How This "Gutsy" Group of Funders Came Together to Support Trans Rights

These are terrifying times to be a transgender or gender nonbinary person, or the parents of a transgender or nonbinary child, in the United States. Between hate crimes and hateful laws passed by state governments, opponents of trans rights — often the same people who are opposed to abortion rights, the wider LGBT movement, and voting rights — have even gone so far as to threaten children’s hospitals that provide gender-affirming care.

Despite these threats, though, a surprising group has chosen to be out and proud in its support of transgender and nonbinary Americans and their families: funders. And not just the usual suspects like Arcus Foundation and the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice. Funders for LGBTQ Issues has inspired dozens of organizations, including community, health, and private foundations, to sign its Grantmakers United for Trans Communities (GUTC, pronounced “gutsy”) pledge.

Since we last reported on the GUTC Pledge in 2018, the number of signatories has more than doubled; with 53 signatories, the GUTC project has been so successful that Funders for LGBTQ Issues is no longer actively recruiting new individual participants (though funders are welcome, and encouraged, to join). Giving to nonprofits that serve transgender and nonbinary people, while still relatively minuscule, has quadrupled. Perhaps just as important, GUTC signatories are being public in their funding of trans-supporting nonprofits — in contrast to funders who have remained timid or even anonymous in their support of another battleground issue, abortion rights.

The pledge has some unique components that have led to its success, but the GUTC initiative also credits the Trump administration — and the current attacks from right-wing legislators and the Supreme Court — for making it much easier to recruit mainstream funders to its cause.

Alexander Lee, GUTC’s inaugural program director and current deputy director at Funders for LGBTQ Issues, was at a philanthropy conference in 2018 when the news broke that Trump’s administration planned to erase transgender Americans from the legal definition of gender. Foundation CEOs were so outraged at the news, Lee said, that “people were proactively trying to find me to talk about the GUTC Pledge.” Former President Trump’s hateful actions, coupled with his tweets attacking transgender and nonbinary people, “motivated quite a few of those foundations to sign up for the pledge,” and to pay more attention to their own support (or lack thereof) for trans communities, in a way that “we probably would have struggled to do,” Lee said.

Rather than the struggle they anticipated, Lee said the response to the GUTC Pledge has been overwhelming. The support has also continued, he said, since Trump lost the presidency in 2020. Thanks to the ongoing attacks in state houses, Lee told IP, the fact that the right wing is using transgender people, including transgender children, as “a boogeyman” to excite their base “really shocks a lot of the foundation staff and CEOs that we talk to, has given us more of a profile, and made our case for us.”

Similarly, Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion in the Dobbs case ending federal protection for abortion rights, in which he called into question legal recognition of same-sex marriage rights, legal protection for consensual sexual acts between adults, and even the right to contraception, has made foundations “more curious to hear where where trans people sit on the spectrum of rights that are being threatened or are ending,” Lee said.

The Ford Foundation — a new GUTC signatory that is also up front about its support of abortion rights — cited the fact that trans and gender-nonconforming people have faced “extreme levels of violence, discrimination and inequality around the world” for decades; they are now subject to threats that have become “more targeted, sophisticated and high-profile in recent years,” said Hilary Pennington, executive vice president of programs. “What is needed now more than ever is more resources to help unify efforts led by trans people in the most impacted communities, and we at Ford want to deepen our commitment to these efforts.” Ford signed the pledge in June and, as we reported in July, the foundation has committed to at least doubling its support of trans-serving organizations in the next five years.

Hysterical right-wing attacks, while key, aren’t the only ingredient in the GUTC Pledge’s success. The wider victories for lesbian, gay and bisexual people have also, Lee said, paved the way for funders to be more open to the concerns and needs of transgender communities. A lot of the more mainstream foundations already had out lesbian, gay and bisexual employees, even if they didn’t yet have out trans employees. Some already had LGB employee resource groups that were pushing for more staff diversity and “deeper thinking around how queer people show up in their different portfolios, and don’t show up, and why.” In this environment, Lee said, the GUTC Pledge “became a tool for those groups to continue to do more internal organizing in their own workplaces, with their bosses and the senior level leadership.”

Finally, GUTC has succeeded as an ongoing initiative because of the way the pledge is designed and the amount of work that Funders for LGBTQ Issues puts into supporting GUTC signatories.

A self-reinforcing effort, and a lot of work

While well-documented rage giving has been a natural response to the waves of right-wing hate laws targeting women’s and transgender people’s individual freedom, that kind of support is reactive, and may not be sustainable long term. In contrast, the GUTC Pledge is practically a study in how to create a self-reinforcing system that will lead to sustained, and increased, support over time. GUTC Pledge signatories don’t just commit to giving more money to trans-serving organizations; an effort, however well-intentioned, that could easily die out when the next new wave of outrage comes along. Instead, GUTC funders also commit to undertaking professional training and development focused on serving trans communities; improving their recruitment and retention of trans and gender-nonconforming people as staff and board members; and publicly expressing their support for, and solidarity with, trans communities.

In return, Funders for LGBTQ Issues works hard to support GUTC signatories. The GUTC initiative has collected a range of materials that includes an audit of office policies and culture and a list of consultants and organizations like Trans Can Work to help with deeper work on employment practices and office culture. Funders for LGBTQ Issues does its own media work to make it easier for GUTC participants to receive public recognition from the progressive and mainstream public, provides signatories with custom social media posts and talking points, and holds regular Pride in Philanthropy Awards as an additional public perk. The initiative has also created a special fellowship, the GUTC Leaders Fellowship Program, as a “concrete professional development benefit” that pledge participants can provide their trans and gender-nonbinary staff members. “It basically becomes this long-term relationship with them,” Lee said.

Ideas for action and next steps

Asked for suggestions to help other comparable causes attract both increased, and increasingly public, support from funders, Lee suggested that organizations serving those missions “lean into” the fact that they also have wide, mainstream support.

Regarding abortion rights in particular, Lee said, “when you look at what happened in Kansas, it’s very obvious that the public supports abortion rights,” and thus would look favorably on organizations that announce moving money into these issues. Further, Lee suggested providing funders the kind of public recognition that Funders for LGBTQ Issues has made integral to its support of GUTC signatories. “You’re not asking these funders to do anything all that different than they would normally do,” he said. “It’s really just being more deliberate and more public.”

Timing the public announcement of a funder’s support is also important, Lee said. Instead of starting out by announcing each individual funder that comes on board, gather and announce the support of a group of them. “There’s obviously support in numbers,” Lee said. “So having this list of pledged signatories makes it easier for people to feel like, ‘OK, I can join them.’”

Finally, Lee urged related groups to come together and “present a united front” to philanthropy. “You can’t do it by yourself,” as a single organization, he said.

As for the GUTC Pledge and initiative itself, Lee said that Funders for LGBTQ Issues has shifted its focus. Instead of seeking out individual funder signatories, Lee said, the initiative is now reaching out to philanthropy-serving organizations and philanthropic affinity groups that serve the wider range of causes that are also under threat by Republican-backed, right-wing extremism.

“We’re trying to be really smart about how we’re talking about this (the GUTC Pledge, and transgender rights more generally) as embedded in the concerns that philanthropy writ large has,” Lee said. “It’s not a separate thing, it’s not a tack-on thing; it’s about the fundamental core purpose of a lot of the social justice-oriented foundations.”

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