Big Changes, Bold Plans

D5 represents more than a dozen organizations, with connections to thousands of foundations, coming together to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in organized philanthropy over the next five years.

Our ultimate goal: help foundations achieve greater impact in an increasingly diverse world. We envision a philanthropic sector in which foundations draw on the power of diverse staffs and boards to achieve lasting impact, forge genuine partnerships with diverse communities, and increase access to opportunities and resources for all people.

To realize this vision, we are working toward four big sector changes by 2015:

1. Leaders: New foundation CEO, staff, and trustee appointments more closely reflect U.S. demographic trends
2. Action: More foundations take meaningful action to address diversity, equity, and inclusion issues in their organizations
3. Funding: Annual funding for diverse communities increases substantially
4. Data: Philanthropy has the research capacity to be more transparent about progress on diversity, equity, and inclusion

We’ve developed a comprehensive plan to achieve these outcomes, coordinating strategic efforts across a range of organizations. These are our priorities:

		Create more inclusive CEO and trustee leadership by providing peer-to-peer dialogue, compelling stories, relationship building with diverse communities, and specific examples of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
		Raise the visibility and build the capacity of diverse donors and population-focused funds to contribute to, influence, and be partners in philanthropy.
		Develop policies and practices to support diverse foundations and ensure that high quality educational resources related to diversity, inclusion, and equity are more readily accessible to foundations across the sector.
		Build a coordinated field-wide diversity research agenda and data collection system to help the sector track progress on diversity.
		Sustain voluntary action on diversity, equity, and inclusion by growing the coalition into a network of philanthropy infrastructure organizations and grantmakers committed to and capable of growing diversity in philanthropy.

This work builds on the achievements and lessons from the Diversity in Philanthropy Project, a time-limited campaign to expand diversity in the field. You can also read the DPP final report, “Moving Diversity Up the Agenda: Lessons and Next Steps From the Diversity in Philanthropy Project,” in The Foundation Review here.

Download a summary about these big changes and bold plans (PDF, 406k).