In the last five years, the total value of grants serving Washington’s women and girls was almost quadruple the value of grants targeted at men and boys, despite serious needs.
A lack of awareness about the severity of boys and men’s issues may be contributing to males being the beneficiaries of substantially less grant funding compared to females. Given the breadth of indicators of wellness for which boys and men are experiencing disproportionately poor outcomes, there is a strong case for foundations, governments, and other grantmakers to increase their spending on males.
In an earlier article we published under the headline “There is a 50 to 1 Ratio of Female to Male Advocacy in Washington,” we presented evidence of a large asymmetry in the amount of organizations and individuals carrying out advocacy for boys and men compared to advocacy for girls and women. In this article, we present findings from a grants database about the asymmetry in grant funds being spent to help boys and men compared to grants helping girls and women.
Searching the grants database
A nonprofit organization named Candid maintains a comprehensive databases of grants and grantmakers. (Candid is the product of the 2019 merger of GuideStar and Foundation Center). Foundation Directory Online is Candid’s enterprise-level grant research tool that allows users to view information about funders and produce lists of grants using various search criteria.
The types of organizations whose grants are included in Foundation Directory Online are governments and agencies; private and independent foundations; corporate foundations; non-governmental organizations; public charities; religious institutions; and giving circles.
On September 9, 2023 we visited the Redmond Library and took advantage of the King County Library System’s subscription to Foundation Directory Online. Our searches made use of these three filters:
- Geographic Focus (i.e. Where will funding be used?)
- Our searches: Washington State
- Population Served (i.e. Who will be affected by the grant?)
- Our searches: Women and Girls; Men and Boys; Transgender People
- Tax Form Years
- Our searches: 2017-2021 (These are the five most recent years for which nonprofit organizations’ 990 tax forms are readily available)
The table below presents our findings, accompanied by Washington state population figures for added context.
Grants serving people in Washington state, by population served, 2017-2021
| Population Served: | Girls and Women | Boys and Men | Transgender People | |
| 1 | Grantmakers | 2,069 | 759 | 60 |
| 2 | Grants | 13,425 | 3,454 | 148 |
| 3 | Grant Recipients | 1,575 | 324 | 69 |
| 4 | Total Dollar Value of Grants | $702,275,928 | $187,242,393 | $4,698,844 |
| 5 | Percent of Total Dollar Value Among These Three Populations Served | 79% | 21% | 0.5% |
| 6 | Percent of Washington’s Population | 50% 3,835,105 (2020 Census) | 50% 3,821,095 (2020 Census) | 0.5% 38,300 (2022 UCLA est.) |
According to Foundation Directory Online, the total dollar value of grants serving women and girls in Washington from 2017 to 2021 was over $700 million, while grants serving men and boys totaled under $200 million. Grants serving transgender people totaled under $5 million.
Read our related piece: Could This Charity in Connecticut Be a Model for Washingtonians Wanting to Help Men and Boys?
It can be assumed that some proportion of the disparity between the value of grants serving women and grants serving men is explained by this: some public funds given to women are intended to be spent on their children. If this is true, we don’t know what proportion of the disparity this accounts for. It would naturally beg the question though — Are government agencies properly serving fathers and their children? (That is a question, by the way, that the Washington Interagency Fatherhood Council is investigating.) It would also cause us to think of the progress made in giving women options to work outside the home or stay home to care for children, and related questions about to what extent we want men to have those same options, and to what lengths we’re willing to go to enable that.
Circumcision in Zimbabwe?
Our database search produced a peculiar finding that’s worth pointing out.
Among the 3,000+ grants that the database said were made between 2017 and 2021 to serve men and boys in Washington, two of the five highest-value grants — totaling over $16 million from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — were made to support HIV/AIDS prevention through male circumcision in Zimbabwe.
This is important for two obvious reasons:
- The target population for those grant funds clearly was not men or boys in Washington. (Something must have been coded incorrectly in the database.)
- While the intent of the funds was to serve men in Zimbabwe, those funds may have done a disservice to those men. Check out The VMMC Experience Project, which is a collection of testimonies from Africans who believe they were lied to and harmed by circumcision campaigners.
Who is giving the most money?
The table below shows the largest funders of grants that served women and girls or boys and men in Washington between 2017 and 2021. The entries in the table are ordered largest to smallest according to the total amount given.
| Grantmakers Serving Women and Girls in WA | Amount Funded | Grantmakers Serving Men and Boys in WA | Amount Funded | |
| 1 | U.S. National Institutes of Health | $42,180,622 | Central Pennsylvania Scholarship Fund | $27,387,972 |
| 2 | U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services | $34,863,792 | U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services | $21,244,637* |
| 3 | Central Pennsylvania Scholarship Fund | $27,387,972 | U.S. Department of the Army | $11,243,118 |
| 4 | Seattle Foundation | $23,993,007 | U.S. National Institutes of Health | $7,415,312 |
| 5 | The Norcliffe Foundation | $18,684,168 | M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust | $6,643,463 |
| 6 | Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund | $15,317,578 | Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund | $5,652,748 |
| 7 | United Way of King County | $9,939,801 | Boys & Girls Clubs of America | $4,143575 |
| 8 | Murdock Charitable Trust | $9,456,711 | Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund | $3,832,818 |
| 9 | U.S. Administration For Children And Families | $8,309,214 | Seattle Foundation | $3,778,171 |
| 10 | Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund | $7,968,105 | Gary E Milgard Family Foundation | $2,580,000 |
| …plus 2,058 more grantmakers | …plus 749 more grantmakers |
Who is receiving the most grant funds?
The table below shows the largest receivers of grants that served women and girls or boys and men in Washington between 2017 and 2021. The entries in the table are ordered largest to smallest according to the total amount of funds received.
| Recipients of Grants Serving Women and Girls in WA | Amount Received | Recipients of Grants Serving Men and Boys in WA | Amount Received | |
| 1 | WA Department of Health | $93,450,244 | Boys and Girls Club of Lewis County | $41,540,367 |
| 2 | WA Department of Social and Health Services | $49,185,921 | University of Washington | $34,540,782 |
| 3 | University of Washington | $46,949,575 | Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission | $10,832,267 |
| 4 | Boys and Girls Club of Lewis County | $41,540,367 | Boys and Girls Clubs of South Puget Sound | $9,869,585 |
| 5 | Code.org | $34,038,390 | Boys and Girls Clubs of King County | $9,124,681 |
| 6 | Kaiser Foundation Hospitals | $27,488,192 | Bellevue Boys and Girls Club | $5,080,036 |
| 7 | Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates | $27,210,332 | Boys and Girls Clubs of America | $5,000,000 |
| 8 | Catholic Community Services of Western Washington | $21,414,284 | Morning Star Boys Ranch | $4,383,983 |
| 9 | Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission | $14,196,862 | YMCA of Snohomish County | $4,227,558 |
| 10 | Boys and Girls Clubs of King County | $12,478,212 | Boys and Girls Clubs of Snohomish County | $3,831,307 |
| …plus 1,565 more recipients | …plus 314 more recipients |
Conclusion
Awareness-raising about the serious struggles Washington’s boys and men are facing — and the need for change — will continue to be a core purpose of Washington Initiative for Boys and Men. Perhaps in the future we will see grant funders increase their giving to causes that help boys and men as their needs and problems become better known.
Not only might the lack of spending on boys and men by the public and philanthropic sectors help explain the poor outcomes we’re seeing, but our society’s underinvestment in males is saying something about what populations we care about. That message is not lost on many boys and men.
See also: OFFICIAL LAUNCH: Campaign for a Washington State Commission on Boys and Men [with Video]