What’s Really at Stake When Funders Abandon Transgender Communities?

As political debates intensify against the backdrop of the 2026 midterm elections, many advocates feel the stakes could not be higher. Transgender communities have begun experiencing yet another round of ugly campaign ads meant to activate voters’ fears, resentments, and suspicions. It is a coordinated rollback of civil rights, with transgender people positioned as the testing ground.

Anti-trans messaging isn’t just a side note—it is a core political strategy. During the 2024 election cycle, political candidates and special interest groups poured more than $215 million into anti-trans ads. The scale alone should raise a question for any serious democracy funder: Why spend nearly a quarter-billion dollars targeting just 1 percent of the population?

This tactic is scapegoating, the oldest trick in the authoritarian playbook. The same strategy has moved from campaign ads into governance—through state legislatures and, increasingly, federal agencies. Across the country, lawmakers have introduced hundreds of bills that block trans people from receiving basic healthcare, education, legal recognition, and the right to exist publicly.

We write as two funders who collaborate with a shared conviction: Trans, queer, and reproductive rights rise or fall with democracy itself.

Last week, one of the most sweeping anti-trans laws in the nation went into effect in Kansas, immediately invalidating the driver’s licenses, state IDs, and birth certificates of thousands of residents who had legally changed their gender markers, stripping them of valid identification overnight, with no warning and no recourse. These legislative attacks are now reinforced by the Trump administration’s executive orders and weaponization of federal funding that narrow federally recognized gender identity and constrain access to healthcare.

Not long before, the Supreme Court added to this troubling wave by blocking California’s policy protecting transgender students’ privacy at school, ruling that parents’ religious beliefs entitle them to be informed of a child’s gender identity, even where disclosure risks abuse or self-harm.

We are in trouble if we dismiss this as just another “culture war debate.” We must ask ourselves who benefits from controlling our bodies and infringing upon very personal medical decisions? If this can happen to transgender people, and if reproductive rights are already curtailed, what and who might this draconian level of control extend to next? It echoes dark periods in our history when moral panic produced real harm—from the criminalization of queer life and the government’s deadly indifference during the HIV/AIDS crisis to contemporary assaults on reproductive freedom. Each time, silence and complacency took a brutal toll on human lives and eroded democratic norms.

Philanthropy can’t afford to treat trans rights as niche. In 2023, US foundations gave $209 million to LGBTQ+ issues, which represents a very small fraction of overall giving: For every $100 in foundation giving, only 25 cents reached LGBTQ+ communities, and only three cents went to trans communities. That might sound proportional—until you consider how disproportionately trans people are being targeted as the test case for state control over bodies, identity, and truth. They’re facing the tip of the spear in this authoritarian project. If we don’t fund the front line, we should not be surprised when the rollback of our civil rights spreads.

The Right to Control Our Bodies

We write as two funders who collaborate with a shared conviction: Trans, queer, and reproductive rights rise or fall with democracy itself. Through our work with the Rights, Faith & Democracy Collaborative, an initiative of the Proteus Fund, we mobilize and coordinate resources to support state-based coalitions resisting religious extremism, defending civil rights, and making space for a more inclusive multiracial democracy.

Through this work, we’ve learned something that rarely makes headlines: Faith communities are not a monolith in this fight. In fact, they are often among the strongest, most consistent defenders of trans dignity and bodily autonomy. Grantees like Jewish Community Action in Minnesota and the Spiritual Alliance of Communities for Reproductive Dignity (SACReD) have stood with trans communities not despite their religious commitments, but because of them.

Their solidarity is rooted in the belief that for people to live freely with dignity, we must protect their ability to live truthfully and safely. We take inspiration from Faith Choice Ohio, which led a prayer on Transgender Day of Remembrance that called for “a world eager for the warmth of the truth of abundant trans life and thriving.” We are excited to learn about new organizations, such as Queer Muslims of Minnesota, building community and creating consistent spiritual care for queer and queer-allied Muslims.

We must ask ourselves who benefits from controlling our bodies and infringing upon very personal medical decisions?

Many civil society leaders, both faith-based and secular, recognize that the rollback of trans rights is part of a broader authoritarian project to control bodies, narratives, and belonging. The defunding and restriction of gender-affirming care is the authoritarian playbook in practice: overriding the decisions of parents and doctors, creating a hostile climate of fear and legal threat for families and clinicians, and setting dangerous precedents for government control over our bodies.

As one parent whose child lost access to care put it plainly, “This care was lifesaving. We didn’t know it was lifesaving until it was gone.”

The disinformation ecosystem around trans healthcare mirrors the tactics used against abortion and vaccines: Elevate rare edge cases, flood the public with fear-based misinformation, and undermine medical expertise.

The fact is, fewer than 1 percent of people receiving gender-affirming care report regret, compared with as many as 22 percent who report regret after routine procedures like knee surgery. Despite all the misinformation, 77 percent of Americans still say medical care should be decided by families and doctors, not lawmakers. Trans people are a test case for how much control the state can claim over bodies, families, and identity—making a defense of trans rights a defense of democracy.

What Steps Can Funders Take Now?

Philanthropy too often reflects the divisions it claims to oppose. We separate funding for “gender,” “LGBTQ,” “health,” and “democracy” as if these struggles are distinct—even as the opposition attacks them as one interconnected project of control.

The funders meeting this moment are modeling a different approach: coordinating across portfolios so trans justice is part of every funding stream; partnering with faith and grassroots networks to anchor moral courage and clarity, not just move money; and funding movement infrastructure—not just services—so communities can withstand political cycles designed to exhaust them.

Here are steps we strongly encourage other funders to take:

Ensure that your own institutions model inclusivity. That means investing in training, recruiting, and retaining trans and gender-nonconforming staff and board members when possible, and adopting inclusive policies. Many employers are learning that medical “coverage” is not the same as access: Insurance denials are rising, clinics are preemptively restricting care, and trans employees increasingly have to travel out of state or seek care out of network.

The same is true for people seeking abortion and reproductive care. Often they are forced to navigate a landscape where medically necessary care is made inaccessible through bureaucracy, fear, and geography. Funders can meet this reality by ensuring benefits cover gender-affirming care, creating reimbursement pathways when care is denied, and offering flexible work and relocation support when safety or healthcare access requires it. These practices don’t just protect trans staff, they also build durable systems of care that strengthen organizations for everyone.

Fund physical and digital safety and security. Resource security and legal preparedness for trans movement leaders, providers, and journalists—including privacy protection services, digital security training, community-led security at offices and in-person events, clear protocols for responding to online threats. Protection also means legal readiness: relationships with counsel who understand trans rights, Know Your Rights training, and support for employees who do not feel safe traveling for work. Our best work happens when we feel safe. Given the threats facing trans people and other marginalized communities today, safety and security is a must.

Include transgender communities in your democracy, public health, and other relevant grantmaking portfolios. Increase grantmaking for trans communities, prioritize trans-led organizations, and support rapid response when attacks escalate. Make trans inclusion a baseline across every portfolio. For example, if you fund journalism, fund trans journalism, and ensure trans reporters—among other marginalized reporters—aren’t shut out of legacy institutions. The same applies across public health, civic engagement, youth development, arts, and democracy: Trans justice is a cross-cutting issue.

For funders newer to this work, donor collaboratives and intermediaries are among the fastest ways to move resources to state-based and grassroots infrastructure. Alongside the Rights, Faith & Democracy Collaborative at Proteus Fund, funds like the Action for Transformation Fund at Emergent Fund and the funds that form the Trans Futures Funding Campaign are also getting resources directly to trans communities, where the consequences of the current administration are felt most.

Use your platform to speak out for transgender rights. Express solidarity with trans communities, affirm that trans rights are human rights, and use your influence to challenge disinformation—including the manufactured panic around gender-affirming care and inclusion. Expressing solidarity can’t stay private, especially when trans communities are being isolated by design. That means being transparent about where you stand: issuing or signing onto public statements of support, spotlighting trans-led organizations at convenings and speaking engagements, publishing op-eds or blog posts calling for increased trans inclusion, and submitting public comments on state and federal legislation and administrative actions affecting trans communities.

We invite other funders to join us as we accompany our transgender family, friends, colleagues, and neighbors in their civil rights struggle—a key front in our defense of democracy. This is the only way to ensure that all of us will one day be able to live together safely no matter our gender, race, immigration status, sexual orientation, or religion.