Good Grant Making is Inclusionary Grant Making
Irfan Hasan, New York Community Trust
Good grantmaking is inclusionary grantmaking. Since people with disabilities make up the largest minority group in the country—more than 54 million people in the United States have a disability—funders must be proactive in taking people with disabilities into consideration. As grantmakers we have to understand that in order to have the highest possible impact in addressing issues like poverty, health, education and housing, we must think about the needs of people with disabilities in the context of all of these core issues.
For instance, people with disabilities have a disproportionately high rate of unemployment. If we are concerned with economic security and helping people get and keep jobs, we have to think about how various workforce development programs apply to people with disabilities. The bottom line is that if grantmakers fail to reach people with disabilities, we will fail to reach some of the most disenfranchised communities in the country.
There is, unfortunately, still a great deal of stigma attached to funding people with disabilities and to supporting disability-related issues. Disability is an uncomfortable subject to talk about in our society in general. I think that as human beings we are programmed simply to avoid engaging if we’re not sure of what to say or do, or of what others’ reactions may be. When it comes to disability, everyday encounters can be awkward. We can get caught between wanting to help on the one hand and not wanting to be condescending on the other. For instance, should you open the door for someone using a wheelchair or wait for them to press the bar to open it for themselves?
By extension, in the world of philanthropy, grantmakers often aren’t necessarily sure of the right or best ways to go about including people with disabilities in their other program priorities. Does one create a special “disability” category, or do we make sure that people with disabilities are part of our over all grantmaking strategy?
Another major challenge is the issue of complexity. The discomfort or lack of familiarity in funding people with disabilities is compounded by the fact that there is no single profile of a person with a disability. When one first thinks of a disability, one often thinks of a mobility-related impairment. But in order to accomplish good grantmaking that is broadly inclusive of people with disabilities, it is essential to grasp that a person with a disability may not overtly look like they are disabled. Otherwise this can be a stumbling point that can lead us to underestimate the scope and scale of the needs of people with disabilities, because clearly there are not 54 million wheelchair users in the United States. In fact only a fraction of the total number of people with disabilities are folks with mobility impairments.
Disabilities are varied and can be physical, emotional, sensory or any combination of these factors. It is key that disability grantmaking becomes part and parcel of every aspect of the grantmaking performed by a foundation because people with disabilities are not an isolated pocket of folks for whom one solution fits all. Because people with disabilities also represent the full spectrum of other aspects of human diversity—economic, ethnic, social, language and cultural—grantmakers must look at every single grant and ask ourselves, is this service accessible to a person with a disability; is that program area inclusive or exclusive of people with disabilities?
The best way to go about answering these questions and tackling these challenges is to have people with disabilities involved at every level of the grantmaking process. From board leadership, to staff positions at foundations, people with disabilities must be at the table. It is also critical that in all of our institutional grantmaking priorities—from the time that a funding initiative is announced and publicized to the time that it is evaluated—that we ensure that key components address the needs of people with disabilities.
As Program Officer for Health and People with Special Needs, Irfan Hasan covers the New York Community Trust’s grantmaking in the areas of health services, children and youth with disabilities, mental health and mental retardation, and people with visual disabilities. Following September 11, 2001, Mr. Hasan was instrumental in emergency mental health response grantmaking through The Trust’s September 11th Fund. Before joining The Trust, Mr. Hasan spent eight years at Greater Boston Rehabilitation Services. Currently he is chairman of the Board of Directors of the Disability Funders Network and co-chairs the United States Student Selection Committee for the United World Colleges.