New Report Finds Black-Led Nonprofits Told to Drop Race from Their Work or Risk Losing Support

By Stacy M. Brown Senior Global Correspondent

“We know that being Black isn’t illegal; neither is talking about our lived experience,” Susan Taylor Batten, president and CEO of ABFE, said in a new report detailing the continued challenges of Black-owned or Black-led nonprofits. “We must be careful that philanthropy is not complicit in efforts to erase our history.”

The report, “Holding the Line: Black-Led Nonprofits and Race-Explicit Work Amid Backlash,” documents how organizations serving Black communities are navigating increasing pressure to change how they describe their work, even as race remains central to the disparities they address.

In the months and years after Floyd’s murder, philanthropy made historic commitments to support Black-led organizations and racial equity efforts. The report states that those commitments are now being tested as legal decisions and political actions targeting diversity initiatives have created new risks for organizations that openly name race.

Researchers found that 76.4 percent of Black-led nonprofits explicitly mention race in at least one part of their public messaging, including conversations with funders, program descriptions, websites, and mission statements. Among white-led nonprofits, 43.8 percent mention race at all, and just 0.1 percent do so across all materials. The divide is most visible in mission statements. Black-led organizations were more than ten times as likely as white-led nonprofits to reference race in their stated purpose, with 40.7 percent doing so compared with 3.1 percent among white-led groups.

At the same time, Black-led nonprofits are more likely to be told to stop doing so. The report found that 15.4 percent of Black-led organizations had been advised to avoid mentioning race when describing their work, compared with 9.9 percent of nonprofits led by other people of color and 3.8 percent of white-led organizations. That advice comes from funders, consultants, legal counsel, and internal leadership. In some cases, organizations were urged to replace words such as “Black” with terms like “underserved” or “underrepresented,” even when those terms did not reflect their mission.

The report also found that Black-led nonprofits are more likely to track legal developments affecting their work. About 31.1 percent reported internal discussions about the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision limiting race-based college admissions, compared with less than 5 percent of white-led nonprofits. The report spans 35 pages and draws on survey responses from 3,888 nonprofit representatives, including 246 Black-led organizations, along with interviews conducted between November 2024 and January 2025.

Financial disparities remain a constant factor. Previous research cited in the report shows 61 percent of Black-led nonprofits operate with budgets under $100,000, while the majority of white-led nonprofits receive roughly three times as much revenue. Interviews with 24 Black nonprofit leaders show organizations taking different approaches. Nearly three-quarters said race is central to their mission. Some said they adjust language depending on the audience, while others said they refuse to change how they describe their work.

When asked whether they would accept funding that required removing references to race, about half said they would decline. Another quarter said they might comply to sustain operations, while the rest said their decision would depend on factors such as funding size and organizational needs. Leaders described the added burden of rewriting proposals, maintaining multiple versions of materials, and balancing financial survival with mission clarity.

“Blackness, that’s who we are,” one nonprofit leader said. “If I have to change the focus of how I talk about it, they’re not the funders that we want.”