The day after Donald Trump’s win, the Leslie-Lohman Museum transformed its SoHo gallery into a refuge. Streams of visitors and staff alike sunk into comfy chairs, sipped hot tea, laughed, cried, and processed the news in one of the world’s few LGBTQ art museums, a haven that has survived over half a century of storms.
“The only agenda was to be a place for processing,” said executive director Alyssa Nitchun. She explained that the museum, which traces its roots to 1969, has been a “home and haven for queer people, for a kind of radical imagining beyond what the law and culture are allowing: that’s in our DNA.”
At organizations across the country, many of them progressive, leaders are grappling with dual imperatives: supporting staff and communities still reeling from the election’s outcome, while also charting concrete plans to address the challenges ahead. For many groups — especially those that serve politicized causes like LGBTQ rights, immigration, and climate change — the moment calls for both creating space for grief and building resolve and relationships for what’s to come.
“The next four years are not going to be for the faint of heart,” said Faisal Al-Juburi, chief external affairs officer for the Texas-based immigration nonprofit RAICES, referring to plans drawn by Trump and his allies to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, which he says could devastate immigrant and refugee families.
“We will be okay. We will rise up stronger,” said Al-Juburi, whose organization, founded in 1986, has become a leading immigration legal services provider in Texas. “But it’s also important to give space to breathe, to replenish ourselves, because that’s how we will be able to sustain our fight for justice.”
Anxiety and Resilience
Like other nonprofits, RAICES has spent months drawing up plans for a possible Trump presidency, pulling lessons from his previous administration, and studying documents like Project 2025, the conservative policy blueprint from the Heritage Foundation that calls for dramatically reshaping immigration, reproductive rights, and environmental regulations.
Even so, this week has been less about prep work and more about processing, amid bagels, coffee talks, and virtual roundtables, said Al-Juburi, who noted that many staff members are also managing anxiety over how new policies could affect their own families. The organization closed its doors on Election Day and the following day, and has encouraged employees to use paid time off and mental health benefits as needed throughout the week.
“When one of us is down, the rest of us will be here to lift each other up,” Al-Juburi has told his team, emphasizing the need to embrace joy and community when possible, celebrate incremental victories, and recognize “the need to resist zero-sum thinking” in what is likely to be a challenging few years ahead.
As an immigrant rights organization in a red state under the Trump administration, he added that philanthropic support will be critical to RAICES’s work in the years to come, which he expects to include expanded legal and social services for immigrants and refugees targeted by the administration.
“For philanthropists, this is a time to be bold, a time to be fearless, and a time to be loyal,” Al-Juburi said, noting that immigration has traditionally received little philanthropic support. “This is the time to lean in, listen to service providers on the ground, and make long-term investments within the space.”
At the Leslie-Lohman Museum, leaders are also beginning to think of practical preparations while navigating staff’s grief and fears over the incoming administration. Republicans spent hundreds of millions of dollars on anti-trans ads this campaign cycle, and advocates fear the second Trump administration will roll back anti-discriminatory protections, imperil gender-affirming care, and target LGBTQ institutions.
In response to the election results, for the first time in its history, Nitchun is adding a security line to the museum’s budget, a precaution she considered necessary to maintain a sense of safety for staff and visitors. Over the past week, she says she’s seen an uptick in visitors and “deepening investment by our community, by artists, and by our board” in the face of daunting circumstances.
There is “a sense of resilience because queer folks have been contending with extreme marginalization for centuries — for forever,” she said. “We are a community that knows how to come together, to organize, to care for each other, and find joy, even in really challenging times.”
As they build out safety plans and resolve at their permanent location, museum staffers are also pushing forward with a new traveling exhibition drawn from a collection of 25,000 works spanning three centuries of LGBTQ+ art. Nitchun said the election outcome has added new urgency — and logistical considerations — to the project, which will bring queer art to communities where LGBTQ art and residents are rarely platformed.
“It was always going to be about telling histories that haven’t been told, about queer liberation and organizing,” she said. “But now we’re really thinking through what the needs are of LGBTQ+ people and communities outside of New York City, and how art can be engaged in that work.”
The Nonprofit Constant
While progressive organizations’ staff reel from the election, at nonprofits across the country, the soup still needs to be ladled. The homeless still need to be housed. The art still needs curating. The daily work of charitable organizations will continue regardless of who occupies the White House, said David L. Thompson, vice president for public policy for the National Council of Nonprofits.
“We were here before the politicians came, and we’ll be here after,” he said. “We are more of a constant than they are.”
At nonprofits disillusioned by the election’s outcomes, some leaders are gathering resolve and game plans for working with — and against — the incoming administration. There is a “hall of sadness” among environmental advocates dismayed by the president-elect’s climate denialism, but the stakes are too high to give up on pushing for better policies, said Tamara Toles O’Laughlin, president of the Environmental Grantmakers Association.
“The issues are not going to change,” said O’Laughlin. “The only thing that will change is how hard we have to fight.”
The organization’s members are particularly concerned about Project 2025, the policy blueprint for the second Trump administration that could dramatically roll back environmental regulations. O’Laughlin argues that the fundamental work of protecting air, water, and soil cannot be put on hold for politics, and many leaders are prepared to try building relationships with the new Congress and administration, despite ideological differences.
Steve Taylor, a Republican consultant who previously led government affairs at United Way Worldwide, says that all nonprofits, including less overtly politicized ones, face a “serious double whammy” of challenges associated with the new administration, including potential cuts to both charitable deductions and social service programs.
That means, he says, it’s more important than ever that nonprofits build relationships with their elected representatives to make the case for continued funding.
“All it really takes is talking to them about what you are doing to benefit their community and their constituents,” he said. “That’s the start, and every nonprofit should consider doing that — and not be afraid to talk to Republicans.”
A Marathon, Not a Sprint
Drawing on experiences from the last Trump administration, many progressive nonprofits expect to encounter more conflict than collaboration when it comes to the federal government in the next four years. At the Union of Concerned Scientists, leaders are drawing hard lessons from the first Trump administration, when they often scrambled to track and respond to a barrage of policy changes aimed at undermining scientific work and policies grounded in science.
“Regardless of which candidate would have won this election, independent and trustworthy science is essential for guiding government decisions,” said Pallavi Phartiyal, vice president for programs, policy, and advocacy. “But with the Trump administration, we have knowledge from the previous time around, and we know that this time is fully expected to be bigger and uglier.”
Like many organizations, they’re balancing staff’s post-election malaise with the planning and inspiration needed for the long haul. It’s a balancing act that Phartiyal expects will continue “in waves” of dejection followed by bursts of energy and determination throughout the next four years: “My challenge as a leader is to recognize the grief and dismay that our staff are feeling, and at the same time also communicate and energize them towards the long game.”
At the end of the day, “this is a marathon, not a sprint,” Phartiyal tells her staff. “We don’t want to exhaust all our resources, all our emotions, all our energy in the first 100 days, because this is a long fight.”
