Part protest, part commemoration, and part celebration, Pride Month joyfully invites us all to see the rich and diverse lives of queer folks — and to recognize that as far as we’ve come (at least here in the U.S.), we still have a long way to go to achieve a world in which LGBTQ+ people are fully seen, safe, loved, and liberated.1 Philanthropy has a role in achieving that goal, but it, too, has a long way to go in better supporting LGBTQ+ communities.

Right now, most funders don’t consider themselves to be LGBTQ+ focused funders. That might be because, according to the most recent tracking report from Funders for LGBTQ Issues, LGBTQ+ communities and issues are specifically targeted for only a small fraction of philanthropic giving. The reality, however, is that nearly every funder is building relationships with queer grantees and often supporting organizations led by LGBTQ+ people, whether they know it or not. And, for any funder that focuses on historically marginalized populations or has intentionally centered equity as a value in their grantmaking, the experiences of queer populations should be part of the conversation. Each aspect of our identities affects our experience, and often the challenges facing marginalized groups can compound one another.

So, every funder should be concerned that LGBTQ+ identified grant recipients have significantly less positive experiences with and perceptions of their funders than their straight peers do — at least as measured through response to CEP’s Grantee Perception Report (GPR) surveys.

Understanding these less positive grantee experiences requires visibility. However, individual funders might have only a handful of grantees who identify as LGBTQ+, which means it can be tricky or impossible to ask important questions about their experiences. These obstacles to recognition are also magnified because this is a group that can often feel pressured to make themselves invisible for all kinds of reasons — including because they may face uncomfortable dynamics with grantmakers who hold funding power but may be silent about their perspectives on queer rights.

That’s why, in CEP’s assessment work, it’s our standard practice to ask about identity and disaggregate data by demographics regardless of whether a funder is focused on direct funding to LGBTQ+ issues (or gender, race, or disability focused funding). As a result, we can look across CEP’s grantee dataset of over 50,000 grantee partners at nearly 350 funders, to reveal important patterns in the experience of LGBTQ+ identifying survey respondents that might not be visible for individual funders.

Let’s start with some of the basic numbers. In CEP’s grantee survey dataset, 11 percent of survey respondents identify as LGBTQ+. While LGBTQ+ respondents are equally represented in executive leadership positions in our dataset, they are more likely to have intersectional identities that are more marginalized. Specifically, LGBTQ+ respondents in CEP’s dataset are significantly more likely to identify as a person of color (POC) and as having a disability. They are also more likely to identify as nonbinary, gender-nonconforming, with multiple gender identities, and as transgender.

When we looked at differences in experiences based on whether grantee survey respondents identify as LGBTQ+, we see a consistent pattern of small differences, where respondents who identify as LGBTQ+ provide significantly lower ratings on most measures. Specifically, they rate significantly lower for their funders’ understanding of their organizations, fields, and the contexts in which they work. They also rate lower on nearly all measures related to relationships, and they find their funders’ administrative processes to be less helpful. This pattern reflects similar findings for grantees who identify as nonbinary and gender-nonconforming.

Read the full article about the less positive experiences of LGBTQ+ grantees by Kevin Bolduc and Liz Kelley Sohn at The Center for Effective Philanthropy.