Lambda Legal, the nonprofit that helped win the landmark Supreme Court case guaranteeing the right to same sex marriage, said it is seeking at least $180 million in additional funding to fight an onslaught of state legislation aimed at rolling back legal protections for gay and transgender people.
Last month, Lambda Legal launched the “Unstoppable Future” campaign, the most ambitious fundraising drive in its history. The organization is urging donors to support its efforts to staff up and take on more cases, particularly at the state level, where more than 500 bills targeting LGBTQ+ people were proposed and nearly 90 were enacted last year.
“We are the LGBTQ+ community’s last line of defense,” CEO Kevin Jennings said. “Unfortunately, in a lot of states we simply don’t have the votes to stop legislators from enacting hateful, anti-LGBTQ+ laws, which means that the only hope left is if Lambda Legal can strike them down in court.”
With the additional funds, Lambda Legal plans to increase its legal team by 42 percent, from 36 to 51 members, and hire nine more litigators. This growth would expand capacity for litigation cases by 83 percent, it said. Lambda Legal took on 60 cases in 2020 and wants to boost that to 112 cases by 2026. Lambda Legal also wants to create an emergency fund that could be tapped during crisis periods, among other things.
Lambda Legal kicked off its campaign ahead of Pride Month, in June, which celebrates the LGBTQ+ community. The campaign is scheduled to conclude in 2026. Before taking the campaign public, the group received large contributions from several donors, including MacKenzie Scott, who has given the organization a total of $16 million. She gave a $6 million gift in 2020 and $10 million more in 2021. The group also received what it called a “transformational” $25 million gift from the Kathryn G. Graham Trust, its largest to date.
“Four to five of our largest donors are women, one of whom is trans,” Josh Pushkin, Lambda Legal’s chief development officer, said.
Eileen Amy Ryan, a transgender woman, and her niece Maureen Ryan gave $1.5 million to help Lambda Legal hire a staff attorney for nonbinary and transgender rights.
“I believe that as we continue to wake up the philanthropic community and garner greater focus on the work that we’re doing, we see tremendous untapped potential within our allied partnerships, family members of LGBTQ+ people who want to make sure that their families and their communities are safe,” Pushkin said.
The group said it has secured $147 million in commitments toward its $180 million goal through cash, pledges, and planned giving. Those commitments include 15 gifts of at least $1 million, including from the law firm Jones Day. Part of its strategy has been driving home the idea that LGBTQ defense funding is falling flat amid increasing legal challenges. Recent data shows charitable giving to LGBTQ+ organizations doubled from $387 million in 2012 to $823 million in 2021, but funding still falls short of what is needed to fight the rising number of laws targeting those communities, he said. Opposition to LGBTQ and women’s rights has attracted as much as $6 billion globally over the past decade, an LGBTQ rights group has said.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy recently sat down with Jennings and Pushkin to discuss Lambda Legal’s campaign.
How did you come up with the $180 million goal?
Kevin: Essentially, you want to pick a number that is ambitious but attainable. And we have been in the quiet phase of the campaign for about two years. With the quiet phase, you go out to your most loyal supporters and say, “What can you help us do?” And by the time you go public, you have a pretty good sense. So we are at approximately $150 million of our $180 million goal right now. So about 83 percent of the way there. I personally — and I’m gonna make all of Josh’s hair fall out — would like to think of $180 million as a floor, not a ceiling. The need is greater than the number. And I think most people who run campaigns would tell you the same thing. The need is always greater than the number.
Josh: I was just going to add that at the starting point, we conducted a feasibility study back in 2021 that recommended a $30 million campaign was realistic for us to achieve. We felt that given the scale of our opposition, that that would be insufficient. We are very proud to have just launched our Unstoppable Future campaign with a goal that is six times the original recommendation at $180 million.
Do you think that MacKenzie Scott becoming a major donor has helped you raise funding?
Kevin: I would say a couple of things. I think first of all, Ms. Scott’s gift was transformational for Lambda Legal. It was the largest gift we had ever received at that time from a living donor. But what it also did was it encouraged other donors to both think about Lambda and to think about giving to Lambda in ways they had not in the past. Many of the people who have committed the seven-figure gifts we’ve gotten were people who had given five or at the most six figure gifts in the past, but now we’re coming to seven or even eight figure gifts because they see the need.
Many of the rights LGBTQ+ people have were won through the courts by Lambda Legal, such as the right to marry, which we won at the Supreme Court in Obergefell in 2015. And I think there is tremendous anxiety out there among LGBTQ+ people and our allies that we could be going backwards very fast. So I think it’s a combination of people thinking of giving to Lambda in a new elevated way and also sensing that we’re in real danger. And that has propelled many people to really up their game in terms of their giving to Lambda Legal, which is very exciting for us.
But I will say that the vast majority of our support for this campaign is coming from individuals. I will honestly say that corporate America could be doing more for the LGBTQ+ community, period, than it’s doing right now. I think that you’ve seen some corporations be targeted [by opponents], like Target and Bud Light. And I think that has put some fear in particularly corporate donors. Now, I’m very happy to say that we did receive a lead gift, seven-figure gift from the law firm Jones Day specifically to fund a legal position that would address the needs of LGBTQ+ seniors, who are a population that often gets overlooked. So I am hopeful that some of our law firm and corporate partners will follow Jones Day’s lead and step up in a new way.
We’ve talked about major individual donors and corporate donors. What’s the role of everyday givers in this campaign?
Josh: We call it a comprehensive campaign because we want to emphasize that we’re raising the organization’s capacity over all. We’re very fortunate to have roughly, I think, 16,000 to 18,000 individual donors per year, and folks are renewing at increased rates. We also tend to acquire new donors not only through personal introductions but also through our social media campaigns, through direct mail, through email, as well as events like our National Liberty Awards dinner. Events like this often are an entry point for new donors to Lambda. They become “friend raisers.” They also make a gift and contribute, and many of those folks become future major donors and also champions for our cause within their foundations, within their families, within their corporates and law firms. There’s really an authentic connection and community within our donor base that I think is helping Lambda to continue to grow and expand.
Kevin: The LGBTQ+ movement has traditionally been funded by small donations from our own community. Only 28 cents out of every $100 in philanthropy goes to LGBTQ+ causes, and the vast majority of that 28 cents comes from our community and comes in small gifts. I think our average gift is something like $64. So we really count on our community and donors across the spectrum to support our work.
In terms of everyday givers, how are you engaging younger donors who tend to think differently about equality and the intersection of issues than earlier generations?
Josh: We actually don’t have demographic data on all of our donors because we’re very sensitive about data privacy. During the pandemic, when we pivoted to doing our events virtually, we also began to engage younger donors online, some of whom have organized and done fundraising campaigns for us through live streaming on Twitch, through a platform that we use called Tiltify. I think that’s been one sort of helpful engagement strategy to reach younger audiences, as well as a recent campaign to lift up trans voices, which is also designed to design to gain attention and traction with younger and more intersectional followers.
Kevin: I’m going to offer the historical perspective, mainly because I’m a fossil, but when I started in the LGBT movement in the ‘80s, even LGBT people did not want to be associated with LGBT philanthropy. People would often give anonymously, they would use pseudonyms, and non-LGBT philanthropists didn’t want to give because they thought people would think they were then gay. In fact, one of my heroes was a gentleman named Jim Hormel, who was the heir of the Hormel fortune, and who came out and was very public with his philanthropy in the ‘80s and ‘90s. That encouraged a lot of other LGBTQ people to realize they should be giving and they could use their real names. I’m very excited about the next generation because they understand that LGBT issues are part of a larger issue, which is, “What kind of country are we going to be?”
What is the ultimate goal of this campaign?
Josh: Our goal is to achieve full capacity by the end of 2026. We expect to do the majority of the fundraising between now and the end of 2025. But as we move into the broader public phase, we will have a greater focus on acquiring new donors and making the tent bigger, continuing to make Lambda Legal a household name.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
