May 12, 2026
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Insights
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From Transaction to Transformation to Repair
What a New ABFE/Candid Report Says—and What Reparative Philanthropy Can Do About It
What a New ABFE/Candid Report Says—and What Reparative Philanthropy Can Do About It
Last month, ABFE and Candid released a new report that’s worth an extended look: “From Transaction to Transformation: Three Ways Foundations Can Invest in Black-Led Nonprofits for Lasting Change.” For those working in and around reparative philanthropy, the report confirms much of what we’ve long known or suspected. Still, seeing it all laid out and backed up in rigorous data is both striking and necessary, and we are deeply grateful to ABFE and Candid for this work.
The report documents a persistent, measurable gap between foundations and Black-led nonprofits—in dollars, in relationships, and in the basic human respect that makes genuine partnership possible. It calls on foundations to provide not just financial support but also social and human-centered support.
At Bold Ventures, we read this report not just as a diagnosis but as a foundation to build on. More specifically, here’s what we see.
On average, only half of Black-led nonprofits received any foundation grants in a given year compared to 70% of other nonprofits. For small, Black-led organizations (many of which are small because they have been underfunded), the number drops to 30%. Even in 2020, when the pandemic and racial-justice reckoning prompted foundations to open their checkbooks, the money flowed almost entirely to large, already-visible organizations.
Reparative philanthropy names this pattern directly: the racial funding gap is not an oversight; it’s an outcome of systems built on extraction and a sector that isn’t adequately built for repair. Here, repair means intentionally redirecting resources toward organizations that have been historically bypassed—especially small, grassroots nonprofits closest to the communities they serve and best positioned to make lasting change. In practice? That means multiyear, unrestricted grants; eligibility requirements that don’t automatically disqualify newer or smaller organizations; and grant sizes that align with expectations (and vice versa).
Nearly half of small, Black-led nonprofits in the study had only one funder at a time, and most of their dollars came from first-time funders, meaning they were effectively starting over on the funding front every year. Black nonprofit leaders described the experience vividly: exclusion from philanthropic networks, superficial check-box relationships, and a grant-seeking process that felt, as one leader put it, like “the longest dating process I’ve ever felt.”
Transactional grantmaking is not neutral. It concentrates power with funders and keeps nonprofits in a permanent state of audition. The reparative alternative is cultivating trust-based relationships: committing to organizations across multiple grant cycles, staying in genuine conversation, and proactively opening doors to networks rather than waiting to be asked. Trust, in reparative philanthropy, is not a soft value or “nice to have”—it’s an essential component of infrastructure and practice.
More than half of Black nonprofit leaders in the study experienced racial discrimination in the grant-seeking process: tokenization, pressure to de-emphasize their Black identity, and standards that weren’t applied to other organizations. Repeated rejection without feedback depleted staff hope and resilience. One leader captured it plainly: “As a people, we have always been resilient … It is exhausting and I believe that that exhaustion manifests even in our DNA, but we don't really have a choice."
Reparative philanthropy takes the humanity of grantee staff seriously as a philanthropic responsibility. That means trusting organizations to design their own programs, applying reasonable deadlines, asking about capacity before piling on deliverables, and celebrating mission and commitment, not just outputs. It also means examining your own systems for the biases the report describes.
The report calls for lasting change. So do we. And we believe the tools already exist—in the practices of redistributing wealth, building sustained power, sharing decision-making, cultivating trust-based relationships, and investing in community infrastructure, including the human infrastructure of the people doing the work.
One foundation representative in the report said that “something equally bold needs to be done to course correct.” Again, we agree. The boldness required isn’t just about writing checks. It’s a matter of replacing transactional habits with genuine accountability to the communities philanthropy was meant to serve.
Reparative philanthropy is not a destination. It is a journey we take together. If you’re ready to explore what that could look like in your work, see our Starting Point Guide to Reparative Philanthropy or reach out to us directly.
