February 22, 2012 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Two relative newcomers to private philanthropy—the Arcus and Gill foundations, which were started in 2000 and 1994, respectively—have given more money to gay causes than any other grant maker, according to a new report by Funders for LGBTQ issues.
Over all, 799 grant makers have contributed more than $771-million to lesbian and gay issues since 1970, the report says. The money has gone to 6,000 charities working in 117 countries.
The report both analyzes and tells the story of grant making to the gay-rights movement since its early days. According to the report, the first foundation grant to a gay-rights group was made in 1970, the same year that The New York Times published its first major article on the cause, entitled, “The ‘Gay’ People Want Their Rights.”
Arcus has given more than $77-million to gay causes, while Gill has contributed $66-million. Both foundations were created by gay men: Arcus by Jon Stryker, an heir to a medical-technology fortune, and Gill by Tim Gill, founder of the technology company Quark.
The only source of money that’s outstripped giving from those two organizations is the collective giving of anonymous donors, who have contributed more than $90-million since 1970 to gay-rights groups in the study.
After Arcus and Gill, the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund, the Ford Foundation, the H. van Ameringen Foundation, and the Pride Foundation are the largest donors to gay causes over the last 40 years, the report says.
The report describes how grant making to gay causes has evolved since those first grants, in 1970, from a Massachusetts philanthropy called Resist to the Gay Liberation Front. As the AIDS crisis grew in the 1980s, more mainstream foundations started to pay attention to gay issues.
From 2000 to 2006, the report says, grant making to gay causes really took off, in part because of Arcus. More than half of all the dollars to gay groups were contributed in that time, according to the study. In recent years, foundations have focused on marginalized groups like transgender individuals and gay people of color.
Dig deeper: See Chronicle profiles about Tim Gill and Jon Stryker.
