Three years (yes, only three) have passed since the U.S. Supreme Court issued the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, unraveling nearly 50 years of precedent and stripping away the constitutional right to abortion care and services. In those three years, abortion access has not just been diminished; it has been criminalized, surveilled, disincentivized, and twisted into a weapon of confusion, shame, and fear.

But the frontlines of abortion access have made it loud and clear that we are no longer in a post-Dobbs moment. We are in a rebuilding one, and it requires clarity, courage, and community.

As a Black reproductive justice organizer working parallel to the philanthropic sector, I hold many contradictions. I am both a survivor of this system and a strategist inside it. I’m brought into decision-making spaces, but the dynamics in the room often leave me feeling like I have to earn my right to stay. But I stay because I believe deeply in the power of moving resources toward liberation, especially when done in solidarity with the movements that got us here and will continue to lead us forward.

At NCRP, we have spent the past five years walking alongside abortion leaders, deepening our accountability, and confronting our own missteps in this work. We’ve studied what didn’t work, we’ve amplified what did, and we’ve consistently reminded this sector that abortion is essential healthcare and funding it is both legally sound and morally urgent.

In this moment, philanthropy has a choice to make. Will you stand behind sanitized statements and cautious commitments? Or will you meet this moment with the kind of bold, transformative solidarity that reproductive justice movements deserve? Right now, we are witnessing the resurgence of a fierce and targeted backlash against the most vulnerable, facing the most obstacles to abortion access.

The number of states enforcing total or near-total abortion bans has doubled. While Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) are taking in eight times the support of actual abortion providers in 2021. Meanwhile, CPCs, misleading, anti-abortion institutions, have grown in both scope and funding. These organizations weaponize fear through disinformation campaigns, racism by co-opting Black maternal health narratives and practices, and faith through shame-based counseling that manipulates and controls. Their rise is not a side effect; it is a strategy. A moment that requires funders to get clear about who they are funding and why. Rebuilding trust with the people most harmed by Dobbs starts with action, not optics.

Watch: Emergency Funder Briefing After SB8

To help funders understand the stakes and legal realities on the ground, NCRP, alongside Funders for Reproductive Equity (FRE), Women’s Funding Network (WFN), and United Philanthropy Forum, co-hosted an emergency funder call following the implementation of Texas SB8. This moment of legal crisis revealed not just how quickly rights can be stripped, but how essential coordinated philanthropic response is.

In the video, you’ll hear from Rosann Mariappuram (Jane’s Due Process), Elise Belusa (Tara Health Foundation), and Dr. Ghazaleh Moayedi (Pegasus Health Justice Center) as they offer concrete insights into how philanthropy can show up, not just legally, but with urgency and impact.

As an abortion organizer at the margins and intersections I exist in, I know that fear—particularly fear masked as legality—has long been used to stall liberation. Philanthropy is not exempt. But let’s be clear, while the legal terrain may be complex, it is not impossible. In fact, you have more room to act than you think.

Know your rights. Here are ten truths every funder must understand to move money boldly, safely, and legally in support of abortion access.

The Hyde Amendment Restricts Federal Dollars. Not Yours.

The Hyde Amendment prohibits the use of federal funds for most abortion care, but that restriction doesn’t extend to private or philanthropic giving. By no means are private foundations bound by Hyde, or the restrictions implemented by the state. Stop letting government limitations create artificial boundaries in your strategy.

Advocacy, Education, and Organizing Are Fully Permissible Under 501(c)(3) Law.

You can fund voter education, you can support policy changes, and you can even invest in organizing. The IRS permits 501(c)(3) nonprofits (and their funders) to engage in a range of grassroots organizing. What’s restricted is lobbying. You know the difference between community-building, grassroots-organizing, and lobbying activities. A risk-averse definition of lobbying is so broad that it could limit very legal grassroots organizing work. Don’t let conservative interpretations prevent you from investing in the broader abortion framework.

Unrestricted Giving Isn’t Just Easier. It’s Safer and Smarter.

Restricted funds can create legal risk when they’re too narrow or specific, while general operating support gives abortion organizers and providers the flexibility to respond to real-time threats, needs, and opportunities, while protecting both them and you from compliance issues. Unrestricted money is not a luxury; it’s a shield and a strategy.

Practical Support Is Fundable and Essential.

Need to help someone get to a clinic? Pay for their hotel? Cover childcare? You can fund all of that. Travel, lodging, abortion doulas, childcare, and translation are not “extras.” They are essential infrastructure. Private funders are legally allowed to support these services, especially through general support grants or our intermediary partners.

Legal Defense and Safety Planning Are Fundable Too.

Many of the people doing abortion work are under surveillance or facing criminalization. Funders can and must support grantees’ access to legal counsel, digital and physical security, and risk mitigation strategies. This is harm reduction.

Understand the Legal Landscape.

Abortion is being criminalized across state lines, and it is essential that funders stay informed on state-specific laws that could impact grantees or partners operating in multiple jurisdictions. Partner with legal experts to understand where your funding flows and what risks may exist, but don’t assume risk means inaction.

Private Philanthropy Is Not Governed by Title X or Medicaid.

Title X and Medicaid have strict federal rules, but they don’t govern your private giving. You are not constrained by those systems, even when your grantees operate within or alongside them. We urge you not to confuse what’s prohibited for the government with what’s prohibited for you (the funder); they are not the same.

Don’t Let Bad Legal Advice Drive Your Strategy.

There is a difference between legal counsel and fear-based decision-making. We’ve seen too many funders have accepted overcautious interpretations of nonprofit law, missing critical opportunities to act. Legal risk is real, but it’s navigable when working with reproductive justice-informed legal teams who understand movement realities, not just institutional liability.

Yes, You Can Fund International Abortion Work with Care.

The Helms Amendment and related policies do not ban all international abortion funding; they ban the use of U.S. foreign assistance for abortion services. But you, as a private funder, can support reproductive health work globally when you are following the wins of intermediaries and advisory from compliance support. Don’t abandon the global South out of confusion.

Storytelling Is a Legal, Strategic, and Powerful Investment.

You can fund media, you can support podcasts, you can be creative, and invest in art, research, documentation, and narrative strategy. These are not just legally safe, but they are essential for shifting culture, fighting stigma, and reclaiming power. We don’t win without story.

We urge our philanthropic peers to:

Fund without restriction. General operating support is not only safer for your grantees, it is smarter for the work.
Support practical care. Travel, lodging, abortion doulas, and childcare are not extras, they are critical infrastructure.
Invest in narrative power. The backlash has always been a battle for hearts, minds, and control. Narrative strategy, digital storytelling, and cultural organizing are essential to long-term change.
Back risk mitigation. That includes legal defense, security planning, and care teams for those under surveillance or threat.
Increase legal literacy. Cut through fear-driven misinterpretations of 501(c)(3) law. Don’t let bad legal advice drive your strategy.
Join us in building a deeper, collective analysis. NCRP’s Funding the Frontlines Roadmap, We Told You So, and Building an Uncompromising Movement for Abortion Access are living documents. Study them. Debate them. Use them to strengthen your own work.

And just as important, show the hell up. Join movement spaces willing to challenge how wealth is used, so your proximity to it becomes a resource for shifting power and deepening resistance. This fall, meet us at the Women’s Funding Network’s Feminist Funded conference on the Capitol steps. Become a member of Funders for Reproductive Equity and engage in values-aligned strategy building alongside movement leaders and fellow funders. Attend the CHANGE Unity Summit. These aren’t just convenings. These gatherings are laboratories for collective learning, and more importantly, accountability.

I do this work grounded in a reproductive justice framework; because the vision built on the right to have a child, not have a child, and raise a child with dignity requires more than legal protections. It requires resources, imagination, and care. That’s why I also root my organizing in healing justice because our sector cannot be brave if we are disconnected from our own humanity, our own lineages of resistance, and the wisdom of communities that have survived genocide, eugenics, and abandonment.

Philanthropy must match the scale of this moment with the scale of its response. The anti-abortion movement is not confused. It is coordinated, well-resourced, patient, and winning. But we can change that.

To our frontline partners and movement siblings: We thank you. You are the force behind this movement, and no court can match the strength of your conviction

To funders: We ask that you declare yourselves a safe space for abortion funding. That you rebuild trust with the field, not through branding exercises, but through budget lines. That you name and confront the ways that the sector’s aversion to risk has delayed urgent care, undermined movement leadership, and let CPCs flourish in the vacuum.

You don’t have to do this alone. In fact, you shouldn’t be. Declare your commitment and invite your peers to make their institutions a safe space for abortion funding.

In honor of the 3rd anniversary of the Dobbs decision, let’s rebuild what Dobbs tried to destroy.

Brandi Collins-Calhoun is the Movement Engagement Manager at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP). A writer, educator and reproductive justice organizer, they lead the organization’s Reproductive Access and Gendered Violence portfolio of work.

Contact: Russell Roybal | rroybal@ncrp.org
Jennifer Amuzie | jamuzie@ncrp.org

NCRP’s Newest Publication Gives Funders Tools To Combat Authoritarianism

The Summer 2025 Issue of Responsive Philanthropy highlights the stories and data that funders must use to address authoritarianism

WASHINGTON, DC – On the heels of rising political violence, an increasingly authoritarian executive, and weakening institutions, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) published the Summer 2025 issue of the Responsive Philanthropy journal, Supporting Data and Stories that Fight Authoritarianism. This issue gives important context and guidance, offers examples of people-led resistance that have worked, and highlights the crucial role that narrative and research play in fighting fascism, so that grantmakers can meet this moment with the effectiveness that it deserves.

This means that progressive funders must invest in narrative change work, democracy and community-building funders must also fund c4 and overt political activities, and all funders across the philanthropic sector must recognize that the work of beating back authoritarianism is an ongoing exercise. “Nonprofit organizations who are being threatened are not shrinking back, because they recognize the threat to democracy and civil society is even greater,” says NCRP president and CEO Aaron Dorfman. “Philanthropy must be just as bold. Now is not the time to be meek.”

This issue of Responsive Philanthropy features essays from organizers, researchers, funders and movement leaders, all with powerful perspectives on how to buck the trend of rising fascism, and features cover art from New York-based visual artist Pyaari Azaadi.

INSIDE THE ISSUE

The following articles and all past issues of Responsive Philanthropy are available on NCRP’s website, ncrp.org:

Seeing the Whole Battlefield: Why Philanthropy Must Fund Data and Story Like Democracy Depends on It

Race Forward Executive Vice President and NCRP Board Member Eric Ward taps into his experience as a longtime civil rights strategist to assert “One of the first targets of any authoritarian movement isn’t the vote – it’s the voice.” He urges philanthropy to stop working in silos and putting our individual fires and instead look to address the arsonist – regressive funding networks supporting narrative.

Nothing Siloed Can Save Us and Nonpartisan Non-profits Alone Aren’t the Solution

Ludovic Blain challenges funders to protect vulnerable communities, including investing in electoral work. His success stories from California Donor Table are a lesson that coordinated funding leads to real wins for equity and justice.

Data and Democracy in America

NCRP’s Research Director Ryan Schlegel reminds us that today’s rise in authoritarianism is the result of long-term, strategic investment in anti-democratic civil society, and further, that American history is full well-funded anti-democratic civic groups. The only way to beat back the worst American instincts is a long-term, strategic investment in democracy.

Act Now Before It’s Too Late

ActionAid International’s Secretary General Arthur Larok and ActionAid USA’s Executive Director Niranjali Amerasinghe bring a global perspective: Americans are not alone in their fight against authoritarian power and have much to learn from communities of resistance around the world. They share an urgent message, “When an organization comes to you with a plan for supporting a vulnerable community, fighting the latest executive power grab, or engaging more people in the movement, fund it! Even if it doesn’t fit squarely in the 5-year strategy, fund it anyway! That strategy will likely be meaningless in 5 years if you don’t.”

Building the Democratic World We Want Through Anti-Authoritarian Storytelling

22nd Century Initiative’s co-founder and director Scot Nakagawa writes, “We must recognize that counter-authoritarian storytelling isn’t just about better messaging, it’s about building the Democratic world we want through the very practice of telling stories together.”

ABOUT NCRP

The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) has served as philanthropy’s critical friend and independent watchdog since 1976. For nearly 50 years, NCRP’s storytelling, advocacy, and research efforts have fostered transparency and accountability within the sector, and helped funders fulfill their moral and practical duty to build, share, and wield power to serve the public.

Carlton V. Bell II

Respectability politics has long cast a heavy shadow over the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. For those of us organizing at the intersections of sex work, Black liberation, trans justice, and bodily autonomy, this shadow is more than metaphorical. It’s a material barrier and systemic obstacle, a locked door to funding, to inclusion, to legitimacy. Respectability politics polices not only what is said and how it’s said, but who is even allowed to speak, survive, and thrive.

As someone who has lived, organized, and now funds at these intersections, I write this with the urgency of someone who has seen how these politics kill visions, silence movements, and perpetuate harm — even in the name of “justice.”

At Third Wave Fund’s Sex Worker Giving Circle (SWGC), we champion the voices that frequently hit roadblocks in our movements, and we call it out. We’ve got to name the truth: sex worker-led organizing is routinely expected to sanitize, shrink, and assimilate itself into frameworks that were never designed with us in mind. These frameworks often demand narratives of redemption, respectability, or reform that evoke pity rather than power. We’re told to tone it down, clean it up, make it make sense for people who’ve never had to trade their body, their gender expression, or their intimacy for survival.

And in exchange, we might get a grant. We might get a seat at the table, but only if we don’t rock the boat. We might get funded, but only if we perform our pain and pleasure in the “right” way.

But what does that performance cost us?

The Tax of Respectability

In the philanthropic landscape, sex worker-led organizations are often asked to do what others aren’t. We must prove we are not “too risky.” We must provide receipts for respectability, not just metrics. This is one small reason why SWGC utilizes a constantly evolving and interrogated “low-barrier” application process. We must center storytellers that align with a funder’s risk management plan, not our community’s liberation goals.

That tax — that additional labor — is not neutral. It’s rooted in white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, and anti-Blackness. It assumes that those closest to harm are incapable of articulating or leading the solutions to that harm. It perpetuates a cycle where funders pour money into research about us, but rarely into efforts led by us. Where the bodies of sex workers are sources of inspiration, curiosity, or saviorism, but not deserving of agency, infrastructure, or care.

It also reinforces the false binary of the “deserving” versus “undeserving” sex worker. If you’re college-educated, if you’ve left the industry, if your story ends in transformation or trauma — you’re palatable. But if you’re still working, still surviving, still resisting — suddenly you’re too complicated, too political, too much.

Respectability politics conditions funders to equate safety with distance from lived experience. But what gets lost when we sanitize our stories? What truths die on the cutting room floor?

Black Trans Femme Beautiful - by Ebin Lee

Risk Isn’t the Enemy — Disconnection Is

Philanthropy often talks a good game about equity, justice, and “centering the margins,” but when it comes time to move money, fear takes the wheel. Conservative funders worry: What if our grantees get arrested? What if a board member doesn’t understand this work? What if we lose donors? What if we get it wrong?

But here’s a more urgent question: What is the cost of avoiding risk? Playing it safe in this moment — when trans folks, sex workers, migrants, and people living with HIV are being legislated out of existence — is the risk. It is a risk to our collective liberation, our interdependent futures, and our moral clarity.

Risk assessment looks different for folx living within the margins of the margins. Sex workers exist across ALL movements, and from my experience have a more nuanced lens on interacting with what most people (especially in philanthropy) might label as “Risky”.

When funders avoid risk, they lose more than reputational capital. They lose connection to the most radical, imaginative, and necessary edge of our movements. They lose the opportunity to be in authentic, accountable relationships with people who know how to survive systems that philanthropy only writes white papers about.

They lose proximity to truth in the name of privilege and capital. And when you lose proximity to truth, your strategy is compromised.

What Would It Mean to Fund Without Preconditions?

Funding sex worker-led work without preconditions would mean trusting our grantee partners. It would mean refusing to make trauma porn a prerequisite for funding. It would mean shifting from “prove your worth” to “what do you need?”

It would mean following the lead of programs LIKE the Sex Worker Giving Circle at Third Wave Fund; it means giving multi-year, unrestricted support to groups who are already leading the work — not waiting for them to prove levels and levels of legitimacy.

It would mean choosing discomfort over detachment.

It would also mean acknowledging that sex worker-led organizing isn’t ancillary to movements for gender justice, reproductive justice, or racial justice — it is those movements. The fight for bodily autonomy doesn’t stop at abortion. It doesn’t stop at gender-affirming care. It doesn’t stop at labor rights. It includes the right to trade sex, to define your labor, to demand dignity.

If you “can’t” fund without preconditions, this is where intermediary funders (like Third Wave Fund) can really be of benefit to all parties.

Where Do We Go from Here?

This may come across as a rant– but it ain’t. This is not a call-out. This is a call-in to those of us responsible for stewarding funding to these communities— with clarity and care.

We need philanthropy to do more than update its language. We need it to change its posture. We need funders to get closer to the ground, to trust the leadership of people who live what they’re funding, and to let go of the paternalism that frames sex workers as beneficiaries instead of experts.

We need to decolonize professionalism. To unlearn the idea that political polish is more valuable than community power. To remember that our movements were birthed in bathhouses, bars, and back alleys — not boardrooms.

As a former fellow and advisor of the SWGC at Third Wave Fund, I’m proud to now be a full-time staff member as the Program Associate. The SWGC is one model of what it looks like to redistribute resources in ways that center sex worker-led, community-rooted solutions. But we need more. We need a field-wide reckoning with how funding practices continue to replicate the very harms they claim to redress.

We need to be unbought, unbossed, and unbowed — in our giving and in our organizing.

So, to my sex worker kin: you are not the problem. You are the blueprint.

To my fellow organizers: keep pushing. Keep dreaming. Keep disrupting.

And to my fellow funders: be honest about your fears. Then move anyway.

Let’s fund like it.

#SexWorkIsWork #FundUsLikeYouWantUsToWin #LiberationNotLegibility

Carlton V. Bell II “cj” (they/them) is a Southern producer, director, and grassroots cultural organizer who’s passionate about resourcing and building power for artists/and arts organizations led by folx living within the margins of the margins. They have a firm belief that culture/art is the missing piece to our liberation strategy. Carlton is a former fellow and advisor for the Sex Worker Giving Circle at Third Wave Fund as well as a former member of Third Wave Fund’s Advisory Board. Currently they serve as SETC’s VP of Finance, Program Associate of the SWGC at Third Wave Fund, Director of Development for Write It Out, and Producing Fellow at The Tank. They are also the Co-Founder of Birmingham Black Repertory Theatre Collective.

carltonvbell.com | @itscjbell | | @3wave | thirdwavefund.org/sex-worker-giving-circle

Image credit: Forward Together – “Black Trans Femme Beautiful” by Ebin Lee

Climate Justice Organizations’ Rally Cry is Echoing

Movement groups have spent years sending out the same rallying cry: “Fund the frontlines. Fund a Just Transition away from the fossil fuel-based economy. Listen to us. Support us.” Funders have seen countless funder briefings, closed door meetings, toxic tours, reports, zines, and conferences. This message from the ground, however, has remained clear. The climate crisis is dire, climate justice groups’ work is critical, and they need these resources.

And now? Our communities’ safety is at dire risk on a national scale not seen in recent memory. Movement leaders routinely have their personal information exposed and their lives threatened. Climate Change denialism is on the rise in the US. Wealthy people at top levels of government are slashing critical programs and laying off hundreds of staff responsible for the climate science needed to inform what frontline communities are already experiencing. Meanwhile, human induced climate change is accelerating, and the consequences are upending our lives and the stability of the ecosystems we depend on to survive.

Philanthropy, however, has not met this moment or answered this call to action with the resources necessary for change.

The ClimateWorks Foundation (CWF) has noted this in their own reports about the sector. Overall climate funding has increased, between $9.3 billion to $15.8 billion in 2023, an increase of around 20 percent from 2022 according to their 2024 Funding Trends report. Yet only $175 million, or between 1.1 and 1.8 percent, of those dollars go to “other climate mitigation strategies,” an overly broad category that includes climate justice and just transition giving along with several other categories. For context, “carbon dioxide removal,” a technology-centric scheme criticized by movement actors as a counter-productive false solution, alone received $60 million in the same period.

Climate funding remains top-down too, even as it grows. Just 3 percent of environmental grantees received half of all philanthropic dollars for the climate in 2021, according to the Environmental Grantmakers Association. Too often, a concentration of funding goes to large, already well-resourced organizations.

This is not the funding strategy of a philanthropic sector committed to justice and transformation. For that to change, the biggest actors in climate funding must take responsibility and lead the charge.

An Echo Chamber of Influence

ClimateWorks Foundation positions itself as the “global platform for philanthropy” on climate solutions. As one of the largest climate intermediaries they link larger institutional foundations with grantees and claim to “enable the climate philanthropy community to operate effectively for greater collective impact.” Given their mission, leadership role, and access to wealth and expertise, CWF could be one of the largest funders of frontline communities and their solutions for a just transition.

However, an analysis of their grantmaking from 2015, the earliest year of publicly available grantmaking data, to 2023, the most recent year available, shows that CWF only gave about 1 percent of their grantmaking directly to frontline organizations. When broadening the analysis to include broader environmental organizations and networks with some kind of accountability, connection, or partnership with the frontlines, that 1 percent only increases to 4 percent.

In eight years, the number of Big Green organizations received over double that amount. Furthermore, think tanks that specialize in policy analysis and research and other intermediaries without a frontline-centered approach received the largest share of ClimateWorks’ grantmaking.

With the resources and connections at their disposal, CWF could be a powerful player to strengthen the climate justice ecosystem and elevate frontline groups. They could help build relationships between grassroots groups and CWF’s own funders, expanding their network into places grantmakers might not otherwise reach. Unfortunately, CWF appears to intensify existing echo chambers rather than bring needed community voices to the table.

This is apparent in their own grantmaking. Since 2015, ClimateWorks has received over $1 billion in funding from 69 funders and granted nearly $700 million to 499 recipient organizations. Separate from their funding for ClimateWorks, those 69 funders have given an additional $8 billion to climate issues since 2015. Today, 83 percent of CWF’s direct grantmaking goes to grantees that ClimateWorks’ funders had not previously funded since at least 2015. Even with CWF’s fluctuating grantmaking, that percentage has nearly doubled over time, up from 44 percent between 2015 and 2023.

While an overlap in recipient organizations is expected for an intermediary, the scale of this insular giving against the backdrop of CWF’s neglect of frontlines climate justice organizations raises the question of whether ClimateWorks is achieving “greater collective impact” for the climate ecosystem — and who gets to benefit from it.

Beyond Grantmaking

ClimateWorks also exerts considerable influence on the philanthropic sector through its research and convening power. While they often receive less attention than its grantmaking, these strategies present a similar missed opportunity for CWF to elevate grassroots voices and strengthen the climate justice philanthropic ecosystem as a whole CWF publishes a trove of research into climate funding trends, for example, but none are written from frontline movement perspectives. Many focus heavily on technocratic solutions. This is a problem, because if CWF only publishes research that analyzes a specific set of solutions, then that is what their funders and climate philanthropy writ large will point to as valid. CWF would strengthen their research by instead validating that the frontlines have had working and scalable solutions for decades.

The same can be said for the Funders’ Table, a twice-yearly closed meeting facilitated by ClimateWorks for key institutional funders, CWF staff, and a few hand-picked grantees. CWF describes the Funders Table as “an informal collaboration . . . for dialogue and collaboration” that is “not a decision-making body,” but it is clear that the meeting plays a significant agenda-setting role for both its participants and sector conversations at large. While the publicly available details are opaque, each meeting appears to be hosted by a different funder, with the list of attendees varying depending on the meeting’s focus. Imagine the impact ClimateWorks could have if this body featured movement voices regularly and co-created that agenda together, rather than operating at a remove from the frontlines.

Some Minor Progress

ClimateWorks does do some things well. They support the Youth Climate Justice Fund as part of their $2 million commitment to Youth –led climate solutions, which “aims to support climate justice young leaders with trust-based funding, resources, and youth-to-youth capacity development, enabling them to amplify their voices and to keep their vision and influence alive.” CWF also operates a small $4 million (as of 2023 data) Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Fund (JEDI) which operates adjacent to ClimateWorks’ 15 program buckets and aims to support both US and International organizations working around climate and environmental justice. And lastly, they have a global just transitions program which is currently funding work in 4 countries: India, South Africa, Indonesia, and Vietnam with a $20 million investment. NCRP applauds these initiatives and recognizes that they are still not enough. The work of grassroots, frontline organizations should not be siloed to specific program buckets and should be centric to CWF’s funding and influence.

How to Help Build Frontline Power

When it comes to resourcing people most impacted by the climate crisis, we need all hands on deck. The climate crisis is dire than ever, federal climate protections are getting stripped away, and our communities can’t wait. Now is the time for ClimateWorks to redesign its grantmaking and influence strategy to center the frontlines, particularly smaller, place-based local organizations who are often left out of climate conversations.

NCRP invites ClimateWorks Foundation and its funders to dig deep and get uncomfortable, to be more transparent in their operations, and to be bold and invite frontline groups to sit in positions of power and influence on its board and within its executive leadership. This includes making space for frontline leaders at Funders Table meetings, at events that they host, and webinars they speak at. It also means seeding more frontline grantees throughout CWF’s program areas, rather than relegating them to external working groups or siloed within a small JEDI fund.

NCRP specifically calls on ClimateWorks to take the following actions:

Devote at least 25 percent of CWF’s total funding to frontline groups within 5 years.

Double the amount of money going to the JEDI Fund within 3 years.

Seed frontline grantees in every CWF portfolio within the next year.

Set a public goal to discuss frontline-led/supported work and its funding implications as a top priority.

Ensure direct frontline organizational representatives (not just intermediaries) represent at least 10 percent of attendees at every Funder Table meeting, starting with the next scheduled convening (in line at least with the percentage level they are funded at internally).

Publicly share the list of Funder Table participant funders (at least organizations) and high-level takeaways from Funder Table meetings.

As part of this campaign, NCRP will be sharing what other funders and funder intermediaries are doing to level the playing field for these groups as examples of how CWF can shift their practices. When applying the lens of a just transition, all of us have a duty to organize to stop the bad (part of which includes holding funders accountable) and to build the new. There is a wealth of data and reports that showcase what funders need to change, but not as much on how they can change. NCRP wants to be mindful of that and bring in the knowledge and expertise of those funders who have shifted their practices to include and center frontline knowledge into how they grant out their resources and support their grantees in building power and capacity.

This content will be coming out over the next 2 years along with NCRP’s continuing narrative strategy and change work around challenging billionaire philanthropy in the climate funding space.

Methodology
NCRP obtained all grantmaking data for ClimateWorks Foundation and its funders from Candid. Organizations were manually coded into each category by NCRP staff based on their primary mission and strategies described on each organization’s website:
Academic – educational organizations, primarily universities, that are also dedicated to scholarly research.

Advocacy organization – organizations that that influence public policy or public opinion using tactics such as coalition building, lobbying, public education, research, and/or policy analysis. Some advocacy organizations may have some some accountability to frontline communities, they function largely as “grasstops” organizations that leverage influence on behalf of a community or group of people.

Big Green – large legacy environmental organizations that largely focus on conservation and wildlife preservation that have historically been well resourced. Big Green organizations may sometimes regrant funding to frontline organizations.

Intermediary – organizations that receive funding from larger donors or institutional funders to regrant and distribute to nonprofits.

Frontline Connections – Organizations with frontline connections include broader advocacy organizations, networks, or Big Green legacy environmental organizations with some kind of accountability, connection, or partnership with the frontlines.

Frontline Organization – organizations that are led by, or primarily serve communities that are impacted most by climate change and its root causes, including white supremacy, patriarchy, and colonization, and are also accountable to frontline community members.

Multiple International NGOs – organizations labeled in Candid as “multiple recipients” aggregated by regions, such as “Multiple East Asia and the Pacific recipients,” Multiple South America Recipients,” etc.

Think Tank – organizations whose primary role is to conduct research and analysis around particular issues to influence policy.

Other – includes professional alliances or networks, climate finance organizations, consultants, media organizations, and miscellaneous organizations.

According to Candid, ClimateWorks Foundation gave grants to 499 recipients between 2015-2023, the years for which funding data was available for CWF. Of those 499 recipients, 8 were aggregated into the “Multiple Recipients” category with a corresponding region. Because this category is an aggregation of multiple individual organizations, it was not possible to determine the strategies and roles of each individual grantee in this category. NCRP staff manually coded the remaining 491 recipients.
These recipients also include intermediaries that received funding from ClimateWorks Foundation to regrant to other organizations, and our analysis does not include any regranting from intermediary recipients of CWF.In order to determine common grantees of CWF and CWF’s funders, NCRP also used Candid to identify the 69 foundations that gave funding to ClimateWorks Foundation. NCRP then analyzed the grants of those 69 foundations that were related to climate issues, using a combination of subject codes:

Air quality
Climate change
Energy resources
Environmental and resource rights
Environmental justice
Forest preservation
Sustainable agriculture
Water access, sanitation and hygiene

After identifying all the climate related grants, we then isolated all the common recipients that received funding from both ClimateWorks Foundation and at least one of its 69 funders in the same year.

NCRP launches the second phase of our Climate Justice and Just Transition campaign: holding climate funders accountable for their continued underfunding of these necessary frontline organizations with this special 2-part blog. Look out for part 2, where NCRP will dig further into CWF’s grantmaking data, including the increase in overlapped funding for non-frontline organizations between ClimateWorks and their funders. NCRP will also look more closely at the ClimateWorks ecosystem and other programs within the organization that amplify their influence in this field.

For years, billionaires and multimillionaires have privatized government services, lionized their wealth, and told us that the charity they direct – not the solidarity and organizing that movements lead – will solve the biggest systemic issues of our time.

We are living through the dire consequences of putting wealth on a pedestal at the expense of working-class Black, brown and Indigenous communities, who are forced to fight for pennies to resource their work. Despite having proven solutions, frontline, grassroots organizations are stretching themselves thin to move projects forward while also fighting back against dangerous opposition. They should not have to choose.

Today, with that in mind, NCRP launches the second phase of our Climate Justice and Just Transition campaign: holding climate funders accountable for their continued underfunding of these necessary frontline organizations. We’re doing so by spotlighting ClimateWorks Foundation (CWF), a prominent intermediary and influential force in the climate funding ecosystem.

At a time when the federal government is attacking nonprofits focused on climate and equity, NCRP stands with both funders and grantees in the crosshairs. But at moments like these, it is even more important that ClimateWorks stand in greater solidarity with frontline groups and share in the risk that communities on the ground face on a much deeper level.

And, while moving more money to the frontlines is NCRP’s ultimate goal, we also want to focus on who and what influences funders to continually under-resource these communities in the first place. Without shifting the power imbalance behind funding decisions, the act of moving the money becomes surface level lip service instead of a cultural change that transforms the way philanthropy operates.

In this opening part one of a two-part series, NCRP will explore the ClimateWorks Foundation (CWF) leadership and governance, pointing out the gaps in what CWF considers to be expertise in the climate funding space. In part two, NCRP will examine the echo chamber in CWF’s grantmaking, including both the overall lack of frontline representation among its grantees and the overlap of grant recipients between CWF and its own funders. Both pieces will include a call for CWF and its funders to better center and resource the frontlines and influence others to do the same.

*We want to note that on the data, NCRP would welcome additional information to clarify this picture further, but to date ClimateWorks has not shared additional information about their grantmaking, or programmatic work publicly. Also, as of publication, many pages about their justice and equity work have been removed from their website.

Challenging the Power of Billionaire Philanthropists

In 2023, NCRP pointed out the problem of The Filthy Five: five billionaires – Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and John Doerr – who positioned themselves as climate “experts.” Their main credential? The obscene amounts of wealth they made, in part, off the backs of those who they purport to support through their philanthropic efforts.

Since then, the influence of billionaires in our society has become even more prevalent. Climate tech billionaire (and outright white supremacist) Elon Musk, for example, has bulldozed his way through the government as if it were Twitter (X) headquarters. Amid this extremely illegal and devastating misappropriation of government power, more and more wealth holders are falling in line. Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos’ philanthropic entities have both cut ties with essential grantees and programs to align with the current presidential administration. Bill Gates, who also claims to care about the climate crisis, is cutting staff and funding from his Climate Tech Fund: Breakthrough Energy. Other billionaires have continued to stay silent, preferring to maintain their wealth instead of mobilizing the resources necessary to support those most impacted.

This is not surprising, because wealth does not equal expertise. Philanthropy as it exists today often does not serve, and in some cases actively harms communities and groups on the frontlines of multiple systemic injustices, including the climate crisis. It is easy to be angry at billionaires and how they use their enormous amounts of wealth, including the ways they use philanthropy to boost their public reputations. But many institutional funders also have difficulty recognizing how their own choices play into the same pattern.

Over the past two years, NCRP has found that billionaires and institutional philanthropy engage in similar practices. This includes:

Hoarding wealth, using a 5% payout rate from their endowment as the ceiling instead of the floor

A tendency to fund or provide big pledges where the money often does not reach the groups on the ground that it purports to.

Holding back resources on technicalities instead of shifting behavior and practice to be movement informed.

Making frontline groups jump through hoops to receive minimal amounts of money compared to legacy organizations, think tanks and academia.

It is past time to be bold and hold climate philanthropy accountable for their role in underfunding the groups that have proven solutions, especially now.

Spotlighting ClimateWorks Foundation

CWF is a powerful and influential institution that has successfully positioned itself as the center of gravity in the climate funding ecosystem. To quote CWF from their most recent IRS 990:

“ClimateWorks Foundation’s mission is to end the climate crisis by amplifying the power of philanthropy. We are a global platform for philanthropy to innovate, collaborate, and accelerate climate solutions that scale by bringing together a unique network of grantmakers, grantees, researchers, and other implementing partners. We provide a suite of programs and services uniquely designed to amplify the power of a climate philanthropy community that is larger, more coordinated, more international, and growing faster than ever. Through our programs and services, ClimateWorks helps the field of climate philanthropy act with the ambition, urgency, capabilities, and interconnections needed to end the climate crisis”

As a funder intermediary, CWF both regrants funding from mostly institutional foundations, guides strategy at the tables it convenes, and disseminates research and data on climate funding topics and trends. With this profound positional power in the climate ecosystem comes a responsibility to center those who will be most impacted by the climate crisis and resource their work.

However, by their own measure, only 19 (or 2.6%) of CWF’s 728 grants and contracts in 2023 were considered “JEDI (justice, diversity, equity and inclusion) grants.” In the nearly two decades since ClimateWorks’ founding, the climate crisis has only gotten more dire with its effects on frontline communities only increasing. 2.6% is not progress; it is deliberate under-resourcing masquerading as such.

To be clear, the climate funding ecosystem as a whole shares this problem. ClimateWorks did not create this dynamic by themselves, and they are not alone in perpetuating it. But CWF’s unique influence in the climate funding ecosystem means that they have a duty – and incredible opportunity – to embrace a different path.

One obstacle to change is CWF’s current leadership composition. As part of our analysis, NCRP examined who within CWF is positioned to make major grant and programmatic decisions and where their knowledge and expertise comes from.

Below is a qualitative data set of 49 past and present board members and executive leaders of the organization sourced from 990 tax forms and CWF’s website.

Public information reveals that CWF leadership has ties to several influential institutions but lacks frontline, grassroots experience. Only 4% of board members and executive leadership combined have worked at organizations that have frontline connections. None have worked at organizations that are frontline led. Instead, the most common affiliations are with think tanks, various government departments and administrative committees, and international governance institutions like the UN or the World Bank. Positions like these represent roles of significant influence, where decisions can shape policy and impact global and national outcomes for climate initiatives. These affiliations are not inherently problematic. But when climate funding decisions are not accompanied by the input of frontline communities with lived experiences critical for a just transition to a regenerative economy, the funding becomes limited and uneven. If there is no one within CWF’s leadership who comes from frontline movement work, how can they adequately support those organizations and communities? What does that mean for those who need funding the most?

Shift the Influence, Shift the Resources

Local, grassroots and frontline place-based climate and environmental justice groups are often the first responders on the ground to climate and environmental injustice happening in their communities. They are also the most vulnerable to attacks and impacts from funding rollbacks. The need for rapid response and calls for legal and security support to help stem the tide of immediate threats will only grow. But for true stability, long-term, transformative support will be crucial, and that must start now.

NCRP calls on ClimateWorks Foundation to live into the deepest potential of its role as a “global climate philanthropy platform” by centering the needs of those who have always been most impacted by the climate crisis.

This will be much easier if its leadership reflects and honors those doing the work on the ground, rather than over-emphasizing a narrow, conventional definition of expertise. That ranges from who sits on CWF’s board and advisory bodies to who is invited to seats of power at their Funder Table.

ClimateWorks Foundation not only has the power to improve their grantmaking, but also the influence to shift other funders to do the same. It is time for them to utilize their resources to amplify and support the communities with proven solutions, directly.

In part two of this blog, NCRP will dig further into CWF’s grantmaking data, including the increase in overlapped funding for non-frontline organizations between ClimateWorks and their funders. NCRP will also look more closely at the ClimateWorks ecosystem and other programs within the organization that amplify their influence in this field.

I never thought the Asian model minority myth would catch up to me while working at a progressive social justice nonprofit.

Until one day, it did. My supervisor Irma Shauf-Bajar and I – both of us Filipino Americans – crossed a line in philanthropy that we didn’t know existed. We broke the unspoken rules on how to be a model grantee, on how to practice and call for justice without causing a scene or bringing attention to an issue in ways that would make other people – people in power – uncomfortable.

This is the story of 18 Million Rising. We’re a national Asian American advocacy organization that mobilizes communities around racial justice, abolition, and democracy. We lost $250,000 in committed grant funding due to our Palestinian advocacy within the Asian American community.

Solidarity from Asian America to Palestine

Last year, Viet Thanh Nguyen wrote a powerful essay on Asian American solidarity with Palestine in The Nation, arguing that, “If Asian Americans decline expansive solidarity, we signal that we are not going to take over, that we know our place.” In other words, if we don’t speak up, we comply and uphold the status quo.

18MR regularly flips the table on the status quo.

We have long established ourselves as an organization known for our courage in addressing contentious political issues that others hesitate to tackle. Since October 2023, we’ve led our Asians for a Liberated Palestine campaign. We have taken decisive action across issues and sectors, including leading a viral campaign demanding The Asian American Foundation remove Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), from its board due to the ADL’s blatant Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism.

Yet, it was a single solidarity statement, which 18MR posted in October 2023, that led to the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund’s board decision to cancel the final $250,000 payment of our multi-year grant and permanently end the funding relationship in January 2025.

On January 30, Executive Director Irma Shauf-Bajar was called into a closed-door Zoom meeting with three Wellspring executives, none of whom 18MR staff have ever met. There were no personal introductions. Rather, the conversation started with Wellspring naming “This is not going to be an easy meeting.”

Within minutes, Irma learned that the Wellspring board got wind of our solidarity statement and wanted to end its contract with 18 Million Rising, effective immediately. When Irma pushed for more explanation – reminding Wellspring we had been grantees in their racial justice portfolio for the past four years – Wellspring remained staunch on their board’s reasoning. She was told that based on the timing of our statement, it appeared to imply that we were calling on Asian America to support the violence and deaths of Israelis on October 7, 2023.

That devastated us. 18MR’s solidarity was not a performance. During those first three months, many of us on staff knew friends who personally lost family members and neighbors in Israel’s responding siege on Gaza.

We felt it at our core that Wellspring’s board failed to recognize the deep connection between Asian America and Palestine. We too are the victims of U.S. imperialism and war, from forced migration to political violence to the continued extractive relationships between our homelands and America. After that Zoom meeting, we reflected as a team why our solidarity was singled out. All of us felt demoralized that a private foundation in effect pointed to our Asian American constituency as an emerging threat, and determined we weren’t aligned with more appropriate channels of justice and dissent.

This was not okay, yet the grant relationship was done. And just like that, $250,000 – a quarter of 18MR’s annual budget – was gone.

The Role of Philanthropy in Asian America’s Fight for Justice

18MR’s story of funder repression is not an isolated narrative. We are not the first organization to lose money over supporting Palestine, and we certainly won’t be the last. Moving forward, we have identified two courses of action.

First, we want to mobilize funds with values-aligned partners. Our formal appeal to Wellspring already failed, so we are not demanding a reinstatement of grant funds. They made their position clear.

Second, and more importantly, we are committed to organizing with philanthropy on funding dissent and investing in movement groups who are on the frontlines every day.

Already, more than 600 philanthropic organizations have signed on Council On Foundation’s public statement protecting the First Amendment, and social justice funders are ramping up efforts to align their sector-wide strategy and approach:

Increase grant spending. Disburse unrestricted funds at-scale rapidly and in multi-year commitments. Like Vu Le says, “You are not just stewards of an endowment; you are stewards of justice.”
Safeguard grantees, especially movement groups and their communities, by investing in physical and digital security. The state is increasing its use of AI and technology to surveil and target vulnerable communities as well as dissenters.
Engage in meaningful advocacy, blocking the rise of authoritarianism that is thinly veiled in legislation like H.R. 9495 and counterterrorism laws.

For 18MR, this organized response from philanthropy is very heartening. At the same time, we won’t ignore the enduring and historical funding challenges that are present in this urgent moment for us and other Asian-led movement groups.

Between 2014 and 2018, foundation funding designated for AAPI communities accounted for 0.20 percent of all U.S. grantmaking. These research results mirror findings from a similar study conducted 30 years ago in 1992.

AAPI nonprofit leaders report having less positive experiences with their foundation funders than nonprofit leaders of other races/ethnicities. This has been the case during, as well as prior to, the pandemic.

In 2020 and 2021, a majority of funds that supported AAPI communities explicitly denoted a focus on anti-Asian hate and discrimination.

BIPOC-led social justice organizations already have to navigate a deeply underfunded movement. For instance, within immigrant justice, for every $100 awarded by foundations, the movement received only 40 cents.

Between October 2023 and June 2024, U.S. nonprofits who have supported Palestinian rights have lost at least $8 million in grant funding.

In October 2024, 18MR had co-sponsored a funder briefing with Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP) on mobilizing philanthropic support for Palestinian communities. Approximately 230 folks registered, and 120 attended live, representing over 90 different organizations. The amount of funding 18MR received as a direct result of this briefing? Zero dollars. We had 1-on-1 meetings with 10 different organizations’ program staff and executives who attended the event. They were all supportive of our work, yet many of them told us there were no funds for us in the coming fiscal year. The reasons ranged from leadership and staff restructuring, grant renewals for existing grantees only, and worst of all: “We can make the recommendation, but our board has the final decision.”

Those conversations happened at the end of 2024, however. The political climate has undeniably changed under the second Trump administration. There is an overreaching attack on movement power, social justice, and basic human rights. Philanthropic leaders, including board trustees, are now experiencing the same pressures as community organizers do in facing the far right.

It’s time to take risks together. We see an opening to move deeper into partnership with philanthropy, and help funders organize on the frontlines too. In fact, at the time of this NCRP blog post, 18 Million Rising is presenting “The Real Cost of Movement Building: A Case Study of (De)funding Community Organizers” at AAPIP’s 35th anniversary conference in Chicago. Our hope is to engage this funder audience once more and call them into action to support 18MR and other organizations like ours. We have an opportunity to sharpen the role and responsibilities of philanthropy, especially AAPI philanthropy, in the movement for racial and social justice.

Break Norms, Speak Truth to Justice

18MR is not a model grantee by any traditional standard, and we think that’s a good thing. We are constantly evolving to meet the needs of our communities, and that takes a lot of courage and experimentation.

Our challenge to philanthropy is whether you can break the mold too. Can you stand up against the government for what’s just in this politically urgent moment? Can you defend your grantees in front of your risk-averse board of trustees? Can you speak out and shape the public narrative on who deserves support and care? We call on funders to join us in redistributing power and catalyzing transformative justice with courage and vision.

To quote our organizing ancestor, Grace Lee Boggs: “We have to get rid of the old ideas of leadership and followership and use our imaginations to create the new… We’ve all been damaged by this system—it’s not only the capitalists who are the scoundrels, the villains; we are all part of it. And we all have to change what we say, what we do, what we think, what we imagine.”

Allison Celosia (she/they/siya) is the Resource Mobilization Director at 18 Million Rising (18MR). They are a queer second generation Bisaya (Filipino) American and proud daughter of immigrant parents. Prior to 18MR, she worked in various fundraising capacities supporting electoral politics, immigration justice, and youth movements. Allison has tapped into movement building through years of resource mobilization, donor organizing, coaching, and facilitation, and is an active member of Community Centric Fundraising.

Roundtable Betrays Its Own Values of Philanthropic Freedom

CONTACT(S): Russell Roybal rroybal@ncrp.org
Jennifer Amuzie jamuzie@ncrp.org

By defining themselves as the champion of philanthropic freedom in an era of censorship and liberal overreach the Philanthropy Roundtable has attracted $67 million dollars of private foundation support and $13 million via DAFs since 2006. They have never been shy about declaring voluntary philanthropic reform efforts a compulsory menace to the pluralist American tradition. As late as 2014 the Roundtable was suggesting that NCRP, then as usual promoting voluntary standards for philanthropic excellence, were “dangerously close to calling for regulations and legislation that would mandate how and to whom donors may give.” Efforts like NCRP’s, the Roundtable said, would “stifle and suffocate” charitable excellence. The Roundtable’s campaign to make philanthropy per se above public critique or regulation reached its apex in April of 2023 when, after a wave of backlash to the largest mass mobilization for racial justice in generations, a most unlikely and much remarked upon combination of high profile, powerful names appeared alongside more fringe anti-reform ones under the signature line of an open letter to the sector which urged the field to “not question the underlying legitimacy of any foundation or philanthropist holding a particular view” and to “assume that those involved in philanthropy have the best intentions.” The wealthy donors trying to use their philanthropy to subvert democracy are also in many cases Philanthropy Roundtable donors.

Over more than a decade, the Philanthropy Roundtable has stoked the fires of fear that someday someone from the government might tell philanthropists what kinds of work they could and could not support – which bits of the rich tapestry that makes up our vibrant civil society were within and without the law – and they’ve used the combustion to power an anti-accountability engine for their regressive donors.

And yet now that an administration aligned with their donors’ interests is threatening an inquisition and pretending that by fiat they can make racial equity grantmaking illegal, the author of the Roundtable’s 2020 anti-diversity “toolkit” is the director of human resources for the so-called Department of Government Efficiency that has moved agency to agency, ransacking the federal government and installing political commissars. And at February 2025’s Foundations on the Hill, the sector’s annual lobby day, and generally with PSO colleagues, the Roundtable presents itself as a staunch defender of philanthropy – a shield for “freedom,” “personal opportunity” and “donor privacy” in an era of existential threat. Yet the existential threat they envision is not HR 9495, or the revoking of c3 status of nonprofits and foundations that defend civil rights. It’s not the government grant freezes that dwarf philanthropic resources, hurting the most vulnerable communities philanthropy serves. It’s not executive orders weaponizing white fragility to destroy fragile progress around diversity, equity and inclusion among foundations and in public institutions. Their concern is much narrower: the specter of new taxes and DAF oversight as Republicans look to pay for yet another short-sighted round of tax cuts for the rich. When challenged about this hypocrisy, the Roundtable claims they have to lay low and preserve their seat at the regime’s table. Yet they have already picked their battles and made their priorities clear in public; there’s little evidence they are a champion for the sector’s truly deepest needs behind closed doors. Even worse, the Roundtable themselves have welcomed the President’s inquisition. 

Probably no one is more shocked about the Roundtable’s betrayal of philanthropic freedom than their mainstream foundation supporters. The Philanthropy Roundtable has an annual budget of $11 million, which is 3 times larger than NCRP’s. Most of The Roundtable’s foundation funding over the past decade has come from predictable places. Foundations like Bradley, Searle, Templeton, and Anschutz have always dedicated their giving to advancing a right-wing policy agenda. But thanks to their savvily cultivated image the Roundtable’s anti-DEI crusade was underwritten to the tune of millions of dollars by some much more mainstream, well-respected names.

Foundations with otherwise pro-social funding commitments in areas like health, shared prosperity, climate resilience, and even democracy justified giving to the Roundtable because they believed them when they claimed to be defenders of a philanthropic freedom threatened by the forces of reform – forces the Roundtable worked hard to associate in every philanthropist’s mind with rousing the rabble. The tax-preferred status of multi-billion-dollar endowments is a valuable interest to protect, and perhaps some feared a little criticism and scrutiny would lead to more than the sector’s political capital could sustain. Some foundations simply thought of it as funding both sides of a heady debate about tax policy. Whatever might have been the rationalization, it should be clear now in the light of a newly authoritarian dawn in US civil society that those millions of dollars in mainstream foundation support for the Philanthropy Roundtable were misguided, and they have done real damage to the prospect of free philanthropy in the USA. Whatever the Roundtable may have said about the threat to civil society posed by an imaginary imperious Left, it is they who have welcomed an American Emperor’s assault on the freedom to associate and give without fear of retaliation from the state.

Earlier this month, a new law in the District of Columbia went into effect that will allow the D.C Council to study the possibility of reparations for Black residents descended from enslaved people or otherwise affected by Jim Crow-era policies such as discriminatory housing and employment practices. This law is yet another win for the reparations movement that comes at a time when public reckoning with this country’s past is under constant attack, and the law is the result of tireless grassroots advocacy fueled in part by funders who understand that they have a role to play in the reparations movement as well. That is the subject of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy’s report Cracks in the Foundation: Philanthropy’s Role in Reparations for Black People in the DMV which was released a little over a year ago, and which is just as important today as it was then.

The assessment of changes to the sector since the release of Cracks in the Foundation outlined below could not have been done without the learning and evaluation expertise of NCRP’s former Evaluation Manager, Adrianne Glover.

Since NCRP released the report, our staff has continued to be in discussion with sector leaders about our findings and the need for additional foundations to reckon with the harm caused by their philanthropic wealth origins, and we have also held conversations with foundation leaders who are curious about how to begin doing this work themselves. While it’s too soon to know how funding levels have changed since the time of the report, we do know that grantmaking for Black communities has been reverting to its mean since peaking in 2020, and philanthropy still has a lot of work to do to adequately fund Black-led grassroots movements. There are, however, some luminaries who are leading the way.

Cover of NCRPs report, Cracks in the Foundation: Philanthropy's Role in Reparations for Black People in the DMV

In 2024, our report advisor Liberation Ventures announced $3.4 million to 48 organizations across the country building power for reparations, and this year they publicly released their Reparations Grantmaking Blueprint. Additionally, since the release of the report we’ve had conversations with 13 foundations across the country who have shared with us their own efforts and internal conversations around redress, some of whom have hired historians to begin digging through archives and uncovering truths about their own institutional wealth.

Another shining example is a foundation who has been on a truth and repair journey since 2023 – the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, who recognizes that “transparency and accountability about RWJF’s historical legacy are key to the Foundation’s equity journey.” NCRP’s own Senior Research Manager for Special Projects, Katherine Ponce, has since been appointed to the Foundation’s Truth, Repair, and Transformation (TRT) Wisdom Council to support this important undertaking. As we stated in the report, in this critical time of national reflection on and reckoning with centuries of racial oppression, philanthropy must actively engage in conversation and respond with urgency, specificity, and targeted action.

Here’s what Dana Kawoka-Chen, report advisor and Justice Funders Co-Executive Director says about this:

“What does targeted action for philanthropy look like? Following the Just Transition Framework, any reparations process must address and transform the legacy of colonialism and racial capitalism through relational repair (acknowledgement, apology, accountability and amends); recenter the vision and leadership of those harmed; and reorganize for regeneration by changing who controls, stewards and decides how wealth circulates, and to what ends. This includes the return of assets and wealth to the people and places from where capital was extracted in a way that gives communities total ownership and stewardship over that capital as a step towards repair. For wealth holders and those involved in stewardship of wealth, reparations hold the potential for deep spiritual restoration and healing of the wound within white humanity caused by participation in or complicity with white supremacy, Indigenous invisibilization, and the harms done as a result.”

Back to the District, and the DMV more broadly, the eight studied foundations continue their individual journeys of accountability. The websites for two of the studied foundations – iF, A Foundation for Radical Possibility and the Weissberg Foundation – have been updated in the last year to reflect more detailed and honest accounts of their founding histories including harm caused to Black communities because of their wealth generation. Weissberg Foundation – which began uncovering its wealth origin story prior to the report – continues to explore reparative actions.

Transparently sharing wealth creation stories with community members, apologizing and committing to repair the damage is our first recommendation to the studied foundations in our five-point action plan, and it remains a crucial component of what philanthropy as a sector must do to cede power and resources to the people who need them the most.

iF Co-CEOs Temi F. Bennett & Hanh Le shared in the Cracks in the Foundation press release, “Addressing anti-Blackness is ground zero for racial justice in America. Given the backlash to the alleged “racial reckoning” of 2020, our sector is in fight or flight mode. iF is fighting, always. We invite others to join us.”

iF, a Foundation for Radical Possibility, who commissioned the report, continues to publicly share progress on their accountability journey.

iF Co-CEOs Temi F. Bennett & Hanh Le also shared:

– “Based on the findings and recommendations of Cracks in the Foundation, in 2024 iF developed and began implementation of a four-year Redress & Repair Initiative. Following the Reckon>Connect>Repair>Decolonize>Advocate framework developed in the report, iF is partnering with DC Justice Lab and RavensLight Pathways to design and execute this initiative that will result in the following:

– The identification of communities harmed by the Group Health Association (the HMO whose eventual sale endowed the foundation);

– Engagement of those harmed communities in a process to co-design our redress and repair plan;

– Repair made to the communities identified from iF’s endowment, along with program and policy recommendations for redress and repair as tools for economic mobilility and to serve as a blueprint for public sector reparations to address the Black wealth gap; and

– The creation of a blueprint for other foundations and private institutions to replicate the process of engaging in their own process of redress and repair.”

Moving forward, NCRP plans to further explore what the sector owes to communities harmed by wealth extraction, such as to Native communities who continue to be underfunded by foundations.

We have also learned that there are many challenges for foundations on this journey. The Horning Family Foundation, one of the foundation case studies, remains on an organizational pause while the remaining studied foundations have not yet publicly shared updates on how they will incorporate our recommendations. Power dynamics within philanthropic institutions vary and while some executives are inspired to do the work of reckoning and repair, they may face other senior leaders who are hesitant due to fear of what will be discovered about their history, or the impact that storytelling will have to the reputation of their founders.

It has always been our view that the difficult conversations caused by the report are necessary for accountability within philanthropy, and ultimately necessary for the sector to transform into a powerful apparatus for equity and justice. NCRP remains available as a resource to answer questions and connect funders with historians who can support a journey of uncovering wealth origin stories, and our partner Justice Funders offers opportunities for deep learning about repair in community with others. NCRP is also committed to exploring how this report can be a useful tool for movement leaders who are eager to have conversations with local funders about accountability and redress.

In this moment of attempts to revise history and exclude the contributions of Black people from public knowledge, the sector cannot be complicit and erase the history of its own extracted wealth. Now is an urgent moment for foundations to use their significant power to support Black-led grassroots movements, acknowledge the role our sector has played in taking wealth and opportunities from the people who have built this country, and fund the communities that they have harmed.

Trey Withers is NCRP’s Field Manager. In this role, Withers supports the organization’s relationships within philanthropy and brings extensive coalition-building experience to the role.

NCRP tracked $1 billion in total foundation funding from around 3,500 private and public funders between 2020 and 2022. In that time, $1 billion in total foundation funding went to 155 election denial and anti-voting rights organizations.

These anti-democracy organizations control more than $7 billion, more than each of the well-known conservative funders combined.

These anti-democracy organizations claim to mobilize 20 times as many people as the US election workforce. These organizations staff over 8,000 and reported more than 400,000 volunteers between 2020 and 2022. Local elections’ total workforce across the US, the people actually securing our election integrity, are a staff of only about 20,000.

About the data

Using internet research and 990 keyword analysis, NCRP researchers assembled a list of organizations from four queries and/or searches:

Organizations who promoted false or overblown threats to election integrity like non-citizen voting, voter fraud, and corrupt voter registration drives;
Organizations that were mentioned in Project 2025’s implementation plan;
Organizations that were linked to state pre-emption policies;
Organizations that were linked to policies criminalizing protest at the state or local level.

Based on this list of nonprofit names, NCRP used Python and compilations of IRS 990 data published by Giving Tuesday to match filings by these anti-democracy organizations to filings by their institutional funders. Anti-democracy organizations’ EINs were used to match public charity funder filings, and their organizational names were used to match private foundation funder filers.

NCRP shows flexible support as a tactic for regressive funders

Philanthropists with regressive policy plots have been highly effective in supporting the goals of a polarizing right-wing agenda. These funders have done so primarily by giving multi-year, unrestricted funding to “anti-movement” leaders and focusing on long-term, nonlinear change.

Between 2020 and 2022, 52% of all foundation funding for these anti-democracy organizations was given as unrestricted general support, and only 8% of that foundation funding was granted for a specific program, project, or campaign. Comparatively, at the peak of the pandemic in 2020, only about 38% of funding for social justice movement organizations was given as unrestricted general support, and at least 20% was project based.

The tip of the iceberg

These organizations are just one part of the deliberate and collective vision of various philanthropic networks who seek to roll back efforts of a more just society.

In 2020, the 3,000 private foundations supporting these anti-democracy organizations controlled $408 billion in net assets.

Based on the federal payout requirement of 5% per year, we can assume these foundations have a total grantmaking potential of $20 billion each year to undermine our democracy.

Why does this matter?

We know there are funders who use philanthropy to maintain their own disproportionate wealth and power and to undermine or roll back efforts for a more democratic and just society. NCRP refers to this type of grantmaking as “regressive philanthropy”: philanthropy designed to resist progress, maintain inequities, and ultimately take us backwards as a society. Our new Regressive Philanthropy research project is documenting the scale and patterns of regressive funding in key issue areas and exploring how those funders have successfully built power and shaped discourse to advance their ideological agendas.

At this critical juncture for American democracy, philanthropy and movement leaders who are dedicated to equality and justice must understand the philanthropy story behind this societal and political moment. Most importantly, funders need the knowledge and motivation to do things differently – to shift power and resources to communities and movements for justice.

In the coming months, NCRP will publish more research deepening what we know about funding for the anti-democracy movement while we expand the scope of our research to explore connections to anti-LGBTQ+, anti-immigrant, and anti-abortion movements. People and institutions invested in maintaining power and wealth in the hands of a few have used philanthropic dollars effectively to exploit divisions around gender and race, with the predictable result that the citizenship and humanity of many are now threatened. Our work thus far highlights a chilling commitment to regressive, right-wing goals, stark against the backdrop of fleeting support for social justice. Understanding how we got here and aligning funding strategies with grassroots power-building efforts are the only ways for pro-democracy donors to position themselves to help rebuild American civil society.

Research Manager for Special Projects and current Connecting Leaders Fellow at ABFE, Katherine Ponce engages in both qualitative and quantitative research projects to advance NCRP’s mission.

Before NCRP, Katherine’s passion to strengthen the involvement of community in philanthropy grew during her time at the Sillerman Center for the Advancement of Philanthropy. Here she analyzed data trends for the center’s publications and outreach to uplift field partners focused on participatory grantmaking.

Katherine earned a dual degree, an MBA in Social Impact and MS in Global Health Policy and Management, in 2021 from the Heller School at Brandeis University, and a BA in 2015 from Towson University.

In 2020, I remember being on a regional call with funders in New England who were optimistic that, after months of a global pandemic and a summer of the largest racial uprising this country has seen since the Civil Rights Movement, we were in a new era of philanthropy. I was not as convinced that those “unprecedented times” would lead to long-lasting change. Historically, philanthropy has always risen to big news moments like the 2016 election results, Supreme Court decisions, market crashes, and climate change disasters. However, as a whole, the sector’s old habits are tougher to break.

Since the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy’s 2020 report, Black Funding Denied, we have tracked multiple trends on giving to Black communities. In our latest published update, data showed a positive rise in funding in 2020 and early signs continuing into 2021. However, more recent 990 data shows that funding for Black communities is reverting to its mean.

Funding for Black communities reached its peak at 1.9% of overall philanthropic giving in 2020 (still nowhere close to meeting the population share of Black people in this country). This percentage slightly decreased in the following years, dropping to 1.3% in 2022.1

This drop off of funding to Black communities is troubling, but unsurprising. In my grants analysis experience, foundations do not commit more multi-year general operating support to marginalized communities in the same way when public pressure goes away. The outpour of support we saw in 2020 was directly driven by the pressure generated by Black-led social movements. So how do we turn reactive grantmaking for Black communities into sustained partnerships?

The data speaks for itself

In reviewing ABFE’s recent Factsheets,“Key Facts About Nonprofits With Majority Black Leadership” and “Key Facts About Nonprofits With Black CEOs”, it struck me that Black leaders are consistently operating from a place of scarcity in comparison to their white counterparts. In their sample size, provided by Candid Demographic Data, 15% of CEOs identify as Black or African American. Yet, nonprofits with Black CEOs account for 28% of all organizations with budgets below $50,000.

The disparities only grow when you look at organizations with majority Black leadership –meaning a Black CEO and at least half the board identifies as Black. Two-thirds of majority-Black led nonprofits have budgets below $100,000 and only 2% have budgets above $10 million. Comparatively, at majority white-led nonprofits, only 21% have budgets below $100,000, and 8% have budgets above $10 million. Right now, funders are giving Black decision makers less to work with AND asking them to undo centuries of systemic racism in one to two years.

When NCRP published Black Funding Denied in 2020, our goal was to shine a light on the gross underfunding of Black communities by forcing foundations to reckon honestly with their role in these disparities. NCRP has always believed that a shift from one-time grants and initiatives to long-term, sustained investments in Black communities is an opportunity for grantmakers to embrace the values they, themselves, say they hold. But the motivation to change is not just in the name of equity.

Don’t wait for the next crisis

Targeted universalism, coined by john. a. powell, is the idea that “outgroups are moved from societal neglect to the center of societal care at the same time that more powerful or favored groups’ needs are addressed.” By supporting communities who have been historically and continuously ignored, we have an opportunity to create solutions that benefit everyone. We have seen this on a large scale with the Curb-Cut Effect and institutionally when internal policies reflect the unseen labor of Black women in particular.

My hope is that foundations don’t wait for another crisis to access their commitments, whatever their motivations may be. Philanthropy has the opportunity to disrupt existing sector standards. Funders must move beyond focusing on the next crisis, the next big idea, the next moment, and prioritize long-term sustainability. If the social good sector wants to win, we cannot keep up the same tired reactive patterns.