Resistance, Resilience, and Reempowerment: LGBTQ+ Nonprofit Responses to Policy Retrenchment Under the Trump Administration

Abstract

Abstract Recent shifts in U.S. federal policy have significantly altered the operating environment for nonprofit organizations, particularly those serving marginalized communities. This article examines how LGBTQ+ nonprofit organizations are experiencing and responding to rapid policy retrenchment under the Trump administration. Drawing on qualitative, semi-structured conversations with leaders from eleven LGBTQ+ nonprofit organizations, the analysis explores perceived impacts on constituencies, organizational vulnerability to administrative discretion, and the strategic responses nonprofits have adopted in the face of funding withdrawal and political hostility. Findings highlight three primary response strategies: organizational retrenchment and restructuring, intensified efforts to diversify revenue amid declining government support, and the use of litigation as a defensive policy tool. While these strategies demonstrate resilience and adaptive capacity, leaders emphasized the limits of philanthropic substitution for public funding and the precarity of legal remedies absent durable policy protections. The article situates these organizational experiences within broader nonprofit policy debates concerning government–nonprofit relations, political risk in public contracting, and the role of civil society organizations under conditions of democratic backsliding. Although grounded in the experiences of LGBTQ+ nonprofits, the findings have broader implications for nonprofit governance and policy design in periods of rapid administrative change.