Keep Showing Up
I’m writing this blog post to reflect on this moment for our nation and our national cultural field. As you know, Grantmakers in the Arts moved our 2025 national conference to a different hotel in solidarity with the workers engaged in a labor dispute with the original hotel’s corporate owners. GIA’s conference attendees rolled with us even though it was inconvenient and expensive. We all did this as an expression of solidarity with workers and with one another. Our federal government’s attacks on our agencies and nonprofits are attacks on workers and the communities they serve. We will not be divided.
Our national nonprofit and grantmaker field are showing unity, including through United in Advance’s Statement on Political Violence and the Fundamental Freedom of Speech in response to our federal government’s threats against foundations and nonprofit organizations.
An attack on foundations that support progressive causes is an attack on all nonprofits and the communities they serve. I was raised in Section 8 housing by a single mother with a severe physical disability. My mother received a home attendant thanks to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. I was able to attend school at the City University of New York while working for the Bronx Council on the Arts because of a fellowship from the Clark Foundation. Nonprofits and government agencies save and change the lives of everyday people. When government agencies or foundations are stopped from supporting our communities’ nonprofits, those nonprofits are prevented from supporting our communities’ residents.
The Facts and the Law Are on Our Side
No executive order creates new laws or regulations or supersede existing ones – not the president’s executive order targeting foundations and nonprofits, and not The Department of Justice’s Guidance for Recipients of Federal Funding on Unlawful Discrimination. Prior attempts to force organizations to follow false interpretations of federal civil rights laws have been blocked by the courts.
There is no court ruling that says foundations cannot support Equity, Inclusion or Diversity. The IRS has long asserted that Equity, Inclusion or Diversity are appropriate uses of tax-exempt funds. For example, the Fieri Scholarship Fund offers scholarships for Italian American students, and The Columbian Lawyers Association grants the Charles A. Rapallo and Antonin Scalia Award annually to judges and public servants of Italian-American heritage.
History of Attacks on Foundations
The last time the US government went after foundations – during the 1960s – the animus came from conservative legislators claiming to root out financial corruption. These legislators chose to be led by the Nixon administration, including Spiro Agnew. This was about as convincing as a federal government now claiming to oppose political violence. Even the authors of a report accusing a foundation of funding illegal activity have publicly admitted that their report includes no actual evidence. In the 1960s, conservatives’ targets were foundations supporting Black and other underrepresented communities to register to vote. Today, they are openly showing contempt for the movement for Black lives, know-your-rights trainings, and other justice efforts.
Foundation leaders at the time poorly articulated their value proposition, and the hearings resulted in the tax rules that foundations live with to this day. Which sectors did not have their tax benefits challenged? Oil, real estate and tobacco – thanks to their lobbying.
Telling Our Own Stories
Civil society is coming together to tell our own stories. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights has prepared a messaging toolkit to support responses to federal attacks on nonprofits and the foundations that support them. The National Council of Nonprofits has launched its Nonprofits Get It Done campaign. United Philanthropy Forum is collecting stories of the positive impact philanthropy has had on communities, and GIA is collecting stories on the negative impacts of the Federal Government’s actions.
The national cultural field is also lifting up local stories of local impact thanks to the hard work of advocacy organizations like Arts Alliance Illinois, Springboard for the Arts, Creative West, and many others.
It is essential that the national arts grantmaking community fund advocacy, storytelling, and the organizations that provide them.
Making Our Own Future
We are coming together to set our own vision for the future we will build. Rather than focusing only on the next budget cycle, organizations and agencies are playing the long game, guided by our values and our vision.
GIA’s members are meeting online monthly to chart our future together. Our September Member Discussion included Pam Breaux, President of National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, who updated nonprofits, foundations, and public agencies on public support for the arts nationwide. GIA’s November 20 Member Discussion will feature Representative Suzanne Bonamici, author of the Arts Education for All Act. GIA is also hosting monthly meetings of the Fair Funding Access cohort.
Midwest Academy and The Highlander Center have been training the GIA team and board of directors in how to participate in and fund cultural organizing for long-term power-building and systemic policy change. GIA, Midwest Academy, and Highlander Center’s Cultural Organizing Community of Practice is now available to cultural grantmakers.
United Philanthropy Forum’s Philanthropy + Policy Institute was hosted online November 5. Entitled From Defense to Design: Building Philanthropy’s Long-Term Advocacy Power, the Institute is al strategy session where philanthropy's leaders and advocates join policy experts, legal strategists, and sector thought leaders to step out of the day-to-day and design a collective future. The Forum’s Foundations on the Hill convening in Washington DC will be March 16-19, 2026. United Philanthropy Forum is also playing the long game, working with legislators to codify tax rules that protect support for Equity, Inclusion and Diversity.
It is essential that grantmakers support organizations’ ability to engage in long-term planning, as GIA explains in our Capitalization and Nonprofit Financial Health work.
Victories Can Fuel Us
The arts and culture field have achieved significant victories, including a court ruling striking down anti-Trans provisions in National Endowment for the Arts’ contracts. This victory is thanks to the hard work of Theater Communications Group, the American Civil Liberties Union, Rhode Island Latino Arts, National Queer Theater, The Theater Offensive, and so many others.
The recent U.S. tax bill removed provisions that would have allowed the Treasury Department to eliminate nonprofits’ tax exempt status by labeling them supporters of terrorism without due process.
The tax bill also dropped the threatened tax increases on foundations – taxes that could have harmed nonprofits already facing budget cuts and political threats due to their support for racialized communities, Trans and LGBTQIA2S+ communities, immigrants, the environment, women’s rights, and more.
The tax bill also included tax deductions for charitable giving by residents of modest means, encouraging more giving in low-income communities.
These victories were won through the effective advocacy of our nation’s nonprofit field.
While these rulings may be appealed and legislation may be reintroduced, we should allow these victories to energize us.
Take heart in your successes, in the facts, and in each other. Keep showing up for each other. Abandon “normal” and make your preferred future together. Support long-term planning, storytelling, and advocacy. GIA looks forward to seeing you at our monthly Member Discussions (register through the My Accounts page of www.giarts.org) and at next year’s Cultural Organizing Community of Practice with Midwest Academy and The Highlander Center.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eddie Torres is president & CEO of Grantmakers in the Arts
