For years, Funders for LGBTQ Issues has documented and tracked philanthropic funding trends impacting LGBTQ communities across the United States and its territories. The latest Resource Tracking Report, which documents the funding landscape as of 2024, highlighted the following noteworthy trends.
In response, Funders for LGBTQ Issues created the 50 by 30: For Trans Lives and Queer Liberation campaign to move $50 million new philanthropic dollars to LGBTQ communities and movements by the year 2030, prioritizing investment in trans and nonbinary communities.
We recognize that centering the leadership of trans people is fundamental to any LGBTQ liberation framework. Our movements were born from trans leaders of color fighting for liberation – and to this day, attacks on trans people often serve as a testing ground for broader rollbacks of rights that protect all LGBTQ people, people of color, immigrants, disabled people, and expansive frontline communities.
Get involved in the 50 by 30 Campaign
Commit new and increased philanthropic dollars to LGBTQ grantees – specifically queer and trans organizations.
- Invest at the state and regional levels and fund frontline communities.
- Ensure movement organizations have the money, space, and time not just to counter relentless attacks, but to support and uplift proactive organizing, narrative change, and cultural work.
Become a 50 by 30 Campaign Champion!
We welcome 50 by 30 Campaign commitments from philanthropic institutions, individual donors, and donor collaboratives. If you’d like to learn more about how to get the process started, please reach out to [email protected].
Trust trans and queer grantees by making multi-year, low-barrier grants for general operating support and rapid response work.
Trust trans-led funding intermediaries
We encourage Campaign Champions to make deepened commitments to current or new grantees, or to invest in the Trans Futures Funding Campaign. The Trans Futures Funding Campaign offers a cohort of trans-led, trans-serving funding intermediaries with close relationships with local, grassroots trans organizations.
Trust Funders for LGBTQ Issues to reflect back the funding landscape and track where resources are flowing.
Submit your institution’s grantmaking data for Funders’ annual Resource Tracking Report, ensuring that we can continue sharing the most up-to-date funding trends affecting trans and queer communities across the country. Read the full 2024 Resource Tracking Report.
Host a stop on our national Membership Tour
Members can work with our External Affairs team to host a Membership Tour stop to strengthen connections with peers in your region and bring folks together to build solidarity around the challenges and opportunities facing your area, and help grow the movement by inspiring new philanthropic partners to take bold action.
Collaborate with Funders for LGBTQ Issues on future events or initiatives
Are you hosting a conference, gathering, or event? Are you launching an upcoming initiative and feel real alignment with the 50 by 30 Campaign? We’d love to be in touch and explore how we can collaborate! Send general inquiries and questions about getting involved in the 50 by 30 Campaign to [email protected].
Help us amplify the 50 by 30: For Trans Lives and Queer Liberation campaign within your network.
Supporting Data
In the past several years, LGBTQ communities have been in the crosshairs of a coordinated and vicious strategy to strip away our rights. In the United States, these attacks on bodily autonomy have taken the shape of executive orders and state legislation seeking to criminalize queer and, especially, trans existence.
The impact of these attacks is vast and far reaching, with Black and Brown people, immigrants, and not only rural, but global LGBTQ communities left most vulnerable. In this context, Funders for LGBTQ Issues’ 2024 Annual Resource Tracking Report found a 17% decrease in philanthropic investment for LGBTQ communities and issues in the United States from the prior year. This translates to a staggering $80 million drop from 2022-2024 during a time when our communities are under increased attack. Similarly, funding awarded for transgender, gender nonconforming, and nonbinary (TGNCNBi) communities decreased by 9% from $36.4 million in 2023 to $33.3 million in 2024. This continues the downward trend in funding for these communities following the all-time high of $48.2 million in 2022.
From the administration’s targeting of trans youth, to blocking global aid recipients from supporting trans rights and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, and the nearly 500 anti-LGBTQ bills proposed thus far in 2026 in state legislatures across the country, our movements need philanthropy to practice hope through mobilizing new dollars.
Explore the Data Below With Transgender Population Estimates, Anti-Trans Bills, and TGNCNBi Funding at the State Level
TGNCNBi Funding by State
Similar to 2023 LGBTQ grantmaking data, philanthropic support for TGNCNBi communities and issues varied widely across U.S. states and territories in 2024. The most funding for TGNCNBi communities was awarded to grantees whose work focused in California ($3.2 million), New York ($1.8 million), Florida ($1.1 million), and Texas ($1.1 million). No dedicated grants were awarded for TGNCNBi communities in the following states in 2024: Iowa, Kansas, New Hampshire, North and South Dakota, and West Virginia. Long-term investment in movement infrastructure that can meet the needs of trans communities in each state is vital, but was not adequately funded in 2024 given the wide variety in state-specific TGNCNBi funding across the country.
The graph below compares the amount of TGNCNBi-specific grant funding awarded by state with both transgender population estimates by state and the number of anti-trans bills introduced at the state level in 2024. Based on this analysis, it is clear that many more anti-trans bills were introduced in states where very little, if any, TGNCNBi funding was awarded in 2024.
Moving forward, more grant funding specifically for TGNCNBi communities across all states and territories is vital to ensure that grantees can run programs to meet the needs of their communities, as well as push back against anti-trans bills and ballot measures.
Frequently Asked Questions
We define new dollars as a material year over year increase in an institution’s grantmaking budget of at least $100,000 in direct funding to LGBTQ communities and movements. Funding must be awarded by the end of 2030.
As part of the campaign, funders and donors can elect to move their money through their own grantmaking processes and/or work with Funders for LGBTQ Issues to identify vetted LGBTQ and trans-led funding intermediaries with a strong background in moving resources responsibly, as well as relationships with local and national LGBTQ frontline organizations.
Commitments to the campaign will be tracked in two phases. The initial phase will offer a tally of committed funds and their corresponding timeline for release, as named by commitment makers (referred to publicly as 50 by 30 Campaign Champions). To determine actual dollars moved to the field through grants that were awarded to grantees or intermediaries, champions will be required to submit their grant data to Funders for LGBTQ Issues’ Research Team for our 2026 to 2030 Annual Resource Tracking Reports. Additionally, the 50 by 30 Campaign Team will invite campaign champions to share their grantmaking strategies, grantee lists, and disbursement timelines to support the field in understanding how resources are moving to the ground in advance of the release of the Annual Research Tracking Report.
Given the disproportionate targeting of TGNC people, alongside the chronic underfunding and active disinvestment of LGBTQ movements nationwide, we encourage our Champions to prioritize trans communities in their grantmaking and be able to articulate why support for trans communities is important to their grantmaking strategies.
We draw from the work of the Trans Justice Funding Project, which defines trans led organizing by offering the following framework: Are you centering the leadership of trans people organizing around their experiences with racism, economic injustice, transmisogyny, ableism, immigration, incarceration, and other intersecting oppressions?
No, this is a philanthropic organizing campaign that is designed to enlist philanthropy to make commitments to move resources to LGBTQ community and movement organizations, either directly or through LGBTQ and trans-led/trans-focused funding intermediaries. Participation in the campaign entails making a commitment to award a specific dollar amount in new or increased funding to be awarded by 2030 and agreeing to submit grant data to Funders for LGBTQ Issues.
$50M was the initial decline in funding we witnessed between 2022 and 2023, when LGBTQ funding dropped from an all-time high of $259M to $209M. In some ways, $50M is a symbolic figure that represents recouping this initial loss. Additionally, given the U.S. economic and social landscape, we see $50M as a meaningful intervention in the nearly $80M in decreased funding allocated towards LGBTQ communities since that time. But $50M is the floor, not the ceiling. $50M is a call-to-action to welcome new funders and donors to the LGBTQ funding ecosystem. Our bounded and time-limited goal is as much about building philanthropic leadership and power as it is about dollars committed to the field. During a time when queer philanthropy is in a a state of existential re-imagining, the 50 by 30 Campaign is an invitation to organize, fund, and deepen engagement in resourcing our communities that will extend far beyond 2030.
Funders will identify a small group of funding intermediaries with strong and current positions of trust within LGBTQ communities, prioritizing intermediaries with trans and queer leadership. These include the Trans Futures Funding Campaign and the Out in the South Fund.
Funders for LGBTQ Issues is in close relationship with a number of LGBTQ, queer, and trans movement groups who have shared the needs the communities they serve and advocate for face, as well as the response they seek from philanthropy. We often host convenings that feature movement & funder panels, including on our Membership Tour, virtual convenings, and funders’ briefings, as well as at our bi-annual Funding Forward conference. The insights and recommendations gleaned from these discussions have informed the campaign goals and strategies.
Data submissions for the 2025 Research Tracking Report is open til November 16, 2026. You can submit your data here.
IF DATA SUBMISSIONS ARE NOT OPEN:
The data submission window for the resource tracking report tends to be open between August-October each year for LGBTQ grants that were awarded during the prior year. If your institution has not submitted its LGBTQ grantmaking data in the past or if you have any questions about this process, please feel free to reach out to the Funders for LGBTQ Issues Research Team at [email protected].
Each 50 by 30 Campaign Champion will utilize their own grantmaking or philanthropic mechanisms to fulfill their campaign commitments. You can find a list of other organizations committed to LGBTQ+ issues and organizations on our Membership page, and we regular publicize open RFP’s through our newsletter, Q-Notes.
We’re excited to connect! Send us an email at [email protected] or reach out to Debasri at [email protected].
The GUTC Pledge laid the groundwork for an institutional commitment to investing in trans communities. Becoming a 50 by 30 Campaign Champion is a way to practice that commitment by moving philanthropic dollars to trans and queer communities in a way that is time-bound, measurable, and accountable to the field.
Yes! There will be dedicated space to learn more and join the 50 by 30 Campaign at Funding Forward. Registration for Funding Forward opens on November 18, 2026.
50 by 30 Campaign Champions
