Equitable Grantmaking: How Federal Grants Can Advance (or Hinder) Equity
Let’s not sugarcoat it. Equity in federal grantmaking is under siege.
As of October 2025, we’re watching in real time as the hard-won momentum around equitable funding practices is outright reversing. Language around “underserved” and “marginalized” has disappeared from federal RFPs. Evaluation rubrics no longer require disaggregated data. Equity-centered technical assistance has been slashed.
And the result? Communities that were already underfunded, Black, Indigenous, rural, immigrant, and others, are once again being pushed to the margins of federal funding conversations. Even though rural areas are ostensibly a priority for this administration, we are seeing the same issues play out. I’m writing this blog mostly from the perspective of how the removal of DEI language and general federal grant accessibility is and will continue to hurt rural communities.
I spend more time writing about equity as it relates to racially minoritized organizations and communities. But many of the same issues play out for rural populations.
While federal policy is shifting backward, we still have tools, voice, and strategy. Let’s look at what’s changed.
The Equity Retreat: What We’re Seeing in 2025
In 2021, the Biden Administration issued a government-wide executive order requiring agencies to embed equity into their operations. We saw historic outreach, community listening sessions, and new equity-focused grant programs. Did it always translate into equity? No. But many organizations that had not felt like they could succeed with federal grants were being explicitly invited in. And that was a shift.
2025? That landscape is looking very different.
Here’s what’s happening:
Equity language is being stripped from funding opportunity announcements.
Data requirements have softened, meaning fewer incentives to track racial or geographic disparities.
Funding favors large, institutionally connected applicants, even in programs intended for “underserved” areas.
Smaller organizations are getting shut out by shortened application windows. We predict the days of 2-week application windows are over for now, but the damage is done.
Federal grantmaking has returned to its default setting: rewarding the resourced and overlooking the proximate.
A Familiar Divide: Urban Dominance, Rural Exclusion
The urban-rural divide in funding isn’t new. But it’s been made worse by recent shifts, even as rural organizations suddenly find themselves in the spotlight.
Urban-based nonprofits, often with full-time grant staff and federal experience, are swooping into rural areas and winning grants written “about” the community, but not with it. And if we take a step back, we see this is similar to what happens in racially minoritized communities in both urban and rural areas.
Rural organizations, many led by trusted local leaders, are missing out because they lack the time, staff, or administrative scaffolding to navigate complex federal applications. Again, check out the similarities to racially minoritized communities.
Often at the heart of these challenges is two-fold:
There is less philanthropic funding going to rural nonprofits. Over time, this means less resources for scale, growing capacity, and landing top talent that can help organizations reach their full potential.
It’s a power problem. The same power dynamics that play out in society often play out within the philanthropic/nonprofit sector.
When national orgs win rural grants and hire locally as an afterthought, they’re not partnering. That is not partnership. Partnership requires TWO OR MORE entities designing together, co-creating together. Not one entity handing out directives (with funding attached).
And far too frequently, the people most impacted are overlooked. They don’t get a seat at the decision-making table, let alone any control over project design or budget allocation.
What Grant Writers Can Still Do—Even Now
So, where does that leave us? Those of us writing grants, convening teams, and navigating this terrain daily?
It leaves us in a position of responsibility. Not to “fix” federal policy. None of us will do that alone. But we can take a look back at what was required under an administration trying to push for more equity in funding. We can look to Vu Le for ideas. We can resist harmful patterns, elevate community voice, and root our work in the truth about the past, even while still playing a game that, for the moment, requires us to shift our language in proposals.
I want to be clear about a couple of things:
We can shift our language in proposals to play the grant writing game, AND we can still act from an equity perspective.
We need to be clear with stakeholders that we are changing our language, why we are doing so, clearly stating where commitments internally may differ, and getting to consensus that language change is acceptable in this scenario.
1. Push for True Collaboration
If your organization is based in a city and applying for rural work, pause. Ask:
Who’s already doing this work?
Are they a subcontractor or a co-lead?
Do they have decision-making power over design, implementation, and evaluation?
Don’t write a proposal about them. Write one with them, or not at all.
2. Budget for Equity, Even When the RFP Doesn’t Ask You To
Even if the feds aren’t mandating community input, you can build it in:
Stipends for community members advising your project
Costs for translation, transportation, and accessibility
Time for rural partners to lead, not just implement
What we need are real, reciprocal relationships. That means:
Letting local orgs lead evaluations
Building budgets together
Sharing outcomes and learning in public, not just in reports
Federal grant systems may be drifting backward, but that doesn’t mean we have to follow.