NNBFF Launches National Network to Address Persistent Funding Disparities for Black-Led Nonprofits

The 20-point gap, drawn from an April 2026 study cited by the National Network of Black Foundations & Funds, is the empirical anchor of NNBFF's first public-facing rollout, which began August 28.

The Post-2020 Surge and Its Reversal

The study window covers 2016 through 2023. After George Floyd's murder in 2020, foundation dollars to Black-led and Black-serving organizations rose. By 2023 the increase had largely reversed. Most of the additional funding concentrated in a small set of larger Black-led nonprofits between 2020 and 2022, then contracted. Smaller Black-led nonprofits recorded little to no change across the period.

For NYC funders and operators benchmarking internal grantmaking, the macro signal is not "more money flowed" — it is "money concentrated and receded."

A National Network Becomes Public

NNBFF's debut formalizes a membership of Black-led and Black-serving foundations and funds that, per the announcement, includes organizations serving their communities since the 1980s. Pittsburgh, PA is listed as the location of the rollout. The release positions the network as a coordination layer for resource-sharing across geographically distinct members — distinct from any single grantmaking vehicle.

Mark Lewis, CEO of POISE Foundation and co-chair of the network's advisory group, is quoted in the release noting that one- or two-cycle funding relationships do not sustain generational change. LaDawn Sullivan, executive director of the Black Resilience in Colorado Fund and the other co-chair, frames the work as extending beyond direct grantmaking into convening, advocacy, and network access.

Foundation Response to Federal Cuts: The Disclosure Gap

A separate MinistryWatch report from the same week found that foundation grants helped some nonprofits stabilize after federal funding losses but generally did not replace the money that disappeared. The reporting also identified incomplete recipient-level disclosure from several foundations responding to the crisis.

The operational implication: where funder response data is missing, sector-level conclusions about who was backstopped remain provisional.

What to Verify in Your Own Data

• The 50% vs 70% baseline: does your organization's grant-receipt record sit above, at, or below the published benchmark?
• NNBFF's published member list, expected as the rollout matures, for cross-mapping against existing NYC partnerships.
• Foundation-level disclosure on federal-cut response grants. Incomplete reporting is a sector-wide gap, not a NYC-specific one.
• Distribution of post-2020 dollars by recipient size. The study's concentration finding is the single most actionable benchmark in the dataset.