Foundations Must Do Far More to Aid Transgender People

Eric Petersen for The Chronicle

Transgender people are our colleagues, friends, neighbors, and family members. More than one million transgender people live in the United States, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. And in philanthropy, as many as one person in 50 people identifies as transgender or gender nonconforming, according Funders for LGBTQ Issues.

Yet we in philanthropy have largely failed to support or include transgender people in our grant making or in our organizations to any meaningful degree. That lack of attention is ever more worrisome as transgender people face attacks and experience health, educational, and economic disparities that make them vulnerable — and in need of services, advocacy, and other efforts philanthropy supports.

Today more than 30 foundations — private and public, regional and national, small and large — are taking a historic pledge to change that. We pledge to speak out against the vicious abuses transgender people face — from violence against trans women of color to exclusionary federal and local policies. We pledge to provide support for a burgeoning activist movement at a time when transgender people are in dire need of our support. We pledge to learn together and to do more to include transgender people in our own internal practices.

Impact on Lives

Transgender people face discrimination and marginalization in nearly every sphere. According to the Movement Advancement Project, persistent workplace harassment, discrimination, and bias-motivated firings have led to transgender people being nearly four times more likely to earn $10,000 or less a year than the general population. Transgender women of color face particularly alarming conditions given the discrimination they face based on race, gender, and gender identity. For example, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly one black transgender woman in five lives with HIV/AIDS, compared with 0.3 percent of the total U.S. population.

According to the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, deaths by violence are on the rise among transgender women of color living in the United States. Of the 102 transgender people murdered from 2013 to 2017, 86 percent were black, Latinx, or Native American; 11 percent were white; and 5 percent were of unknown backgrounds.

Barriers to jobs and housing, systemic racism, and many other intersecting issues are obstacles many transgender people face — especially black and Latinx transgender women.

These challenges have only heightened in the current political context. Last month, the United States Supreme Court upheld the administration’s ban on transgender people in the military, ignoring the reality of the many brave transgender Americans now in active military service. In 2018, 10 states introduced 21 anti-transgender bills. These are just a few of the many actions policy makers have taken that stereotype, demonize, and further marginalize transgender people in the United States. These brazen attacks bring to light for the media and the public the all too common and familiar reality that discrimination and violence are daily occurrences for transgender people, and have been so for decades.

For its part, philanthropy has not done enough to tackle these problems. In 2017, foundation funding for nonprofits focused on transgender issues in the United States totaled nearly $22.5 million — a record high, but only about three cents for every $100 that foundations awarded that year. That means that total foundation funding for the transgender movement nationwide for a whole year is less than one month’s operating costs for a museum like the Art Institute of Chicago. The result is that too few nonprofit services are available to transgender people: Just five nonprofit organizations focused on transgender people have annual budgets of more than $1 million.

A Pledge to Help

Despite the lack of dollars, transgender leaders are accomplishing a great deal. The Trans Justice Funding Project has identified a total of almost 600 transgender grassroots groups, located in nearly every state. Most of these groups have budgets of less than $100,000, but with limited resources they are pioneering innovative solutions to some of the most complex issues of our time, ranging from economic injustice and incarceration to immigrant rights and health-care access. Right now, philanthropy has a unique opportunity to support these burgeoning efforts and support a strong, diverse ecosystem of services and advocacy for transgender people.

Grant makers also have an opportunity to assure that the nonprofits we support fully include transgender people in their work. Our grant-making priorities — such as fighting poverty and homelessness, promoting health and well-being, and pressing for an overhaul of the criminal-justice system — disproportionately affect transgender people, and yet we have too rarely developed strategies to assure that our work is reaching them. Those of us working to curb homelessness, for example, need to ask how many transgender people can access the homeless shelters we fund and whether our grantees treat transgender people with respect and dignity.

To kick-start a new movement in philanthropy in response to this moment of urgent need and tremendous opportunity, Funders for LGBTQ Issues has asked foundations to sign the Grantmakers United for Trans Communities pledge, which aims to help foundations be more transgender-inclusive in both their grant making and internal practices. The pledge asks grant makers to:

• Participate in training and professional-development opportunities focused on supporting transgender people.
• Improve recruitment of transgender people, nonbinary people, and others who don’t conform to the gender assigned to them at birth to serve on our staffs and keep them on the job.
• Increase grant making for groups that serve transgender people, especially those run by transgender leaders.
• Publicly express support for transgender people and demonstrate solidarity with their demands for change.

Dozens of foundations have already taken the pledge, including the California Endowment, which Dr. Ross heads. This pledge is a natural extension of who we are and the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion that we hold dear. We recognize that transgender people are part of every effort we fund and deserve to benefit equally from all of our grant making, programs, and strategies. At the endowment, our mission to promote health has meant we’ve always made it a priority to support and uplift vulnerable and marginalized peoples. Additionally, transgender people face significant obstacles to obtaining the care required for their unique needs from health-care professionals knowledgeable about transgender issues.

For us, supporting the transgender-rights movement is how we protect the health of transgender people and promote healing from the deep trauma of discrimination and violence. When we say health and justice for all, we put the most vulnerable, including transgender people, at the center of that effort. A system that excludes anyone hurts everyone. If we can create systems that address the education gap, health disparities, homelessness, and poverty transgender people face, we will then build systems that improve the well-being of all communities.

As we join together to transform philanthropy to be more responsive and accountable to transgender people, there is much to do. We urge more grant makers to join us and make history together.

Robert Ross is chief executive of the California Endowment. Ben Francisco Maulbeck is president of Funders for LGBTQ Issues, and Alexander Lee is director of the organization’s Grantmakers United for Trans Communities Initiative.