Don’t roll back your DEI initiatives. Leverage your power and show some solidarity.

By Jessie Calero, fundraiser and freelance writer

Now is the time for those of us with privilege to leverage our power and show some solidarity. Now is a great time to examine our ability to divest from federal funding and commit to building a future rooted in justice and authenticity.

For years, nonprofit organizations across the United States have been warned about their reliance on individual donations and grants from private foundations. Funders repeatedly advised nonprofits to pursue federal dollars in order to secure their long-term sustainability. 

As a newly minted fundraiser in the mid-2010s, I embraced this strategy. An organization I worked for at that time invested in my participation in a local fellowship focused on writing federal grant proposals. Less than a year later, we were able to secure our first federally-funded programmatic grant, designed to support young people with disabilities in their transition from high school to adulthood. 

Now this program—and many others like it—are under attack. 

In 90 days, the current administration has proven that federal funding isn’t the panacea we once believed it to be. Trump’s second term has been characterized by some of the most aggressive executive actions we’ve ever seen: attempting to dismantle entire federal agencies, halting enormous swaths of federal spending, and freezing payments for services rendered. While many of these executive efforts have been poorly executed and are actively being challenged through litigation, the chilling effect on the nonprofit community has been immense. 

These funding cuts are particularly alarming given this administration’s open hostility to even the most oblique references to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). 

Organizations that have worked diligently to align with even the most basic tenets of civil rights protections now face scrutiny for using language related to diversity and inclusion. These organizations are at a crossroads: will they continue their DEI efforts, or reverse course in pursuit of renewed federal support?  

Over the past five years, many organizations have invested thousands of dollars and thousands of hours of staff time to pursue internal policy shifts, address gaps in staff training, and develop new language to more accurately describe their work and the communities they serve. These efforts have allowed organizations to expand their workforces and service delivery to better include and meet the unique needs of BlPOC, LGBTQIA+, and disabled folks. But with millions of dollars and critical programs at risk, they have an excuse to halt or even roll back those efforts. 

Some organizations—particularly those led by white, abled, cisgender, heterosexual individuals—may view DEI policies as burdensome and may seek to discard them in favor of aligning with the current administration’s guidelines. 

The Trump administration has already indicated its intention of flagging language that is seen as DEI-related—words that emphasize empathy, accuracy, and cultural competence.  

While there are nonprofits that could find a way to frame their work in a way that excludes this language, there are a lot of organizations that, no matter how they frame their work, simply won’t get federal funding anymore. These organizations are most likely to be led by the marginalized communities they serve and have the least access to affluent individual donors, donor-advised funds, bloated endowments, and private foundations that could supplant federal money (and yes, these sources of funding could replace federal losses if they chose to). 

Now, more than ever, those of us in a position of privilege need to unite in solidarity with the communities most impacted by these cuts. 

Do not roll back your efforts to make trans people feel safe. 

Do not stop engaging in anti-racism. 

Do not eliminate accommodations for people with disabilities. 

Do not scrub your website or proposals to comply with regressive policies and attempts to erase entire communities. 

Now is the time for those of us with privilege to leverage our power and show some solidarity. Now is a great time to examine our ability to divest from federal funding and commit to building a future rooted in justice and authenticity.

This is an opportunity for all of us to re-examine where we get our funding from and find new ways to sustain our work. 

Together, we can forge a future where our commitment to equity, justice, and inclusion drives real change—no matter what happens in Washington.