Structural inequality exists across a range of social issues, including healthcare, education, economic development, environmental impact, and more. It happens when policies and practices systematically prevent people from accessing opportunity. For many, increasing access to opportunity is central to their giving.

To help, we developed the toolkit and rubric Choosing Change: How to Assess Proposals for Potential to Reduce Structural Inequality.

Other resources can help you implement Choosing Change. For example, Demographics via Candid has demographic data on leadership, staff,  and beneficiaries for tens of thousands of nonprofits. Since structural  inequality often exists along demographic lines, such data can help you identify relevant grantees, alongside our other resources.

The Fund for Shared Insight works to improve philanthropy by listening to those impacted by structural inequality and shifting and sharing power to advance equity. In 2016, it launched Listen4Good to help nonprofits better listen to and integrate client perspectives into their work.

For donors in the U.S. focused on addressing the underfunding of smaller, grassroots organizations and those led by leaders of color, JustFund streamlines the grantmaking process, so that such organizations can submit proposals to hundreds of funders at once. Another platform is Giving Gap which aims to reduce the underfunding of nonprofits grounded in the needs of Black communities through its database of organizations founded by Black leaders