Grant Types Full Report

We conducted a rapid review of academic and grey literature on google scholar using a combination of keywords to find literature on types of grants and grant making that support equity and justice. Most of the literature focused on grant making practices and organisational practices by grant makers that can support equity, diversity and inclusion in their practices. Most literature comes from the US – where there is a bigger DEI industry and more philanthropic money flows. There are also more institutions dedicated to studying philanthropy (typically housed within business schools) which might contribute to the higher volume of literature. 

Defining Equity & Justice

• Equity: designing funding so people and organisations with different starting points get resources and access proportionate to need, removing barriers that block participation. 
• Justice: goes beyond equity to redistribute power and change systems (not just equalise inputs). Several sources emphasise that the line between equity and justice matters for practice and design.

Some call for investing in racial justice strategies – long-term and strategic solutions that would reduce racial disparities long-term– rather than investing in diversity which can be tokenistic. Call for distinguishing between individual acts and institutional racism. Most reports still highlight the role of increasing diversity in the charity sector, especially in decision-making roles.

Reports highlighted practices that are two fold – internal and external – for grantmaking to be externally just and equitable – the grantmaking organisation also needs to review its organisational practices and structures which might be perpetuating inequality. For instance, many grantmakers still do not have trustee board which reflect the diversity and experience of the communities they aim to benefit through their grantmaking, many lack accountability practices, have hierarchal decision-making processes which make it difficult for racialised and lived-experience staff to effectively participate, etc.  

Beyond strategic recommendations and culture-shifts proposed, literature also provides practical steps to improve equity in grantmaking: 

1. Unrestricted / general operating support (multi-year where possible): Literature considers this equitable as unrestricted grants let organisations cover core costs, build staff capacity, and sustain operations without being constrained by project-only rules; reduces survival pressure that biases toward short-term, visible outputs.
2. Multi-year funding and predictable commitments: supports planning, staff retention, long-term impact, and power-building rather than ephemeral project work. Recommended across health, social justice, and community funding literature. 
3. Trust- and relationship-based grantmaking (relational philanthropy): emphasizes reciprocity, long-term partnerships, mutual accountability, and shared agenda-setting; flattens hierarchical funder–grantee dynamics.
4. Participatory grantmaking (community-led decision-making): transfers decision-making authority to people with lived experience; improves relevance and legitimacy of awards. Implementation must pay community reviewers and provide support to be fair.  
5. Flexible, low-burden application and reporting processes: removes administrative barriers that disproportionately exclude smaller, grassroots, or non-English-speaking groups (short forms, multiple submission modes, simplified reporting). Strongly recommended by Lancet, PRE, and capacity-building reports.  
6. Micro-grants and flexible rapid response funding (when designed for accessibility): can reach grassroots groups quickly and with minimal bureaucracy if eligibility and outreach are inclusive. Caveat: microgrants must be part of a broader strategy (not the only form of support).  
7. Capacity-building and ecosystem funding (including intermediaries accountable to communities): invests in strengthening grantee systems and movement infrastructure rather than only programs—supports sustainability and power-building. 
8. Funding that explicitly centers lived experience and community leadership: positions people affected by problems in governance, design, and evaluation; supports compensation for lived-experience expertise.  
9. Transparent, disaggregated grant data and public accountability: allows analysis of who is funded (and who isn’t), highlights gaps, and supports corrective action. Transparency is a prerequisite for equity assessment. 
10. Grants explicitly designed to build power (movement- or organizing-focused grants): supports systemic change rather than only service delivery; centers redistribution and collective action.  

Some literature also focuses on practices that perpetuate or uphold inequality.  

1. Short-term, project-only, restricted grants (one-year, project-bound, no core costs): force organisations to chase renewal, prevent investment in core capacity, and favour those able to demonstrate immediate outputs—often larger or better-resourced groups. Seen as a major barrier in global health and community funding.
2. Highly restricted, output-oriented funding tied to donor priorities: undermines locally defined needs and prioritizes donor-defined metrics; marginalises community strategies. Criticized in global partnerships and justice-oriented literature.
3. Competitive, bureaucratic processes with heavy eligibility and reporting requirements: exclude small, new, or non-formal organisations; favour those with grant-writing capacity or existing funder relationships; perpetuate inequity.
4. Funding channeled via distant intermediaries with weak accountability to communities: resources may be diverted from grassroots actors and lose local contextual responsiveness; intermediaries can become gatekeepers. Literature warns intermediaries need clear accountability to community leadership.  
5. Grants without transparency or data on who is funded: inability to detect disparities or correct biased practice; prevents public accountability and sector learning.
6. Tokenistic initiatives (surface-level DEI actions without structural change): training, statements, or one-off events that are not backed by policy, budgets, governance change, or power shifts do little to alter entrenched inequities. Many reviews call out performative practice.  
7. Funding that privileges large, established institutions by default: scales funding to organisations with existing relationships, institutional infrastructure, or grant-writing capacity—leaving grassroots, BIPOC-led, and local CBOs underfunded. 

Scholarship warns that conventional “equitable partnerships” often leave core power relations untouched. Transformative collaborations require co-creation on agenda-setting, resource control, and interpretation—especially for Global South partners (GSCJ article). In global mental health, funders should privilege CBOs with flexible, multilingual, core support and context-honouring evaluation (The Lancet Global Health). 

Equitable grantmaking practices require a twofold approach – actively acknowledging current internal and external practices that perpetuate inequality and actively working on dismantling those systems. These could happen through higher transparency, higher accountability, funding relationally and building partnerships with the communities to support them through long-term fiscal as well as non-fiscal support.

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