Increasing Access to Health Equity Funding from Private Foundations Among MSIs

Five recommendations private funders can take to support health equity research at Minority Serving Institutions.

The Issue

Private foundation funding mechanisms are calibrated to large, research-intensive institutions, and that calibration produces structural disadvantages at Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs)—Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), Predominantly Black Institutions (PBIs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs). RWJF commissioned this study to understand how researchers and grant administrators at MSIs experience the private foundation funding landscape, and to identify practical changes funders can make to increase the number of MSI grantees and sustain awarded research over time.

Key Findings

At a time when federal research support is uncertain, private funders can bolster sustainability of MSI health equity research. Researchers identified recommendations in five interlocking areas. None of these recommendations should be considered in isolation from the others.

1. Reform Indirect Cost Policies: Indirect cost (IDC) funds are crucial for MSIs to build a solid operational foundation. For these institutions, the distinction between a grant without IDC funding and one with a higher IDC percentage can significantly affect their resources. A grant with adequate IDC can strengthen the institution, while one lacking this support may overburden it or, even worse, deplete its resources. The gap between federal and foundation IDC rates is not neutral; it is a recurring tax on institutions least equipped to absorb it. Reforming IDC policy is among the highest leverage actions a foundation can take to convert its grantmaking from transactional to transformational.
2. Invest in Institutional Capacity Building: An MSI can successfully be awarded a grant and still fail to utilize funds on time because their grants office has only one overworked administrator. The department can recruit multiple promising health equity researchers and still fail to retain them because institutional structures are insufficient to support the obligations placed on them. To ensure effective use of grant funds to support health equity research, there is a critical need to enhance institutional capacity at MSIs. By prioritizing dedicated funding resources for capacity-building, faculty and student support, and collaborations, sustainable growth can be fostered, and the impact of MSIs can be elevated in the broader research landscape.
3. Increase Funder Visibility and Relationship Building: RWJF and other private foundations were repeatedly described as less visible in participants’ circles of awareness. Calls for proposals pop up in their inboxes, if they arrive at all. Faculty commonly learn about opportunities from colleagues at a conference rather than from foundations directly, and once a hope-filled proposal is submitted, researchers describe that the only touchpoint is typically a disheartening rejection. Providing targeted resources and prioritizing intentional engagement can enhance RWJF’s, and other private foundations, images as an approachable funder and foster stronger relationships between MSIs and program officers.
4. Expand Grant Writing and Management Support: The grant process, as currently structured, was not designed with MSIs in mind, and that design gap has consequences at every stage. Friction in the application process deters submission. Blind rejections end relationships. Reporting requirements without staffing support exhaust the researchers whom foundations most need to retain. Foundations should examine whose interests the current process was built to serve, and invest deliberately in making it navigable for the institutions doing some of the most consequential community-based research in the country.
5. Honor and Resource Community Engagement: Community-engaged research is not a budget line; it is an activity with its own infrastructure, staffing, and timing requirements. Funder systems that treat community engagement as an add-on rather than a core research activity will continue to produce grants that extract from communities rather than invest in them. Foundations can match their stated commitments to health equity with budget structures, timelines, and partner recognition policies that enable genuine community engagement.

About the Author/Grantee

The Cultural Resilience, Equity, and Technology Lab (CREATE Lab) at the University of Maryland College Park, aims to improve mental health equity and reduce disparities in access to mental healthcare within African American communities. The Justice and Joy Squad (J2 Squad) at the University of Illinois Chicago researches how to increase equity in STEM postsecondary education.

About this Grant