Reliable data about what is happening across the charitable sector has been hard to come by historically, due to a variety of factors. Those include a shortage of philanthropic funding to gather and analyze such information and minimal demand for such data on the part of for-profit entities.

Filling the void has been Candid, a nonprofit that “provides the most comprehensive data and insights about the social sector,” according to its website. Candid was formed in 2019 by the merger of Foundation Center and GuideStar, two well-known entities that gathered information from and about nonprofits.

To track of all the funding announcements and pledges that began emerging in the summer of 2020, Candid launched a special section on Funding for Racial Equity to provide “continuously updated data” as well as news and analysis.

By Candid’s estimate, commitments for racial equity soared to $16.5 billion in 2020, up from $5.8 billion in 2019 and $6.1 billion in 2018. Those commitments slipped to $7.9 billion in 2021 but remained above pre-2020 levels, according to Candid.

Ben Francisco Maulbeck, a senior fellow at the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity, said the Candid data was widely quoted and analyzed in the sector, including in PRE reports.

Indeed, a 2022 analysis of the initial Candid data by Maulbeck and his PRE colleagues entitled “Mismatched” concluded that the amount of racial equity grants that actually went out the door in 2020 was only $3.4 billion, far below the numbers publicly pledged, as many donors were slow to follow through on their commitments. The analysis was based on the partial grants data available at the time and is likely an underestimate, Maulbeck said. But PRE is currently at work on an update now that the grants dataset is nearly complete for 2020 to 2022.

In the meantime, other efforts are underway to try to understand funders’ mindsets and the quantity of their racial equity giving.

Shortly after the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision last year, for instance, the Center for Effective Philanthropy surveyed foundation leaders and found that few planned to make changes to their grantmaking and some were leaning into racial equity more deeply. CEP is releasing new data soon from nonprofits which examines whether these commitments from funders still remain.

But Elisha Smith Arrillaga, vice president of research at CEP, cautioned that surveys are not substitutes for hard numbers.

“Intent to give and actual giving are not the same thing,” Arrillaga said. “It’s important to truly understand how changes in actual grant dollars to nonprofits doing work in this area are shifting.”

Maulbeck and his colleagues at the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity conducted their own informal research through workshops and conversations with more than 100 organizers and foundation staff in late 2023 and early 2024.

In a February op-ed in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, they concluded that there had been “a regression in recent months from core racial-justice values at the very moment deeper investments are needed.”

Maulbeck said there is usually a two-year lag in official reporting from the federal 990 tax filings, so in the absence of the data that Candid had been regularly updating, it could be a while before the sector knows exactly how funding for racial equity has evolved in 2023 and 2024.

“In the past four years and even before that, some funders have looked seriously at how to address structural racism both in their grantmaking and in internal practice. Others are currently retreating from equity and justice language for fear of hypothetical future threats,” said Maulbeck. “We need more funders to do the thoughtful, bold work of making equity and justice core values in their institutions and their grantmaking, regardless of the latest headlines.”

In the meantime, nonprofits working to address the racism and systemic inequities that came into focus following the death of George Floyd may continue to struggle to direct funders’ resources where they are needed most.

“If we don’t understand or measure how much funding is going to racial equity,” said CEP’s Arrillaga, “it is truly difficult to understand if we are allocating the resources necessary to make real and sustained change.