Grant Making & Human Rights in 2020
December 10th marks International Human Rights Day. According to the United Nations website, “Human Rights Day is observed every year on December 10th — the day the United Nations General Assembly adopted, in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).” This milestone document proclaims the inalienable rights that every human being is entitled to, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
This year, Human Rights Day looks a little different. The COVID-19 pandemic and other recent events have inspired many foundations to focus on ensuring Human Rights are a central building block as we move into 2021. The only way we can recover and build back better is if can “create equal opportunities for all, address the failures exposed and exploited by COVID-19, and apply human rights standards to tackle entrenched, systematic, and intergenerational inequalities, exclusion and discrimination”, according to Philanthropy News Digest.
Many foundations are finding that Human Rights must be central in a post COVID-19 world. The COVID-19 crisis has exposed and exploited the deepening poverty levels, social inequalities, and systematic discrimination among other things. The only way we can close the gaps and build back a better country and world is to focus on these basic necessities.
In August, Foundation Source conducted a survey of more than a hundred private non-operating foundation clients. The report, 2020: The Year That Changed Everything — How Private Foundations Are Meeting this Moment showed 42 percent of respondents increasing grantmaking significantly (13 percent) or modestly (29 percent) in 2020. 48 percent said their level of grantmaking had stayed the same and 10 percent said it had declined. In looking forward to this last quarter, 42 percent of respondents expected their grantmaking to increase significantly (7 percent) or modestly (35 percent), while 5 percent expected it to decline.
Respondents who had already increased their grantmaking cited the impact of COVID-19 (79 percent), the impact of the pandemic on nonprofits (72 percent), social injustice concerns (28 percent), or increased payout obligations based on the value of their assets at the end of 2019 (21 percent) as factors in their giving.
The survey also found that 39 percent of respondents had modestly (37 percent) or significantly (2 percent) shifted their foundation's mission since the beginning of the year, citing the impact of COVID-19 (85 percent), increased need among nonprofits (52 percent), social justice concerns (32 percent), high unemployment rates (20 percent), or the struggling economy (17 percent).
Obviously there have been extraordinary challenges in 2020 - COVID-19, social turmoil and unprecedented unemployment. These difficulties have paved the way for the entire philanthropic community to do more, even though they have finite resources. The private foundations have been meeting these challenges head-on and are making tremendous strides toward creating a better world.
