The Funding Leaders Who Have Spoken Out About Trump

A recurring question across the philanthrosphere these past five months has been the extent to which funders will — or won’t — publicly respond to the administration’s policies.

Many funders have opted for silence. Others have signed a unity statement in defense of the sector, or responded more obliquely, such as by issuing affirmations of their values or announcing an increase in grantmaking. And a small subset has fired off statements mentioning the president by name and accusing him and his appointees of putting lives at risk. 

Historically, foundations have been reluctant to wade into politically charged waters, and this reticence has been exacerbated since Trump’s election by the MAGA movement’s adversarial stance toward nonprofits and philanthropy, which includes a temporarily shelved proposal that would empower the IRS to revoke groups’ nonprofit status without due process. As Grantmakers Concerned With Immigrants and Refugees President Marissa Tirona told IP’s Martha Ramirez, “I think there is, unfortunately, there is a segment of funders who… might also be wary of being targets themselves.”

But there are also funders who have spoken up boldly — and, so far at least, those who have done so say they haven’t faced explicit retaliation from the administration, or much in the way of harassment and threats from nongovernment actors. (As far as we know, however, that could change at any moment.)

The following list features funding leaders who have referred critically to President Donald Trump by name or have otherwise made a powerful moral case against his administration’s policies.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation President Richard Besser

Perhaps the most outspoken Trump critic in the top ranks of institutional philanthropy, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation president and IP guest contributor Richard Besser issued a January statement after the president signed a flurry of executive orders that aimed to roll back DEI initiatives.

“It is unconscionable,” Besser said, “that the Trump administration would co-opt the language and vision of the civil rights movement in these executive orders as it attempts to send our nation back to an era of rampant, state-sanctioned discrimination.”

In a separate open letter, Besser argued that “the Trump administration’s vicious retrenchment on the policies, progress and words of diversity, equity, and inclusion has severe consequences for health in America.” He went on to affirm that “we will keep speaking in the media, online, behind closed doors, and any place we are invited.” 

Besser’s comments come at a time when Republicans in Congress have been seeking to rein in large private foundations. As the country’s largest health foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which had $13.7 billion in total assets in 2023, would be subject to a 10% excise tax on its net investment income should a provision in the budget reconciliation bill passed by the House become law.

Marguerite Casey Foundation President and CEO Carmen Rojas

Speaking to IP’s Connie Matthiessen in May, Marguerite Casey Foundation President and CEO Carmen Rojas pulled no punches. 

“This is a very white nationalist agenda,” Rojas said of the administration. “It’s an agenda that is seeking to erase history. To have, in the first 100 days, the intentional removal of the contributions that Black people have made, and to intentionally eliminate practices that allow institutions to be truly representative of our nation — for me, this is a signal that you are advancing a white nationalist agenda.”

Rojas backed up her critique with concrete action. To push back against the president’s agenda, she is overseeing the foundation’s $130 million commitment to support nonprofits focused on racial and economic justice that are confronting what the foundation called “growing political attacks from the Trump administration.”

California Wellness Foundation President and CEO Richard Tate

California Wellness Foundation President and CEO Richard Tate penned a statement of values, titled “We Shall Not Be Moved,” calling out the president. “We are witnessing a brutal attempt to remake America under the Trump administration in 2025,” he wrote. “This is not just a political shift; it is a moral test. This is where we take a stand.”

Tate has also called on philanthropy to dig deeper. “Now is the moment when we as foundations and community partners need to be thinking together about how we navigate this period,” he told Matthiessen. “And it means we as foundations need to be giving more to our community partners. Now is not the time for us to be holding in reserve dollars that could be making a difference today.”

In March, the California Wellness Foundation took to Facebook to criticize the administration’s removal of former surgeon general Vivek Murthy’s advisory on gun violence as a “public health issue” from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ website, calling it a “significant step backward.”

MacArthur Foundation President John Palfrey

In a May 22 essay, MacArthur Foundation President John Palfrey didn’t mention Trump by name, but readers can decide for themselves who is responsible, as Palfrey sees it, for attempting to decimate bedrock American principles. 

“Long-held freedoms — the freedom to give, the freedom to invest, the freedom to speak — are in question,” he wrote. “The rule of law is being tested. Decades of hard-won progress to combat pervasive unfairness and discrimination is under threat of being rolled back. Those of us working in charitable foundations and nonprofits have come under pressure that is unprecedented in American history.” 

Palfrey has channeled the sector’s growing fears that the administration, which has relentlessly slashed funding for nonprofits that don’t comport with its worldview, would investigate private foundations engaged in DEI work.

The essay went live a little over a month after the Nonprofit Quarterly published a piece authored by Palfrey, alongside McKnight Foundation President Tonya Allen and Freedom Together Foundation President Deepak Bhargava, affirming philanthropy’s constitutional right to treat donations as a form of protected expression. Their public statement has since collected close to 700 signatories.

Woods Fund Chicago President Michelle Morales

“Under this administration,” asks Woods Fund Chicago’s “Commitment to Solidarity,” “what can we as funders do to protect and bolster our grantee partners?” The multipronged answer included bumping its payout rate to 14% this year and 15% in 2026. 

The funder’s statement notes that by rescinding funding to nonprofits that didn’t align with its priorities, the administration was acting as the sector’s “gatekeeper.” “It is undeniable that this gatekeeping is used as a tool of white supremacy,” the statement read, “but make no mistake — whether that tool is wielded by funders or the government, those who will be hurt the most are the very communities affected the most and fighting the hardest against systemic injustice and oppression.”

In a recent conversation with IP’s Dawn Wolfe, Woods Fund Chicago President Michelle Morales said that she and her board considered the potential implications of using such charged language. “When the rollback of affirmative action happened, I laid out all of the legal risks,” Morales said. “‘We may get sued. This might happen. Blah blah blah.’ We’re very race-explicit in our language, as I’m sure you saw on our website. And [our board] were like, ‘We’re not changing anything. And if there is a legal fine, we have the resources. We’ll use our resources to do it.’”

Cancer research funders

While there may not be one specific funding leader to highlight, we have to give an honorable mention to backers of cancer research. They haven’t stayed silent as the administration has spent the past five months stripping back a wide swath of medical and science research funding, even as victories are being won in the war on cancer. 

These groups have unambiguously sounded the alarm that the president’s cuts are, as an American Association for Cancer Research press release stated, “jeopardizing progress and delaying innovations and treatments that are pivotal to improving patient outcomes and saving lives.” Similarly, a May statement from breast cancer funding organization Susan G. Komen said that “drastic funding reductions of cancer screening and research programs threaten lives and reverse decades of progress.”

Many cancer research funders operate patient advocacy organizations, engaging in activities like education, patient care and, naturally, advocacy, so speaking out against policies that put lives at risk is baked into their missions.

Billionaires

Given that the president was flanked by Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos at his inauguration and how his “big, beautiful bill” seeks to cut taxes by over $600 billion for the top 1% of wage earners, we shouldn’t be surprised that more billionaire donors haven’t criticized the administration. 

That said, at a time when vulnerable communities are reeling from the administration’s draconian cuts to programs focused on food security, public health and domestic violence services, there comes a point where even the most publicity-shy billionaire can no longer remain silent. Over the past few weeks, a handful of billionaire donors, including Warren Buffett, Stanley Druckenmiller and even Trump supporter Bill Ackman, have stepped up to push back against the president’s tariff policies.

“What Trump unveiled (last) Wednesday,” said Ken Fisher, the billionaire founder of Fisher Investments, in early April, “is stupid, wrong, arrogantly extreme, ignorant trade-wise and addressing a non-problem with misguided tools.”

For more, see my colleague Michael Kavate’s thoughts on the philanthropic billionaires who might just help provide the anti-Trump resistance with the financial firepower it desperately needs.

Bill Gates?

Speaking of billionaires, Bill Gates has seen his life’s philanthropic work imperiled after unsuccessfully lobbying the president to preserve the U.S. Agency for International Development. He also correctly predicted that the cuts, which left him “horrified,” would cost lives. 

Despite his agenda enduring a devastating nearly six months, Gates, to the best of my knowledge, has refrained from attacking the president by name. He has, however, publicly gone after Trump’s erstwhile cost-cutting accessory, Elon Musk. “The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Gates told the Financial Times.

The Gates Foundation’s commitment to spend down by 2045, while not a huge surprise — and still light on some important details — indicates at the very least that one of the leading philanthropists of our era will be applying his vast fortune to heal Trump’s global damage — and maybe get more vocal and correct some of his own political missteps.

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