Methodology: DEI and Accountability at the Knight Foundation
This post is part of a series published by the Community Info Coop analyzing DEI and accountability at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Read more at knightdei.org.
The Knight Foundation 2020 Grants and Grantee data analyzed in this report was pulled from the Knight Foundation’s 2020 IRS Form 990PF using Adobe. It was cleaned in Google Sheets and Airtable and then fact-checked against the original document.
The IRS Form 990PF is how tax-exempt, private foundations like Knight report their revenue and expenses to the federal government. It is the only public disclosure of all of the Knight’s grantmaking, and 2020 was the most recently available year.
Community Info Coop’s research initially included surveying Knight’s 2020 grantees to request data on leadership diversity and DEI in mission statements. However, only 49 of 380 people or organizations responded, leading researchers to end data collection and analysis in those areas. In addition, when some 2020 grantees reached out to Knight to ask about their relationship with the Just Transition survey, the Knight Foundation advised them the survey was not authorized, impacting our response rate.
The Community Info Coop research team did not verify the accuracy of the 990PF. Instead, it treated the tax filing as indisputable in the analysis despite listed grantees like Open M awards in the document. (Correction: This post previously said LION Publishers was among grantees contesting the filing. The organization clarified that it was receiving a multi-year grant from the Knight Foundation at the time.) In addition, past allegations of financial impropriety and mismanagement discussed above indicated Knight’s tax filings may not accurately reflect its spending.
Despite this, the Knight Foundation’s 2020 990PF remained the most effective resource for conducting our analysis.
After cleaning the data, our research team developed definitions for tagging and categorizing grants based on DEI, spending area, and applicable Knight City. DEI grants were further analyzed to determine the population they primarily served.
Defining DEI
The Community Info Coop assessed the DEI value of each grant by considering whether it fits one or more of the research team’s definitions for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Diversity
Representation of non-white, non-male, LGBTQ+ people, and or/other people from diverse backgrounds
- Examples: A theater that performs works from predominantly non-white playwrights, a dance company that performs with traditional Japanese taiko drums, a fund for Caribbean filmmakers.
Equity
Support organizations or projects serving non-white, non-male, LGBTQ+ people, or other people from diverse backgrounds that advance their access to social and/or economic capital.
- Examples: Training and development programs for Black women in tech, scholarships to a tech boot camp for underrepresented people of color, a mental health platform for Black entrepreneurs.
Inclusion
Having a mission to foster a sense of belonging and camaraderie among non-white, non-male, LGBTQ+ people, or other people from diverse backgrounds, particularly in industries, geographic locations, or facets of society in which they are underrepresented.
- Examples: Bilingual pre-K, the launch of a chapter of an affinity organization for LGBTQ+ tech employees, funding research that helps non-white people feel safer participating on social media.
Defining diverse populations
The Community Info Coop defined diverse populations as those with one or more distinct characteristics: race or ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, immigration status, language, or sexual orientation.
The characteristics reflected in the initial DEI categories included:
- Non-white: Comprised of people who do not have white skin or traceable European ancestry.
- Non-male: Comprised of people who do not identify as male, including women, transgender, nonbinary, and genderqueer people.
- LGBTQ+: Comprised of people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer, inclusive of other gender identities and sexual orientations that don’t fit neatly within the acronym.
- People with disabilities: Comprised of people living with a physical or mental impairment that would substantially limit major life activities, having a record of such impairments, or being perceived as living with such impairments.
- Low-income: Compromised of people receiving services directed at low-income people, including housing, financial, and other forms of assistance.
- Immigrant: Comprised of people of varying legal status born in a country that differs from their current residence.
After tagging grants with these broad categories, the research team segmented them further based on which specific diverse populations the grant was designed to serve.
The grants’ stated audiences determined these categories. In real life, these identities are intersectional, but the majority of relevant individual grants mentioned only one “diverse population.” They included:
- Arab American (Serving people with a heritage from one of 22 Arabic-speaking nations in North Africa and Southwest Asia: Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti, and the Comoros Islands.)
- Black or African American
- Asian or Asian American
- Haitian
- Queer
- Black and Brown women
- Women
- Caribbean Diaspora (Serving people of Caribbean descent living outside their country of nationality, such as the United States.)
- Hispanic or Latinx
- Immigrant (Serving people who live in a country that is not their country of origin, encompassing all legal statuses.)
- Undocumented (People without legal status in the United States)
- Of color (Serving BIPOC, or non-white people, in general.)
- Unhoused (Serving individuals who lack regular and adequate permanent residences)
- Visually Impaired (Serving people who live with a decrease in vision that cannot be corrected, encompassing people living with blindness)
- Indigenous/Native American (Serving people who share a lineage with the groups that inhabited what is now the United States before European colonization, such as the Lenape or Navajo
Identifying grantmaking areas
The Knight Foundation’s 2020 Statement of Strategy identifies the organization’s grantmaking priorities, including journalism, community and national initiatives, arts, and learning and impact, with subcategories under each.
Due to the expansive nature of the Knight Foundation’s 2020 giving, not all of its grants fit under any categories in its statement of strategy, including grants to wildlife conservation in Kenya or a federal WWI memorial, for example.
Instead, the Community Info Coop identified its categories of grantmaking. They are listed below in alphabetical order. Grants may be tagged with multiple categories as part of general or specific categories. For example, a museum’s adult art education program will be tagged “Museum or Gallery,” “Arts,” and “Arts Education.”
Identifying Knight cities
The Knight Foundation funds primarily in eight cities where John and James. L Knight owned and operated newspapers, including:
- Akron, OH
- Charlotte, NC
- Detroit, MI
- Macon, GA
- Miami, FL
- Philadelphia, PA
- San Jose, CA
- St. Paul, MN
Grants made to organizations working in Knight cities were tagged with their city name in addition to “Knight city.”
Comparing dollars and DEI
Grants dedicated to DEI or specifically serving diverse populations were tagged as “Instituional DEI” to measure the proportion of DEI spending in each grantmaking category.
