Changing the Way Funders Approach Disability
Kim Hutchinson, President and CEO, Disability Funders Network
According to the Social Security Administration, 54 million people are currently receiving social security benefits for disabilities. This is one in five people in the national population. But we know that this number is not comprehensive account of the total number of people with disabilities. For instance, it doesn’t include people who have a partial disability or a short-term disability, or people who are engaged in substantive gainful activity and therefore not eligible to receive social security benefits. If you add these groups, the total number of disabled people in the United States is close to double the official estimate. Further, as the baby boomer generation continues to age, as technology continues to advance life expectancy, and as more veterans apply for benefits, the number of people with disabilities will continue to grow exponentially.
The reality for grantmakers today is that if you are funding any program within any community, a large portion of the population—no less than one in five of the people you are aiming to reach with your philanthropic resources and probably closer to one in three people—will have a disability. Therefore grantmakers need to understand how to identify and develop programs that are inclusive of everyone, including people who need some type of accommodation or access in order to participate because they have some form of disability.
It is also critical for funders to understand the correlations between race, poverty and disability. You simply can’t practice inclusive grantmaking by selecting out separate areas of focus and saying that you are “inclusive” around those separate issues—that’s just siloing. True inclusion means making sure that you’re reaching everyone in the community as a whole, whether they’re African American, Hispanic, Asian, LGBTQ, a woman, or a person with a disability—and a person with a disability could also belong to any one or more of those other groups as well. Being inclusive means having everyone at the table and addressing all of these issues, including the intersectionality of disability with all of the other components of diversity.
The Disability Funders Network provides very simple and effective tools for grantmakers that want to include disability as part of their diversity profile. These include tips on how to ensure that grantees are inclusive of people with disabilities by adapting their grantee application process by asking questions like: How many people with disabilities work within your organization? How do you accommodate people with disabilities within your program? We also offer funders an inclusion inventory they can conduct internally which incorporates everything from a capital inventory—taking into consideration accessibility factors like ramps and stairwells and making sure that you have push bars on doors and grab bars in the bathrooms and that desks are at a level that allows people who are in wheelchairs to be seen when they sit behind them—to conducting inclusion trainings on how to go about providing personnel accommodations for employees with disabilities. Another significant area of concern is making sure that the field of philanthropy is hiring people with disabilities and asking people with disabilities to serve on boards of directors.
Our goal is to move disability grantmaking from a medical model to a social justice model and to convey that it is social barriers and prejudices that, in and of themselves, are inherently disabling. This approach to inclusive grantmaking is in keeping with a social justice philosophy that says we need to look at the community as a whole and at who lives in the community, who the constituents are, and to make sure that all people have the same ability to live life to their full capacity. In terms of disability grantmaking, this is counter-posed with a medical model that silos people based on medical definitions. The medical model looks at disability as a diagnosis and pigeon-holes and stereotypes people into specific medical criteria. A social justice model, on the other hand, seeks to identify the tools that people need in their community to be able to survive and to thrive. Changing the way that we approach disability is critical to building strong, healthy communities.
For more information about the Disability Funders Network, please visit www.disabilityfunders.org.
Kim Hutchinson is the President and CEO of the Disability Funders Network (DFN), a national membership and philanthropic advocacy organization that seeks equality and rights for disabled individuals and communities by bridging philanthropic resources, disability and community. DFN envisions an empowered and functioning democracy with full equality under the law, equal access to services, unconditional respect for difference and the meaningful participation of all communities at tables where decisions are made. Prior to leading DFN, Ms. Hutchinson served as President and CEO of voluntary health organizations focused on the disability field as well as an executive manager for a national commercial real estate development and construction company.