Engaging Diverse Communities

Engaging Diverse Communities44 pages, 2001
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The guide shares and explains the experiences of several institutions that broadened their donor bases, services, and programs by reaching out to diverse communities. The publication focuses on the African American, Asian American, Latino, and Native American communities.

Engaging Diverse Communities is written primarily for those who work or volunteer in institutional philanthropy:

  • private and family foundations
  • private and public foundations
  • corporate giving programs
  • community foundations and
  • various service organizations that support the philanthropic field.

This guide explores how the philanthropic field has identified, attracted, and invited participation by individuals from culturally defined communities. This is not a handbook with explicit instructions on how to succeed with your outreach efforts: strategies and programs are still evolving; learnings are iterative.

While this guide offers an overview of the histories and traditions of philanthropic practices within diverse population groups, it concentrates on marketing, outreach, structural, and program strategies the field has tried, although not fully tested. You will recognize many of these strategies as adaptations of basic fundraising principles and marketing practices. Success in this particular context is dependent on nurturing each new relationship over time. Your explorations and experiments will contribute to this body of knowledge as the field adapts to and serves more effectively our multicultural communities-the communities of our children and our future.

Engaging Diverse Communities begins with some general observations about our increasingly diverse nation and the practices of philanthropy within and across the African American, Asian American, Latino, and Native American communities. General principles for diversity and inclusiveness work are next, followed by descriptions of specific outreach and marketing activities and a discussion of philanthropic practices within each of these four groups. The book concludes with a list of resources, including organizations that have worked with these issues and tried many of the activities described here.