BILL WOULD REQUIRE NONPROFITS TO REVEAL RACE, GENDER MAKEUP CHARITY: AIM IS TO AID MORE DIVERSE GROUP OF RECIPIENTS.

Byline: Edwin Garcia

MediaNews Sacramento Bureau

SACRAMENTO -- California's charitable foundations give hundreds of millions of dollars each year to nonprofit groups, but the money rarely reaches organizations led by minorities, according to a Bay Area lawmaker seeking to regulate philanthropy.

Legislation proposed by Assemblyman Joe Coto, D-San Jose, would require the state's largest philanthropic foundations to disclose the race, gender and sexual orientation of staff and board members.

He hopes such information will push foundations to redirect their giving to a more diverse group of recipients in a state where nonwhites make up more than 57 percent of the population.

But foundations across the country are fighting the bill, saying the reporting requirements are irrelevant, onerous, unnecessary and violate the privacy of those who dedicate their lives to helping disadvantaged people regardless of race or ethnicity.

A harsh attack is under way in the right wing blogosphere where Coto -- a Mexican-American whose legislation often highlights disparities between whites and nonwhites -- has been branded a racist.

"To this Democrat Assemblyman your race is more important than your deeds," wrote conservative blogger Stephen Frank of Ventura County, who says he has tens of thousands of readers.

"Bigots are concerned about the color of your skin. Whether doing right or wrong, they care about color and sex first."

Coto did not return numerous phone messages and e- mails seeking comment on his legislation, AB 624, which passed the Assembly on a partisan vote.

The measure is sponsored by the Berkeley-based Greenlining Institute, which wrote the first draft of Coto's legislation and conducted research that found in 2006 only 3.6 percent of grant dollars from the nation's top 24 private foundations went to minority-led organizations.

Minority-led organizations were those defined as nonprofits where the total composition of staff and boards was at least 50 percent nonwhite.

The lack of funding, said Greenlining's executive director, John Gamboa, means minorities are being shut out from programs, services and critical public-policy discussions.

"Foundations work in the dark. There's no oversight; there's no reporting regulations on them," he said, "and because nobody knows what they're doing -- I think unintentional on their part -- they have excluded minority-led organizations."

Foundation executives say the controversial measure distorts the effect of philanthropy because, no matter which nonprofits receive grants, there's a high likelihood that members of minority groups will benefit from the money provided, given California's demographics and the issues being funded.

Coto's measure would require every private, corporate and public foundation with assets of more than $250 million to post the composition of its staff and board on the organization's Web site.

egarcia(at)mercurynews.com

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