By Mikail Khan, communications specialist and trans activist

People of the global majority have to deal with racism, classism, transphobia, and white supremacy (to name a few social ills) on a daily basis. Too often, these oppressive norms are perpetuated by people from dominant cultures in progressive spaces. 

More prominently, since the 2020 #BlackLivesMatter summer uprisings, many social justice nonprofits and philanthropic institutions have been rapidly co-opting radical language and making public announcements of their ‘organizational transformations’ when the very real manifestations of white supremacy remain within those structures. 

Similar performative displays have been demonstrated by well-funded mainstream LGBTQ+ nonprofits in metropolitan cities across the U.S. that have historically been founded by white, cis, upwardly mobile gay men and women.

A brief history of the LGBTQ+ nonprofit landscape

…once I completed the onboarding process and became more familiar with various dynamics, the messaging used in the marketing plan’s audience-facing collateral was in stark contrast to the internal value systems and carceral HR processes of these organizations. 

These past two decades have seen numerous BIPOC trans professionals slowly and, at times, unwillingly inserting themselves into the progressive nonprofit industrial complex (NPIC). Due to our current social order’s fixation on trans bodies, where our basic human rights are being stripped away, a lot of us have now ended up in this seemingly ‘social good’ sector where we want to fight for a good cause. 

Yet this naive promise and pursuit of equality for all has created a false separation of injustice from our everyday lives. The NPIC and philanthropy are easily self-perpetuating systems (aka: working toward its self-preservation), and not a fundamental restructuring of power and society. It is futile to think that nonprofits can stand in the way of failing states, failing democracies, and failing economies. Still, as workers, we often project these aspirations onto ‘cause-driven’ workplaces. 

This rigged model doesn’t allow trans nonprofit workers from oppressed backgrounds to challenge the status quo as we try to work from the inside to change the fabric of these institutions. The same logic applies to an employee within LGBTQ+ institutional settings, where we are working harder than ever, but unable to secure meaningful power or impact.

I have worked in the LGBTQ+ mission-specific nonprofit sector in New York for the past six years.  As someone with an abolitionist mindset, I knew there would be various contradictions working as a trans, chronically ill, immigrant of color in the NPIC. How could there not be? The work being done in this complex is uncomfortable and messy, given the neoliberal capitalist alliances between governments, funders, and charitable entities. 

I got involved in nonprofit communications and development activities because I genuinely wanted to work for the liberation of Black and brown trans, gender nonconforming, and intersex folks, whether it be diverting resources back into the community, or building narrative power. For some time, it was difficult to get hired by non-LGBTQ+ organizations due to my ongoing medical transition as a transmasculine individual. 

Given my upbringing in Bangladesh and lack of access to LGBTQ+ professional settings, I also felt I should be grateful for getting a chance to work at these organizations. I dedicated myself to the work with the hopes that we trans BIPOC folks might be encouraged to demonstrate leadership and courage and reimagine the world we live in to pursue queer and trans liberation–the premise by which I was brought in to craft progressive marketing and communications messaging at these institutions. 

However, once I completed the onboarding process and became more familiar with various dynamics, the messaging used in the marketing plan’s audience-facing collateral was in stark contrast to the internal value systems and carceral HR processes of these organizations. 

A majority of these rooms were dominated by cis straight, gay, and/or lesbian liberals in various shades (Caucasian white, white Latine, Savarna, brown, Black) whose sole purpose was to keep churning the wheels of liberal “advocacy” and “allyship,” and who didn’t seem invested in confronting the cycles of violence facing some of the most marginalized community members.

Unsurprisingly, the organizational hierarchy determined who was deemed the most valuable worker and who could be discarded. The lowest rung of the hierarchy tended to be working-class Black and brown trans folks with minimal safety nets but who were performing essential public-facing work (front desk personnel, support group facilitators) at minimum wage, while the cis white CEO was earning close to mid-level six figures. 

The whiplash intensified when the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) consultants were brought in regularly to engage the organizations in racial and gender equity transformative dialogues. These sessions concluded with some colleagues, most of whom were white/white-aligned and cis, feeling a sense of accomplishment, while Black and brown trans folk left feeling even more disenchanted.

When equity work becomes self and community betrayal

Phrases such as ‘liberation’ and ‘trans joy’ are now neatly packaged within newsletters, social media channels, cause marketing products, and end-of-year fundraising appeals to convey messages of healing and accountability when these values and actions have not been meaningfully embedded within the organization.

Let’s acknowledge that things are really fucked up in the world today. In the realm of LGBTQ+ rights in the U.S., over four hundred anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced between January and April of this year alone, including laws to ban drag performances, erase public school curricula of LGBTQ+ content, censor books from public libraries, ban gender-affirming care for minors as well as adults, and forcibly de-transition adults. Fascism has been creating a chokehold on trans people’s existence for some time now, and it is up to everyone, especially cis people, to illuminate and counter the attacks on our bodily autonomy and right to claim space.

Equity work should consider how contemporary social crises coupled with race, gender, disability, and other vulnerabilities might impact the life cycle of an employee within the organization. The focus should be to help the employee flourish in their roles so they, in turn, can help serve the organizational base and community members’ visions of healing and justice. Instead, I have observed that cis LGBQ+ nonprofit leaders and DEI consultants work together to use movement-building language from frontline organizers as a public relations and fundraising strategy. A narrative of healing, accountability, and progress is carefully constructed (read: branded) without staking any claim in material redistribution or furthering our political demands. 

Phrases such as ‘liberation’ and ‘trans joy’ are now neatly packaged within newsletters, social media channels, cause marketing products, and end-of-year fundraising appeals to convey messages of healing and accountability when these values and actions have not been meaningfully embedded within the organization. 

Don’t get me wrong—internal contradictions are a product of external forces. Institutional changes do take time and consistent efforts from invested workers. Additionally, nonprofit workers will not be 100% aligned with one another on the various tactics needed to achieve our collective freedom. So many of our culture and political wars have also pitted us against one another, creating an environment of distrust and conflict. 

Considering all these nuances, I am providing an example of top-heavy institutions that don’t have a strategic plan or theory of change in place and are taking up space in the LGBTQI progressive landscape. Such spaces have not internally engaged in a robust power analysis to create people-centered and trauma-informed infrastructures, yet are financing their public rebrands to hoard more resources that our trans and intersex BIPOC communities desperately need to build joyful worlds.

The cost of neoliberal identity politics on trans of color lives

Merely identifying oppressive behaviors and systems does not mean people are willing to step out of their comfort zone to do the hard and necessary work of dismantling them. For all the trans representation and candidacy appointments in the media and electoral offices that LGBTQ+ nonprofit executives have pushed forth, it has not mobilized larger society to stop the tidal wave of violence that trans people from oppressed backgrounds are facing in the U.S. and across the world. 

The need to build power for those facing the most harm in our communities is becoming eclipsed by the politics of representation and identity.

Due to the narrow requests that are part and parcel of trans visibility campaigns, things have started shifting for mostly elite trans people. Recognizing some of these disparities, DEI measures are working with mainstream LGBQ+ cis-led organizations to actively recruit multiply marginalized candidates with various lived experiences, namely those from working-class, disabled, trans, and intersex backgrounds. But how have these organizations developed internal practices to ensure the safety and leadership development of these candidates without their identities being infantilized? 

Safety for trans people within LGBTQ+ mission-specific organizations will demand that cis leaders reject a respectability politics that is pushing entry and mid-level BIPOC trans workers from oppressed backgrounds to embody the white cis supremacist foundations that these 30+ year-old organizations claim to be actively moving away from. The imposition of cis dominated culture thoughts and values on trans folks trying to build new worlds needs to stop.

Moving away from neutrality and toward principled struggle

We all deserve to play a part in shaping a world that works for us. For the foreseeable future, this will come through the self-organization and solidarity economies being built by workers and some of the most oppressed community members.

Most cis LGBQ+ leaders need to acknowledge that demanding a seat at the table is not ‘joy’ or ‘liberation’ that they are so intent on copy-pasting into their values statements. It’s a desire to be acknowledged by those in power. 

It’s the liberal notion of individual success which makes structural change unrealistic or unnecessary. If nonprofits continue operating neutrally, they will keep diverting our attention toward things overwhelming our nervous systems. These methods are causing LGBTQ+ nonprofit leaders to invest in solutions that aren’t addressing our community’s basic needs that would allow them to survive and eventually thrive. I’ve observed this decision-making ladder to be a source of regular conflict between the lower echelon of workers and the leadership structure–where direct service or program nonprofit workers are overworked and underpaid to meet the communities’ immediate needs, but the leadership teams cannot fulfill said requests due to their ‘profits over people’ mindset. 

As workers, we also don’t know how to deal with conflict effectively. With no training on how generative conflict can be practiced, reactionary LGBQ+ cis leadership use tactics such as performance improvement plans, to push out ‘difficult’ trans and queer employees who want to engage in values-aligned work. 

A perfect example is the recent union busting of Trevor Project’s unionization efforts by a volatile leadership team who went against their mission and values and laid off 12% of the bargaining unit employees. 

Under these constraints, how can decisions be made that reflect the organizational values LGBTQ+ mission-specific institutions seek to uphold? Here are a few considerations I would like to bring to the table:

1. Solutions over critique: One way to make better decisions is not to let critique be the end goal of workplace equity conversations. Hollow proposals of organizational change without encouraging regular feedback and implementation sessions from both employees and community members are creating illusory hopes for some of the most promising workers from oppressed backgrounds, who eventually quit. More points of alignment for trans and intersex BIPOC workers need to be built on an internal scale, particularly because our communities have been constantly sidelined and dehumanized by cis LGBQ+ people since the beginning of the contemporary ‘gay rights’ movement.
2. De-professionalizing and unionizing the workplace: Professionalization, as an industry, has harmed trans and intersex BIPOC workers more so than any other identity group, where we’ve had to follow rigid gender roles to keep our jobs. If these LGBTQ+ organizations want to bring about ‘liberation’ as per their values statements, they will need to stop treating their most oppressed workers as instruments of productivity. They must stop perpetuating the current system that values efficiency (e.g., harsh performance reviews and surveillance) over workers’ rights. Workers should have the freedom and resources to unionize and convey the strong message that our lives are not disposable, no matter how we choose to show up in the workplace.
3. Recognizing NPIC’s limits and building alternate structures: Nonprofits are an extension of the current governmental and corporate establishments that aren’t improving LGBTQ+ people’s material conditions. Understanding this limitation is critical in developing an alternate long-term strategy for building the power of our various movements. Talking to conflicted audiences, supporters, and donors will be very difficult, but sharing these tactics within organizations’ annual strategic plans will inspire hope and build trust between workers on all levels. 

Overall, my observations while working at LGBTQ+ mission-specific organizations have highlighted the need for a fundamental transformation of the LGBTQ+ mission-specific nonprofit organizational superstructure. Such spaces need to bring in principled leadership—those that will honor worker-owned control of resources, provide financial transparency, and prioritize workers’ health over profits. The same leaders must confront the truth that most systemic changes will not arrive through the nonprofit sector, which upholds the capitalist system. 

We all deserve to play a part in shaping a world that works for us. For the foreseeable future, this will come through the self-organization and solidarity economies being built by workers and some of the most oppressed community members. Whether the end result will be the dismantling of the non-profit or philanthropic industry and the co-creation of new ways of working together will depend on whether we are ready to engage in the vulnerable conversations and strategic coalitions needed to safeguard our planet against rising global authoritarianism. What will we choose?