Inequities in the Cultural Data Infrastructure: Insights from Two Recent Studies

Good data on the scope and composition of the nonprofit arts, culture, and humanities is fundamental to making assessments of equity and inequity in the subsector. This chapter reports on findings from two recent studies that show how the privileges of financial data and data on larger organizations skew portrayals of the subsector. The chapter discusses why and how these biases toward financial data and larger organizations are built into the nonprofit infrastructure and concludes with suggestions about how to address this critical weakness in our research capacity.