Donors of Color Network

Founded in 2019, the Donors of Color Network (DOCN) is a first of its kind cross-racial community of donors committed to engaging our collective power towards racial equity and justice. DOCN estimates there are approximately 1.25M people of color with assets over $1M in the U.S. This demographic represents a significant potential source of power and influence that to date has had limited leadership in organized philanthropic spaces that support racial equity and justice. DOCN was founded to organize and promote the leadership of this community – working across race, national origin, professional backgrounds, and intersections of gender, sexual orientation, religion, and ability. Our donor members are organizers and leaders in their own spaces, moving their peers, friends, and networks to center the priorities of communities of color and to think with a systems frame. As we grow our network, we are bringing these individuals together and building a strong foundation of a values-aligned, humble, joyous, loving, and learning community. As a recently formed organization, we are inspired by the possibilities that will come, with the knowledge that we are more powerful together than each of us is as an individual. DOCN’s impact is unique in that our work centers the stories and lived experiences of donors of color and communities of color most directly harmed by racial discrimination and injustice. By creating understanding and aligning values across diverse backgrounds, we are working towards power building in communities of color nationally to achieve racial and gender equity, economic opportunity, environmental sustainability, and political power that reflects and is accountable to communities of color. We do this through peer-to-peer donor learning, investing in leaders of color, supporting organizing and advocacy, and through the promotion of our Inclusion Principles. These Inclusion Principles are a set of voluntary commitments we ask organizations we support and partner with to make. We aim to influence how budgets are made, how dollars are allocated, how boards are built, and how folks are hired by requiring a racial equity lens for each.