Why Does Philanthropy Keep Overlooking Disability Funding?
Foundation pledges to support disability-focused work haven’t led to significantly more investments. During National Disability Employment Awareness Month, let’s right that wrong.
By Richie Siegel
Timothy A. Clary, AFP via Getty Images
Manager Shray Campbell, left, and employees Josh and Noah, serve food at Café Joyeux in Manhattan. The French restaurant chain, staffed by people with autism and Down’s Syndrome, is setting up shop in a U.S. job market that is virtually closed to people with mental and cognitive disabilities.
Imagine you live in a community that has just one food bank serving people within a 50-mile radius. Despite its mission to address food insecurity, the food bank only distributes to soup kitchens and homeless shelters established when it first broke ground 10 years ago, even though the area’s population and needs have grown significantly. While the initial clients remain well served, none of the shelters, soup kitchens, and other social services launched in the last decade are eligible for its resources.
An equivalent experience is happening to disability-focused nonprofits when it comes to philanthropic funding. Disability was not historically a priority for philanthropy, so it was rarely part of foundations’ original strategic plans. And since it wasn’t a priority at the beginning, many funders now consider it too challenging to incorporate without compromising their existing grantees.
This catch-22 shows up in the data. Just one penny of every 10 grant-making dollars in the United States goes to disability rights and social justice, according to a 2023 report by the Disability & Philanthropy Forum. That’s a wildly inadequate level of investment for a group that makes up more than a quarter of the U.S. population.
Making matters worse, most of those funds support medical- and charity-focused organizations that view a person’s disability as a problem to be solved and often eradicated. The Disability & Philanthropy Forum study found that 94 percent of foundation giving for disability goes to medical treatment and support services. By contrast, just 4 percent seeks to advance disability rights by supporting social justice nonprofits that see the inaccessibility of society as a large part of what actually disables people.
A Time for Action
October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month — a time to take stock of the state of disability inclusion and grant making within philanthropy. As president of Inevitable Foundation, which invests in disabled writers and filmmakers and uses storytelling to destigmatize disability and mental health, I’ve zeroed in on three primary areas where funders should direct their attention.
