In early 2024, Matthew Hart took a hard look at the upcoming elections around the world and worried that the outcomes did not look promising.
“What we knew was that the winds were not in our favor. The winds were not in our sail, and we saw all around the world a kind of moral panic,” said Hart, executive director of the Global Philanthropy Project, a network of funders for LGBTQ+ people internationally.
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Rising authoritarianism and religiously motivated political movements were mixing into a “toxic blend" that regularly targets trans, intersex and gay people, they said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Hart was among the philanthropic leaders who tried to prepare for not just changes under the Trump administration, but growing trends toward autocracy and crackdowns on human rights around the world.
As a result, last year, Global Philanthropy Project quietly launched a campaign called “Fund Our Futures” to raise money for LGBTQ+ organizations around the world. In November, they announced they had secured more than $100 million and have since raised the bar to try to bring in another $50 million. Donors will award the funds over the next three to five years and GPP will track their commitments.
Funders can be slow to respond to crises
While few anticipated the speed and breadth of the Trump administration's policy changes, Hart had seen funders grapple with fear and paralysis in moments of crisis.
“There’s a history in philanthropy that that you sort of wait and see. What’s going to happen?” Hart said. “We thought, ’Oh, we have got to get ahead of this. Because if we don’t secure the commitments now, we’re talking two years of internal, philanthropic field work that would need to be done.”
Phil Buchanan, president of The Center for Effective Philanthropy, said the early preparation will allow funders to identify and support organizations aligned with their goals. But he said, no funder can expect to always be accurate in their forecasting.
“Preparation is really important,” he said, “And then also, so is being responsive when the context looks different than what you prepared for.”
For example, few funders contemplated the wholesale termination of most U.S. foreign aid, which has had vast and cascading effects on organizations across every geography and issue. Trump singled out foundations with large endowments for investigation in one of his executive orders on diversity, equity and inclusion and in a memo in February, he accused many nonprofits who have received federal funding of engaging “in actions that actively undermine the security, prosperity, and safety of the American people."
Preparation can help funders decide how to act
Funders who support democracy movements in inhospitable environments have some experience adapting to these kinds of threats. Even so, Kellea Miller, executive director of the Human Rights Funders Network, said they were caught off guard.
“There are areas that Trump has very quickly shifted that we knew he would touch, but the scale and rapidity of it is beyond what most of us had imagined,” she said, adding that she had expected more action from Congress.
Starting in 2021, HRFN convened funders to coordinate their responses to crises like the presidential assassination Haiti and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Those conversations grew into a framework called Better Preparedness, which encourages foundations to consider in advance of a crisis how they want to react.
“So we’re not all funding the same groups and that we’re also able to distribute the risk and risk appetite in a way that we can’t if we’re not honest and and working together,” Miller said.
Miller said now in the U.S., funders of democracy and human rights movements worry the Trump administration will threaten their ability to operate.
“A lot of foundations are very, very cautious right now because they’re worried that their assets could be frozen. They’re concerned that they will be targeted politically,” she said.
LGBTQ+ communities were still disrupted
The commitments to the Fund Our Futures campaign represent a noticeable portion of the funding for groups that serve gay, transgender and intersex people around the world even as some government funding has been taken away.
In 2021-2022, private philanthropy and donor governments together gave $905 million to these groups, according to the most recent research by GPP.
Of that total, 20 foundations alone gave $522 million, or around 50% of the total, highlighting the importance of these private donations to supporting international LGBTQ+ communities. Sixteen governments and multilateral donors gave $175 million to LGBTQ+ groups, with the largest funder being the Netherlands.
As part of its dramatic reduction in U.S. foreign aid, the Trump administration has also ended its policy of supporting the rights of LGBTQ+ people abroad, which the Biden administration had made a priority. In an exit memo from January, USAID staff under Biden wrote that the agency increased funding for programs for LBGTQ+ communities abroad from $6 million in 2021 to $25 million in 2024.
The Netherlands and another major funder of LGBTQ+ communities, Sweden, both recently announced cuts to their foreign assistance. Canada, which is another major funder, has so far not changed their commitments.
Even with the new resources in the pipeline, the cuts from government funders have significantly disrupted groups that serve LGBTQ+ communities, Hart said. In their view, every philanthropic dollar they can raise will help save the lives of trans, intersex and gay people around the world, who will be under greater attack as support for democracy more broadly falters.
“Gender justice, feminist movements, freedom of movement and LGBTI people are all being attacked at the same time,” Hart said. “That is a fundamental disruption to some of the core tenets of how modern democracy was proposed to function.”
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