.S. nonprofit sector, we want to better identify who, exactly, is sharing demographic data with Candid and what information they are sharing.

Here we share four key insights from our recent analysis of Candid’s nonprofit demographic data and what they mean for the nonprofit sector today.ii

  1. Demographic data sharing varies by nonprofit subject category.  
  2. Nonprofits are most likely to share data at the leader level and on gender and race/ethnicity.
  3. Nonprofits that depend more on contributions or have more financial resources and/or staff are more likely to share demographic data. 
  4. Nonprofits serving racial-ethnic populations are more likely to share comprehensive demographic data. 

Read the full article about nonprofit demographic data by Zemin Cai and Jinglun Yu at Candid.