How Candid hopes diversity data will help aid racial equity

Candid, the major philanthropy research group, is leading a coalition of funders and grantees that want to standardize the collection of demographic information to help enable donations to minority-led groups.

Harnessing such data could help advance racial equity, said Candid’s CEO, Ann Mei Chang, who is launching a nonprofit initiative to amass more such information.

The initiative — dubbed Demographics via Candid, or DvC — hopes to create a straightforward survey that is as widely accessible as a philanthropy’s 990 form for the Internal Revenue Service. If it succeeds, nonprofits would...