Disability and Philanthropy Forum

Background

The Presidents’ Council on Disability Inclusion in Philanthropy founded the Disability and Philanthropy Forum in 2019. In 2022, the group became a fiscally sponsored project of the Proteus Fund. ²

The Ford Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation seeded the group with grants totaling more than $3 million. ²

The group’s goal is to encourage philanthropic giving towards disability inclusion, rights, and justice, and to increase the presence of disabled people among leaders within the philanthropic sector. The group also encourages nonprofits to hire and promote people with disabilities. ²

The group seeks to combat ableism and adheres to the far-left worldview of “intersectionality.” ³ The group claims that philanthropy has contributed to harm, ableism, and eugenics. The group sees the queer and trans, racial justice, and black liberation movements as its peers. ⁴

Disability Inclusion Pledge

The Disability and Philanthropy Forum’s major initiative is the Disability Inclusion Pledge. The pledge has eight items for signatories to follow, including disability community engagement, disability inclusive language, disability-accessible events, inclusion audits and plans, staff and board training and participation, disability grantmaking, and measuring and reporting on giving. ⁵

Activities

Funding for Disability Rights

In June 2024, the Disability and Philanthropy Forum released its annual report which found that nonprofits donated $0.01 to disability causes for every $10 donated. The group wants to raise that amount to $0.03 for every $10 donated by 2028. ¹

Combating Racism and Ableism in The Workplace

The Disability and Philanthropy Forum published an article by D’Arcee Neal about her experiences as a worker for the federal government as a Black disabled woman. She recounted how her employers forced her to go to work despite an ongoing blizzard in Washington, D.C. She acknowledged that she received the job through affirmative action and complained that employers did not authentically value her experiences. ⁶

Feeling Valued without Working

The Disability and Philanthropy Forum published an article by Alaina Leary that argued that disabled people are valuable even if they do not engage in paid labor. The article argued that by making paid labor the only kind of value, it plays “into historical and current systems of oppression that devalues certain types of labor.”  ⁷

Accessible Housing

In September 2023, the Disability and Philanthropy Forum published an article by Dessa Cosma that argued for more disability accessible housing. She explained how she bought a house in Detroit and spent a large amount of money to make it accessible for her disabilities. She explained how she campaigned for more money for Detroit’s subsidized housing programs and that 10 percent of those funds were used for housing for disabled people. She also called for nonprofits to fund groups run by disabled people who do community organizing. ⁸

Abortions for The Disabled

In March 2024, the Disability and Philanthropy Forum published an article by Sarah Katz that outlined how nonprofits could help disabled women and how “birthing people” could access reproductive health care, including abortion. She lamented that 31 states and the District of Columbia allowed for the forced sterilization of disabled people and that disabled women would not be able to pay for abortions because of the Hyde Amendment which restricts Medicaid from paying for abortions. She also claimed that “racism, homophobia, transmisogyny, and other systems of oppression” prevented women from getting reproductive health care. She said that nonprofits could help by lobbying and advocating for more reproductive health care. ⁹

Leadership

The Disability and Philanthropy Forum’s executive director is Sandy Ho, who took over in June 2024. She was previously the program director of the Disability Inclusion Fund at Borealis Philanthropy. She was a member of the 2023 Obama Foundation USA Leaders program and a 2022 Disability Futures Fellow supported by the Ford Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. ¹⁰

The previous executive director was Emily Harris, who retired in June 2024. ¹¹