Holding the Line: Defending LGBTI movements in the 2025 Funding Crisis

Advocate to foundation boards for an emergency release of reserves

• We have hit an inflection point for the future of democracy. Philanthropic institutions must meet the crisis by releasing more than the minimum required payout for foundations. As recently as 2020, foundations acted with urgency in the face of the crisis posed by COVID-19. This moment similarly calls for bold action on the part of philanthropy to release funds for LGBTI movements and others who serve as the frontline defenders of democratic societies.
• Commit new funding to global LGBTI movements as part of GPP’s Fund Our Futures Campaign, which responds to this crisis by seeking to mobilize $150M in new pledged funding by June 2025.

Provide maximum flexibility to grantees

• Provide maximum flexibility to grant budgets and timelines so that grantees’ full attention can focus on response to their evolving situations. Funders are encouraged to act quickly to loosen restrictions on funding for grantees by: 

• Reduce the burden on grantees and ensure their security. Funders are encouraged to review their due diligence requirements to ensure the information they request from grantees is absolutely necessary and treated with a high level of security. 

Bolster the resilience of LGBTI movements to withstand attacks

• Many LGBTI civil society organizations are unprepared for the range of attacks that will affect their ability to continue operating. Funders can provide short-term support for holistic security to organizations and staff, including: 

• Increase support to LGBTI movements in high-risk contexts where violence, discrimination, and criminalization are prevalent. Support movements in contexts where anti-gender ideology is likely to be instrumentalized in the lead up to national elections. This is particularly important in countries with ODA budgets on the line, as well as in global “hotspots” of anti-gender/rights activity.

Do no harm

• Review portfolios to ensure grants are not inadvertently funding the opposition, gender restrictive movements or trans-exclusionary projects. Because organizations’ positions on LGBTI rights are changing rapidly as the opposition gains strength, funders should pay particular attention to grants to faith-based organizations and groups that operate in global anti-gender hotspots.
• Ensure that existing grantee records and data retention policies, data collection processes, and any public materials are evaluated to reduce risk to grantee partners operating in closing or closed space.
• Support grantmakers to participate in GPP’s Trans-Inclusive Grantmaking Training to improve strategies for global trans funding and serve as a bulwark against anti-trans agendas being promoted and enacted by anti-gender actors, political parties, national governments, and religious institutions.

Use an ecosystem approach to guide decisions

• Support LGBTI movements to convene as soon as possible to identify critical infrastructure at the national, regional, and global levels that must be preserved. Integrate these recommendations into decisions about triage and long-term philanthropic strategy.
• Working in coordination with other funders in the sector, identify organizations that are critical to the LGBTI funding ecosystem and must be preserved. Assess the risks for these organizations and work collaboratively to mitigate them.
• Harvest best practices from prior field disruptions, keeping the focus on the health of the funding ecosystem rather than individual organizations. Deploy rapid movement coordination models to help organizations transform, merge, or otherwise mitigate the changes for the best interests of the field. Share processes to help transfer knowledge and expertise between organizations for the benefit of the field as a whole.

Build for the long-term while funding crisis response

• Convert short-term (1-3 year) grants to long-term (8-10 year) grants to key LGBTI organizations in each region. Embed support for these organizations within your institution by helping them build relationships across program teams, and encouraging their integration with other areas of work and different sectors of the field.
• Initiate conversations about sustaining key LGBTI organizations over the long-term through property purchases, land grants, and endowments. This may require converting some funding allocated to program grants towards organizational sustainability. Provide extra support for organizations seeking to diversify their funding sources.
• As organizations start to close or merge, philanthropy can develop creative mechanisms to reduce further disruption to the field. A priority should be designing mechanisms to allow LGBTI movement leaders to remain connected to the field and preserve or transfer their knowledge and expertise. Program Related Investments (PRIs) such as fellowships for leaders or interest-free loans will help bolster organizations facing particular risks. 

Increase donor coordination and joint responses to the crisis

• Coordinate with other funders to tackle the difficult questions about the future of the movement, including how to:

• Resist setting up new funding mechanisms (e.g. delays in grantmaking, limited resources and institutional constraints), make every effort to utilize existing (collaborative) funding mechanisms. Contact GPP for suggestions on funding mechanisms that are well-placed to address the current funding crisis with an influx of additional resources.
• Monitor the field and philanthropic community for duplicate efforts and actively work to connect key partners and streamline responses. Foundation staff should actively listen for opportunities to consolidate work and resource coordinated efforts. 

Work collaboratively across sectors and bridge historic funding silos

• The crisis presents an opportunity for SRHR, HIV, feminist, and LGBTI funders to work collaboratively across fields that have been historically siloed. Similarly, it creates opportunities for foundations to work across portfolios to bolster support for LGBTI movements in other sectors, such as democracy and civic space, broader human rights, and climate. Ensure staff representing your institution in various donor networks actively coordinate internally. Creating internal working groups that meet regularly to share information within foundations will facilitate holistic responses that better serve the field over the long term. 

Level-set expectations about the role of philanthropy in responding to crisis 

• The funding crisis is unfolding on many fronts, with cross-cutting impacts across portfolios. Through staff and grantee consultation, leadership in each institution should discern which funding gaps the institution is best positioned to address, recognizing that one institution cannot address all.
• While foundations may not be able to replace the gap in government funding (including the ODA cuts by U.S. and Dutch governments), this is an opportunity to reimagine funding structures and tools to support the LGBTI global movement in an environment of reduced government assistance worldwide.

Scale investments with expert partners

• Advocate internally for institutional participation in partnerships with donor governments, corporate foundations, and individual donors to leverage more resources for LGBTI communities. Contact GPP to learn more about participating in donor leverage tables such as those GPP has brokered with the Equal, Safe, and Free Fund (U.K.).

Explore innovative financing mechanisms

• Leverage alternative financing models developed by other movements to mobilize new resources for LGBTI communities. Examples include: (1) blended finance structures which combine public, private, and philanthropic capital to de-risk investments in renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure, and (2) gender-focused social impact investing models, like gender-lens investing and outcome-based financing channel capital toward projects that advance economic equity for women and marginalized communities. Similar approaches could be adapted to LGBTI movements, such as social bonds that fund employment and housing for LGBTI people or provide catalytic capital to scale grassroots organizations. Traditional philanthropy can engage by offering first-loss capital to de-risk investments (PRI), funding technical assistance, and aligning grantmaking with these models to unlock new, sustainable funding streams for LGBTI rights and inclusion. Contact GPP if you are interested in this work.