Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP)by Connie Chung Joe
Heritage Month brings a familiar ritual: social posts, cultural spotlights, a week of programming. What it rarely brings is a reckoning with the numbers.
AAPIP has been tracking philanthropic giving to AANHPI communities since 1990. In 35 years of research, the percentage of institutional philanthropic dollars reaching our communities has never exceeded 0.60%. In 2023, it was 0.34%.
For every $100 awarded by U.S. institutional funders, AANHPI communities receive 34 cents.
To put that in context: total institutional giving to AANHPI communities in 2023 was $481 million. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s operating budget that same year was $477.9 million. Philanthropy is supporting 25 million AANHPI Americans at roughly the same level as running a single cultural institution.
Our 2025 AANHPI Funding Snapshot calls this what it is: essentially frozen.
Why this matters more in 2026
I spent my first months at AAPIP traveling nearly 18,000 miles across the country, meeting with members, chapter leaders, foundation trustees, and community-based organization leaders. What I heard was consistent: AANHPI communities are in crisis, and philanthropy has not caught up to the urgency.
Nearly six out of ten AANHPI Americans are immigrants, which means we have the highest proportion of immigrants of any racial group in the US. In Minnesota, where we witnessed first-hand the horrors of federal escalation targeting immigrants, many funders seemed unaware that Asians are the largest immigrant population in the state, including Hmong and other Southeast Asians being racially profiled. Families are being separated. Community members are too afraid to leave their homes to access healthcare, food, and education. AANHPI-led organizations that spent years building capacity are losing federal funding overnight. Some have already closed.
And it’s happening at the exact moment when race-explicit grantmaking, the mechanism through which much of this underfunding might actually be corrected, is under direct legal challenge. The READI Legal Support Fund exists to defend that work. But defending it requires philanthropy to stay in the fight.
The pattern is clear
Our Funding Snapshot documents something that should give every funder pause: AANHPI funding spiked in 2021 in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder and the Atlanta spa shootings. It peaked at $495 million. Then it dropped. By 2023 it had declined to $481 million, and when adjusted for inflation, the growth over the last decade looks far less impressive than the nominal numbers suggest.
This is the pattern. Tragedy creates visibility. Visibility creates a funding moment. The moment passes. The percentage stays frozen.
I was at Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California (AJSOCAL) when AAPIP released its 2021 Seeking to Soar report. I used that data constantly, with mainstream foundations who needed a baseline and with AANHPI funders who needed to see the full scale of the gap. The data moved money. For that moment, but not long-term.
What I’ve noticed since joining AAPIP is that unless they’re really intentional, philanthropic institutions are a step removed from our communities and our urgency is harder to hold onto. One of the things Heritage Month is actually for is closing that distance. Asking: what does it mean that the number hasn’t meaningfully moved in 35 years? What does it mean that the tools for changing it are now under legal attack?
What you can do this month
Give in May is a month-long fundraising campaign supporting AANHPI nonprofits across the country. These organizations are doing human rights, human services, and community development work. These are the organizations most directly exposed to what’s happening right now, and they need resources to stay in the fight.
Find causes at giveinmay.org.
If you’re a funder questioning whether this is the right moment to stay invested in AANHPI communities: the data says this is exactly the moment.
If you’re an AANHPI philanthropy professional navigating your own version of this pressure: AAPIP’s membership, programming , and regional chapter networks exist for you.
The full 2025 AANHPI Funding Snapshot is here.