Washington, DC – One year into the second Trump administration, NCRP’s newest report, Hide or Speak: Navigating Authoritarianism Without a Playbook, exposed a disturbing fault line among progressive foundation leaders. While many foundations are committed to expanding funding and strengthening partnerships, 41 percent of surveyed funders expressed that they are uncertain about how to respond effectively in the current climate.

“In conducting research for this report, I was struck that the greatest obstacle funders named was not operational challenges, or legal issues, or even fear. It was uncertainty: uncertainty about how to navigate such unprecedented challenges. Many funders said they felt like there was ‘no playbook for this,’ and yet many of those same funders told me how they were inventing a playbook as they went, often trailblazing inventive and bold strategies to protect human rights in the face of rising fascism,” said Ben Francisco Maulbeck, an author of the report.

Nearly 98 percent of foundation respondents agreed that the U.S. is facing a constitutional crisis, yet only 36 percent had spoken about human rights and democratic crises in the country in the year since the current administration took office. In fact, one in twelve foundations in the sector seem to have censored themselves, changing their websites to remove language related to concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the social sector.

Hide or Speak joined a series of recent reports aimed at sparking and amplifying discussion in online philanthropy and nonprofit spaces about what it looks like for funders to step up for democracy and equity.

The Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity found that the total value of philanthropic grants whose descriptions included “racial justice” dropped 90% since 2020, and that philanthropic funding for the explicit benefit of BIPOC communities is down more than 30% as a share of all grantmaking since its peak in 2021.

ABFE has documented a “Blacklash” of pushback to nonprofits being explicit about being by and for Black people. 15% of Black-led nonprofits surveyed said that they had been told in 2025 not to mention race when talking about their work.

According to a ProPublica analysis, “more than 1,000 charities rewrote their mission statements in forms they filed this year with the Internal Revenue Service, removing or minimizing language tied to race, inequity and historically disadvantaged.”

Center for Effective Philanthropy talked to both funders and nonprofits; their study revealed a disconnect between nearly all foundation leaders and nonprofit leaders.

“This report is a real-time documentation of how funders are combating an authoritarian regime. It is true that leaders indeed feel stuck in their response, but many are also finding ways to resist. There is a playbook to protecting democracy, and we’ve synthesized some of the best strategies funders are using to keep up the fight,” Tyler Armey, co-author of Hide or Speak, stated.

Report authors Ben Francisco Maulbeck and Tyler Armey outline many of the ways that foundations can experiment and push the boundaries to meet this moment.