Taxpayers Are Funding ‘Whites Need Not Apply’ Charity Grants. The IRS Must Stop It

A Portland, Oregon, nonprofit organization called the Avenue Foundation gives $1,000 grants, marketing consulting, and coaching sessions to small businesses. There’s one catch. Applicants must be at least 50% owned by someone who is black, indigenous, or a person of color. White business owners aren’t invited to apply. The foundation’s own grant application says so in plain English.

I’ve spent three decades advising fiduciaries on what they can and can’t do with money entrusted to a charitable purpose. Avenue Foundation is running race-based gatekeeping under a 501(c)(3) determination letter, and it’s exactly the kind of arrangement the IRS has the legal authority, and now the political mandate, to shut down.

The American Alliance for Equal Rights filed a complaint against Avenue Foundation with the IRS this month, and the underlying facts aren’t in dispute. Avenue Foundation’s own website states its “Avenues of Impact” grant program is designed to support BIPOC-owned small businesses. The application form asks whether the business is majority BIPOC-owned and offers no path for a white-owned business to qualify, regardless of need, mission, or merit. Applicants must also show proof of Oregon business registration and a purpose-driven mission, but race is the only criterion in the entire application that excludes a class of owners outright. The foundation’s 2024 Form 990 shows it distributed $111,658 in grants under this criterion in its first year of operation.

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Plenty of DEI-branded programs across corporate and nonprofit America have quietly kept race-based criteria in place since the 2023 Harvard ruling, betting that enforcement would stay theoretical. Avenue Foundation is a useful test case precisely because the paper trail is so clean. There’s no ambiguity to litigate around, no disparate impact statistics to argue over. The application form says what it says.

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