DataWoven: Making nonprofits led by women of color visible

For decades, organizations led by women of color have been on the frontlines of gender justice—defending reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, protecting LGBTQ+ communities, addressing gender-based violence, imagining solutions to a broken care economy, and advancing racial and economic justice. They’ve carried this work through political headwinds, funding droughts, and escalating attacks.

And here’s what Women’s Funding Network’s DataWoven makes impossible to ignore: Black women-led organizations with fewer than 10 staff spend just $0.08 in fundraising expenses for every dollar raised, compared with $0.49 among similar-sized organizations led by white men. They’re doing more with less at every level. The barrier isn’t capacity. It’s access to capital.

This is not an accident of design. It is the design.

Nonprofits led by women of color face structural barriers

DataWoven is a public intersectional dashboard built by members of Women’s Funding Network (WFN) in partnership with Candid using the Demographics via Candid dataset and IRS filings from more than 77,000 organizations, including 2023 and 2024 Forms 990.

Among nonprofits with fewer than 10 staff, which include many community-rooted movement organizations, those led by Black women hold a median asset base of $185,517, less than half the $417,293 median for organizations led by white men. They also carry an average of nine months of operating runway, compared with 12 months for organizations led by white men.

These figures reflect only organizations filing full Form 990. The thousands of organizations with less than $50,000 in annual revenue filing 990-N e-postcards—which contains only basic information—are not captured. If they were, the disparity in financial capital would be even more stark.

Nearly 40% of organizations led by Black women file Form 990-N, compared with 18% of those led by white men. This means that grantmaking databases which rely on data from 990s are not built to see these nonprofits; their programmatic and financial information is “invisible.” 

Small nonprofits led by Black women face a capital gap

DataWoven’s governance data makes reality visible. When board and staff diversity are mapped by leaders’ identity, the pattern is stark: Organizations led by white men tend to have the lowest representation of women and people of color on their boards and staff. Organizations led by white women have strong gender diversity but variable levels of racial diversity, especially on boards. Organizations led by women of color show the highest levels of gender and racial diversity. Gender diversity alone does not predict community rootedness: The organizations most accountable to the communities they serve are operating with the least capital.

That gap compounds over time. Black women are nearly twice as likely as white men to lead organizations that are under five years old and far less likely to lead legacy organizations. Black women are entering the sector at high rates, but too few nonprofits are funded sustainably.

We must ask: Does the sector’s financial structure support long-term movement growth, or does it reflect assumptions about organizations that don’t match realities faced by today’s movements and the people leading them?

Women’s funds provide flexible funding for growth, sustainability

More program grants are not the answer. Restricted funding cannot build reserves, strengthen operations, or invest in long-term sustainability. What the data describes is a capital gap—and closing it requires fundamentally different tools from conventional grantmaking mechanisms.

Trust-based philanthropy is a step in the right direction, but it still requires an existing relationship. And from large philanthropy’s perch—it cannot reach what it cannot see. This is where women’s funds have long played a critical role. Women’s funds build deep relationships with communities, local institutions, and global movement ecosystems like WFN. Many also occupy a unique position in philanthropy—funding movements while also being part of them, seeking funding while also distributing it, deploying rapid response while also advocating for long-term systemic change—and they do all this while experimenting with innovative, participatory, flexible, community-centered models.

Blended finance models, for example, combine impact investments with grants and low-cost loans or recoverable grants, giving organizations the capital they need to innovate, stabilize, and grow on their terms rather than simply survive from grant cycle to grant cycle. This is the logic behind the Just Rise Fund, a WFN initiative designed by movement leaders to reach the broader ecosystem of women of color-led, rural, and gender justice organizations facing similar structural barriers.

Funding infrastructure is not optional

The data available through DataWoven reveals a structural mismatch, one that philanthropy now has the evidence and the power to address. Intersectional demographic data isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s how we see how resources and opportunities move through existing power structures. And, as this data makes clear, current patterns don’t serve the movements many funders claim to support.

When women of color-led organizations are undercapitalized, the ideas, innovations, and solutions closest to communities never get the chance to grow. We have known this. Now we have data to show it.

Philanthropy can support stronger, more durable movements by shifting capital—not just celebration—toward women of color–led organizations, funding them earlier, more flexibly, and at the scale their impact already proves possible.

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