Kresge Foundation President Rip Rapson is turning up the heat on environmental funders who have yet to voluntarily disclose their diversity data as a step toward making the green movement more inclusive and reflective of the communities they serve.

In an opinion piece published by the San Francisco Chronicle, Rapson laid out the case for funders, environmental groups and other nonprofits to share the makeups of their staff and boards.

“When people of color and other underrepresented groups are fully embedded and valued in our organizations, we are stronger, more aware, and better equipped to connect with our partners in meaningful, powerful, and personal ways,” Rapson wrote.

Rapson and other foundation heads joined with several partners a year ago to ask key environmental funders to share their data. The initiative came in the wake of a report documenting the monoculture within mainstream environmental groups and funders. The partners calling for data sharing includes Green 2.0 – an initiative dedicated to increasing racial diversity across the green movement; D5 – a coalition to advance philanthropy’s diversity, equity and inclusion; and GuideStar, an organization that tracks data for nonprofits.

Despite repeated entreaties from the coalition, progress among funders has been sluggish.

“I wish I could report that all this has lit a fire under environmental funders. Unfortunately, however, that’s not yet the case,” wrote Rapson. Of the nation’s top 40 environmental funders, only 12 have disclosed their data on GuideStar. Green 2.0 is updating the status of those organizations here, and has issued this press release with excerpts from Rapson’s Chronicle piece.

Rapson acknowledges that the Kresge Foundation has a lot of work to do in order to make its staff and board match its diversity ideals; but notes that disclosure is an important step. Kresge recently asked its own environmental grantees to provide diversity data to GuideStar.