AAPIP Blog

AAPIP is excited to announce the launch of our Winners Circle Facebook contest and we need your help to make it a success.  Get everyone you know (friends, family, co-workers) to go to our Facebook page and vote for a  Giving Circle. We think they’ll have no trouble finding a group that shares their passion about a particular issue. (If not, maybe they’ll start their own circle.) The top three vote getters will receive the recognition they deserve AND share $6,000 in prize money to invest in community groups. Read here for more information, or go straight to our Facebook page to vote!

Today, One Nation Bay Area (ONBA) joins 11 other communities across the nation, including New York and Chicago, in creating local programs designed to change misperceptions and reduce prejudicial attitudes toward American Muslims. Now completing the first phase of a challenge grant process, One Nation Bay Area granted $227,500 to 25 community-based organizations throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.  In 2009, the One Nation Foundation announced a $3.5 million initiative to partner with community foundations in cities across the United States by providing a dollar-for-dollar match to support increased understanding between American Muslims and non-Muslims in their local communities.

ONBA is a partnership between The San Francisco Foundation, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Marin Community Foundation, and AAPIP (Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy).

To learn more and for a complete list of grantees, click here.

(Theo Yang Copley works as a philanthropic and fundraising consultant.  Some of her other writing can be found on the Astraea Foundation and Resource Generation blogs.)

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It’s probably no surprise that there is a long-standing need for funding for organizations that support Asian American and Pacific Islander LGBTQ communities, but I was surprised by just how little funding these organizations get. The numbers tell the beginning of the story: in 2009 the amount of foundation funding to all LGBTQ organizations was 0.2 percent, and the amount of those resources going to LGBTQ AAPI organizations was 0.7 percent. Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP) has produced a new report, Missed Opportunities: How Organized Philanthropy Can Help Meet the Needs of LGBTQ Asian American, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Pacific Islander Communities by Alice Y. Hom, Director of the Queer Justice Fund (QJF). It is the first of its kind to summarize key issues facing LGBTQ API communities, document the current lack of philanthropic investment, and make funding recommendations that will benefit individual lives and strengthen AAPI communities.

Missed Opportunities is a major milestone for the Queer Justice Fund, an incubation project of AAPIP that stemmed from the National Gender & Equity Campaign. The QJF report puts into practice AAPIP’s principle of “democratic philanthropy,” which “calls on both organized philanthropy and individuals to support the development of practices that begin with the vision of communities first, and that draws on the assets of those communities as the starting place for any blueprint to maximize their potential.”  In addition to being a roadmap for foundation funding, the report also serves as a useful tool for individual giving though a collective vehicle such as LGBTQ AAPI giving circles, which the Queer Justice Fund is helping develop.

Click to read more. »

Missed Opportunities provides a crisp, accessible topography of the issues and trends facing LGBTQ Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and offers pragmatic strategies.  It is an invaluable resource for any funder committed to advancing equity in the United States.

- Daniel Lee, Executive Director, Levi Strauss Foundation

Missed Opportunities: How Organized Philanthropy Can Help Meet the Needs of LGBTQ AAPI Communities, a new report from the Queer Justice Fund, finds deep disparities in funding to LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) AAPI (Asian American/Pacific Islanders), despite rapid growth of both communities. The report is being released on the eve of Creating Change 2012: The National Conference on LGBT Equality, the nation’s largest annual gathering of LGBT advocates, convened by the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, and will be presented as part of the conference’s institute, AAPI Focus: Building a Queer AAPI Movement.

Download: Missed Opportunities (Full Report) Download: Missed Opportunities (Executive Summary)

Missed Opportunities found that funding in 2009 to LGBTQ AAPI communities amounted to barely 0.7 percent of the total amounted granted to all LGBTQ communities and organizations that year. In 2009 funding to all LGBTQ organizations in 2009 amounted to barely 0.2 percent of all foundation giving in the United States.

Click to read more. »