While philanthropy plays a vital role in driving change, nonprofits that serve communities of color frequently encounter significant and ongoing funding disparities in their work. The Communities of Color Index (CCI) offers the first systematically generated directory of charitable organizations in the United States specifically focused on serving communities of color.
The report illustrates key characteristics of organizations serving communities of color, including the amount of total philanthropic support they receive from individuals, foundations and corporations. The CCI focuses on four distinct populations—American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian-American & Pacific Islander (AAPI), Black/African-American, and Hispanic/Latino communities. Capturing a decade of data, this inaugural report shows that despite large growth in 2020 and 2021, these organizations receive 2.9% of overall charitable giving.
Organizations serving communities of color received less than 3% of total charitable giving in 2022
Communities of color represent a substantial portion of the U.S. population and contribute significantly to the nation’s economic, cultural and social fabric, yet organizations serving communities of color received $16.0 billion in charitable contributions—or 2.9%—of total philanthropic giving in 2022.
The following graph represents philanthropic support for organizations serving communities of color compared with traditional nonprofit subsectors.
While giving to these organizations saw large growth in 2020 and 2021, it leveled off in 2022. Notably, organizations serving American Indian/Alaska Native, AAPI, Black/African-American, and Hispanic/Latino communities each received less than 1% of overall donations.
The following graph shows a timeline spanning from 2012 - 2022, illustrating the surge in giving during the pandemic and its subsequent leveling off in 2022.
Communities of Color Index FAQs
The Communities of Color Index was developed by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. The school is dedicated to improving philanthropy to improve the world by training and empowering students and professionals to be innovators and leaders who create lasting and positive change.
The Communities of Color Index was developed with funding from Google.org Charitable Giving Fund and the Raikes Foundation, as part of the Equitable Giving Lab. The findings and conclusions contained within are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect official positions or policies of any funders.
The Communities of Color Index includes 501(c)(3) public charities primarily dedicated to serving communities of color that were active from 2012 to 2022—the most recent year for which more than 99% of finalized IRS data on charitable organizations were available as of June 2024. The analyses in this report illustrate key characteristics of these organizations, including the amount of total philanthropic support they receive from individuals, foundations, and corporations. To offer context, the findings compare CCI organizations with non-CCI organizations and with traditional nonprofit subsectors.
Several data sources form the basis of the CCI, the most important of which are e-file Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data available on irs.gov that provide details for 423,609 (c)(3) public charities filing IRS Forms 990 and 990-EZ electronically for circa fiscal year 2022. These data were supplemented with 6,718 digitized Form 990 and 990-EZ returns from IRS Return Transaction Files (RTF). For organizations not filing an IRS Form 990 or Form 990-EZ, a combination of 620,598 charitable organizations filing Form 990-N and 477,664 “non-filing” registered charitable organizations were used to gather further information on typically smaller and religious organizations, for a total population of 1,528,589 registered 501(c)(3) domestic charitable organizations. Non-filing organizations are defined as registered tax-exempt organizations that did not file any type of Form 990 between the fiscal years ending in 2020 and 2022, most of which are religion-related charitable organizations exempt from annual 990 filing requirements.
The Communities of Color Index includes data from nonprofits active from 2012 to 2022. Analyses in the 2025 Communities of Color Index report are based on this decade-long period and also zoom in on the most recently obtained data for 2020 and 2021.
2022 was the most recent year for which more than 99% of finalized IRS data on charitable organizations was available as of December 2024. Previous or subsequent fiscal year information was used when 2022 data was unavailable.
This report addresses four distinct racial/ethnic/tribal populations. These groups, as defined by the National Institutes of Health, align closely with classifications used in government data, which were incorporated at various stages of the CCI analysis.
American Indian/Native American or Alaskan Native
Asian and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander (AAPI)
Black/African American
Hispanic/Latino
Informed by a review of the relevant literature and published organization listings, the researchers developed initial sets of key words, stop words, and other criteria to establish logical “rules” to identify potential organizations for the CCI. It’s important to note that we included organizations serving these populations that do not mention serving these specific populations in their name or mission statements.
Following this process, the final set of rules was applied to the full population of 1,528,589 registered charitable organizations found in IRS Business Master Files (BMF) between 1989 and 2024, resulting in 60,234 CCI organizations, 42,615 of which were registered during circa 2019 per BMF. In total, researchers hand-checked around 10,000 potential CCI organizations identified based on available information.
This study has a limited scope beyond 501(c)(3) nonprofits, and therefore does not provide a full picture of the numerous ways individuals and organizations support communities of color, including direct support to businesses and individuals, political advocacy, informal mutual aid networks, volunteering, and religious giving—are not reflected in the data.
Data and classification challenges mean that there are certain caveats to this research. Organizations were manually reviewed for inclusion in the Index, but their categorical classification was not systematically verified—which may introduce minor consistencies in how some organizations are categorized.
The racial, ethnic, and tribal categories used in this study are limited. For this inaugural Index, the study focused on four broad racial or ethnic subgroups: American Indian & Alaska Native; Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI); Black/African American; and Hispanic/Latino. These categories are not exhaustive, and these specific groups are not monoliths.
This study is limited as it does not capture many smaller grassroots organizations that serve communities of color, for example, if they have not explicitly identified as such in government filings or nonprofit classifications.
The variety of communities of color such as gender, LGBTQ+ identity, disability, or veteran status, also shape giving patterns. However, current nonprofit datasets do not yet allow for detailed breakdowns of funding to organizations serving specific intersectional groups.
The following citation should accompany any use of the Communities of Color Index data: Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and DataLake Nonprofit Research. (2025). Communities of Color [Data file].
