Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on March 11, 2026.
Since it was created a year and a half ago, the Block and Build Funder Coalition has grown steadily but without much fanfare or media coverage. Nevertheless, its work gets at a central question — if not the central question — facing philanthropy today: What can and should civil society funders do about the existential threat of authoritarianism? Block and Build is the largest U.S.-based coalition of funders and philanthropy organizations working to address that threat. It has 475 participants who represent over 200 organizations and a collective funding capacity of over $6 billion annually.
BBFC predates President Donald Trump’s 2024 election but has proved prescient. Organized by Women Donors Network and Solidaire in response to emerging threats to grassroots organizations and their funders, its goal is to create, grow and inform a diverse community of funders and philanthropy-serving organizations “committed to resisting authoritarianism, defending movements for justice and safeguarding civil liberties.”
Since Trump assumed office for the second time, much of the philanthrosphere has appeared to be at sea on the question of resisting authoritarianism, with many grantmakers continuing with business as usual and failing to reckon deeply with the damage being done to their core funding interests.
However, a number of funders have been quick to react, refusing to comply in advance — or in the moment. Many have signed statements defending the right to give and objecting to attacks on individual funders, some of which have predicated larger efforts to protect philanthropy, like Unite in Advance.
Others like the Marguerite Casey Foundation, Freedom Together Foundation, and MacArthur Foundation have increased payouts to grantees (although IP’s Michael Kavate has questioned the significance — and dollar amounts — represented by this trend). Still others are working to defend healthcare access, counter anti-DEI backlash, and protect immigrants and basic services from ICE overreach.
Given many funders’ understandable desire to operate below the radar as they organize to resist attacks on vulnerable groups and on philanthropy itself, it’s hard to get a full handle on everything happening behind the scenes. But the Block and Build Funder Coalition is one part of that picture, working to construct a united front to oppose authoritarianism.
For Leena Barakat, the president and CEO of Women Donors Network and WDN Action, the pace at which organizations have joined demonstrates the need — and the urgency of the moment. “People are looking for direction,” she said. “They know it’s time to fight, but everyone is trying to figure out the best way to do that. And we know that it is just better to do it together. We’re stronger together than we are on our own.”
How the Block and Build Funder Coalition came about
In the spring of 2024, Barakat noticed what she interpreted as an ominous sign of things to come. In May of that year, the GOP chairs of two congressional committees cited a number of pro-Palestinian organizations and funders in a letter requesting information from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. The committees were investigating the funding of the groups that they claimed were “organizing, leading and participating in pro-Hamas, antisemitic, anti-Israel and anti-American protests with illegal encampments on American college campuses,” according to the letter.
“Most people treated it as a one-off attack,” Barakat said. “But my gut told me this was a test, and whatever happened here would eventually make its way to other organizations, other movements, and it would grow. So if we didn’t respond accordingly, we risked this threat spreading across our sector.’”
Barakat called Rajasvini Bhansali, the executive director of Solidaire Network and Solidaire Action, and the two began organizing calls with organizations and funders on the list. “We spoke to the importance of solidarity, and we realized that it was better that we not all spin our wheels hiring lawyers and asking the same questions; we might as well work together to ask the questions and not be duplicative. So we started hosting calls and getting educated. We brought in legal expertise and shared comms information. We also tried to influence funders to not distance themselves or stop funding grantees who may have been targeted.”
The calls became a monthly occurrence, expanding beyond the original list, and the number of people involved grew. Some people initially thought that Barakat, Bhansali and the other members of the fledgling coalition were being alarmist, and then HR 9495 was introduced in September 2024. The so-called “nonprofit killer bill” would allow the government to strip tax-exempt status from any organization identified as “terrorist-supporting,” sidestepping legal firewalls and due process. The bill set off alarms through the nonprofit world. (Language from the bill was included in the GOP’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act but ultimately removed; still, observers believe it could be redeployed down the line — it was reintroduced in both houses of Congress last December.)
“More and more organizations in our network started asking, ‘Can I get on this call? Can I join?’” Barakat said. “No one wanted to be alone; we wanted to organize together. So we built a movement to do just that: a very diverse coalition with a movement-aligned lens. And we worked closely with grassroots organizations, the canaries in the coal mine, to help us shape the strategy to fight authoritarianism together.”
By December 2024, the coalition had 50 to 60 members, and few people were calling it “alarmist” anymore. “It was very clear to us that these kinds of attacks were going to escalate — not just against movement organizations, but against their funders,” said Farhad Ebrahimi, Solidaire Action’s philanthropic transformation strategist and the organization’s lead organizer for the Block and Build Funder Coalition (as well as the founder of his now-spent-down Chorus Foundation). “With HR 9495 passing the House and the results of the election, it was one of those situations where it doesn’t feel great to have read the tea leaves correctly, but we felt that Solidaire and our good friends at Women Donors Network had read the tea leaves correctly.”
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A diverse coalition of funders and funder-serving organizations
To date, besides Solidaire and Women Donors Network, the names of BBFC members have not been made public, and Barakat said she doesn’t want to disclose them without members’ permission. She described the membership as a diverse group that includes public and private foundations, philanthropy-serving organizations, funding intermediaries and a few corporate funders. A small number of movement organizations also participate and inform strategy.
“We’re trying to be a broad anti-authoritarian front,” Ebrahimi said. “But part of that is allowing everybody to show up transparently with their political alignments and political commitments, and not feeling the need to sweep those things under the rug, which I think is how philanthropy often tends to handle those kinds of differences.”
Although the calls and conversations had been going on for months before, Ebrahimi said the organization’s formal structure really took shape a year ago, in February 2025. There are monthly calls where information is shared and strategies developed. BBFC has also created a resource library that members can access for information on communications, legal analysis and other resources. Smaller working groups zero in on specific areas and develop recommendations and informational materials.
“We have done some media outreach and media trainings for members, particularly members from foundations that don’t have communications staff,” Ebrahimi added. “We’ve run multiple scenario-planning exercises. And we’ve dipped our toes a little bit into fundraising. I think that moving money and the best way to do that will be a focus this year. We’re looking forward to having even more coordinated action around how we move resources collectively and how we build our collective political power. We’re also thinking about ways that we, as 501c3s predominantly, can legally engage with conversations around policy in terms of topics that impact us.”
Meanwhile, individual members are continuing to move money in response to grantee needs; some have increased their payout, others have reallocated discretionary budgets or taken other steps to identify new resources. “The question is, with all the other spaces that we’re all involved in, and all the wonderful pooled funds and fundraising campaigns and fundraising asks, what is the right lane for us?” Ebrahimi said. “That is something that we’re always evaluating.”
A major part of that lane is creating and maintaining a sense of community and solidarity. Rather than shrinking from controversy or standing back when another organization is the target, the coalition is working to keep funders united in an adverse climate. But Barakat and Ebrahimi are hoping to do even more to strengthen the sector — in the current moment and beyond.
“We encourage people to join, to not be alone in this,” Barakat said. “Authoritarianism is not normal, and it’s not acceptable. We are here to not just fight against it, but to build toward new, better systems for everyone.”
Ebrahimi agreed. “We want to take proactive, collective action to try to transform our sector,” he said. “We don’t want to just defend the status quo. We want to continue to organize to improve all the contradictions and complications and problematic qualities that exist within the philanthropic sector.”
