By Allison Celosia, Resource Mobilization Director at 18 Million Rising

The funding loss was initially a gut punch. It stoked fear in our hearts, it made us question our campaigns, and above all, it made us grieve the ongoing violence against Palestine.

Let’s start with the facts.

In 2024 alone, the U.S. government sent Israel at least $17.9 billion in military funding to mass murder the Palestinian people.

In the same year, right-wing donors and foundations spent $1 billion to keep people from voting.

And between October 2023 and June 2024, nonprofits who have supported Palestinian rights have lost at least $8 million in grant funding. 

This climate of political and economic violence is what we’re up against as movement organizers, as coalition members for justice, and as pro-Palestinian advocates.

18 Million Rising (18MR) is a national Asian American advocacy organization that mobilizes communities around racial justice, abolition, and democracy. We work within movements towards a liberated future for Asian Americans and all marginalized peoples. We have been unwavering in our commitment to a free Palestine.

18 Million Rising organizer group at 2024 March on the DNC

From calling out The Asian American Foundation to #DropTheADL to marching on the Democratic National Convention to end U.S. military aid to Israel to mobilizing philanthropy to support Palestinian communities, we continue to call for an end to this genocide and the 77 years of settler colonial violence against the Palestinian people.

Little did we know though, it would be a single solidarity statement we made that flagged our organization for funding review.

18MR’s Fight for Justice Amid Funding Cuts

In January 2025, Wellspring Philanthropic Fund, a major funder of racial justice organizations, informed us that the foundation would be ending its relationship with 18MR and canceling the final $250,000 payment of a multi-year grant. The reason cited was a community statement 18MR made in solidarity with Palestine.

Media headline “How A Single Instagram Post Cost One Nonprofit a Quarter of Its Budget” by Sara Herschander, Chronicle of Philanthropy (April 2025)

The full story has been reported on by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, but the tl;dr version is that our Executive Director was called into a closed-door meeting with Wellspring’s executive leadership and was informed of the Wellspring board’s sudden decision to end the grant relationship. The reasons Wellspring gave were vague and rooted in misunderstanding and misinterpretation of our message to call out the root causes of the Palestine-Israel conflict. Ultimately, our formal request to appeal their funding decision failed, and we were left to wonder if other Wellspring grantees with pro-Palestinian stances experienced similar cuts (spoiler alert: we later learned that 18MR was singled out for our solidarity). 

Mind you, 18MR is a small nonprofit. We are a team of 8.0 FTE employees, organizing nationally on a $1.2 million operating budget. The entire staff team holds multiple identities as Southeast Asian, South Asian, East Asian, mixed race, queer, trans, and working class people. 

The funding loss was initially a gut punch. It stoked fear in our hearts, it made us question our campaigns, and above all, it made us grieve the ongoing violence against Palestine. By conservative estimates, more than 52,000 Palestinians have lost their lives since October 2023, while ninety percent of Gaza’s population of 2.1 million people have been forcibly displaced multiple times within the region and continue to survive under oppressive conditions to this day.

Staff Morale Under Funder Repression

Wellspring’s funding decision came right at the beginning of the year, just as 18MR was finalizing its strategic campaigns and programs for 2025. Our annual operating budget was set, and we were counting on our final grant payment from Wellspring to come in that same month. 

We were already feeling the pressure of operating in this volatile landscape. 2024 marked the House passage of H.R. 9495, the “nonprofit killer bill,” many sector employees were forced into Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan forbearance on their student loans without the possibility of Public Service Loan Forgiveness, and a growing number of social justice organizations have faced or are anticipating threats to their reputation, office, or personnel in addition to cuts in funding, especially federal grants. 

Needless to say, telling our staff team the news about losing funds for our Palestinian solidarity was a hard conversation. Together, we discussed our organization’s overall financial sustainability, and we listened to our team members’ concerns about salaries and job protection. Even with all our worries, the staff still wanted an opportunity to organize and fight back. They quickly identified that the solidarity statement was the same one being tracked by MAGA and the far right, and they asked how we were going to call out the funding decision as an attack on movement power and Palestinian solidarity.

18 Million Rising Instagram “An Attack on Movement Power”Informational Post

…fighting for Palestine helped free us. We are no longer grantees of the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund. We are free to partner with our community in new, more powerful ways when it comes to fundraising and resource mobilization.

As leadership, we moved quickly to assess our organizational risk and come up with a plan. The power dynamics between funders and grantee organizations have always been challenging, no matter the political landscape. To name a funder as large as Wellspring Philanthropic Fund as one who had failed us in solidarity was a big decision for our organization, one that demanded vulnerability but also courage. We’re incredibly grateful for our community of trusted movement and philanthropic partners who encouraged us to tell our story of funder backlash as a way to continue our campaign and call for an end to the Palestinian genocide.

How Palestine continues to free us

Ultimately, fighting for Palestine helped free us. We are no longer grantees of the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund. We are free to partner with our community in new, more powerful ways when it comes to fundraising and resource mobilization. We want mutual support and values alignment when it comes to fighting for the liberation of Palestine and all marginalized peoples.

Moving forward, 18MR’s resource strategy will continue to embody the same strategies that drive our programmatic work — we educate, we mobilize, and we organize. It is our hope that by deepening our shared analysis of power and wealth with funders, donors, and our community members at large, we can continue to challenge traditional philanthropy and help sharpen its role and responsibilities within the social justice movement. 

No more risk aversion, no more censorship, no more saving dollars for a rainy day. Funders must organize and do the hard work with us today, and every day until Palestine is free.

We owe it to Hind Rajab. We owe it to Mahmoud Khalil. We owe it to generations of Palestinian families, who deserve freedom, healing, and justice. 

After all, in our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians.

In solidarity,
Allison and the 18 Million Rising team

If you want to join 18MR in movement, we have upcoming briefing events on movement defense and philanthropy. Contact us at info@18millionrising.org to learn more. If you are called to donate in solidarity, we have a community fund at bit.ly/18MR_FUNDCOMMUNITY.

Resources:

• The Criminalization of Solidarity (Muslims for Just Futures, March 2025)
• Repression, Retrenchment, and Resilience: Philanthropy and Support for Palestinian Liberation After A Year of Genocide (Funding Freedom Project, January 2025)
• Defunding Dissent (Jewish Currents, December 2024)
• A Clarion Call: How Attacks on U.S. Palestinian Solidarity Organizations Undermine Our Democracy (Responsive Philanthropy, September 2024).