How Candid hopes diversity data will help aid racial equity

By GLENN GAMBOA
AP Business Writer

Philanthropy research organization Candid is leading a coalition of funders and grantees looking to standardize the collection of demographic information to help streamline donations to minority-led groups. Candid CEO Ann Mei Chang believes harnessing diversity data can advance racial equity and she plans to launch a nonprofit movement to amass more information this month. The new initiative — dubbed Demographics via Candid, or DvC — hopes to create a survey as straightforward and easily accessible as an organization’s 990 form for the Internal Revenue Service. If it succeeds, nonprofits would no longer need to provide specialized diversity information for each of its donors and would make it easier to measure how much money is going to minority-led groups.