When three Wellspring Philanthropic Fund executives appeared on her Zoom screen — strangers she’d never met before — Irma Shauf-Bajar, executive director of 18 Million Rising, knew something was wrong.
When a progressive group posted in support of Palestinians in Gaza, it saw funding evaporate. Similar fissures are reverberating across the nonprofit world.
“This is not going to be an easy meeting,” one began. A Wellspring program officer, who for years had championed the work of the progressive Asian American advocacy group, was nowhere to be seen.
As Shauf-Bajar frantically pulled up the 15-month-old social media post calling for Asian Americans to “join in support and speak out to end Israel’s oppression of Palestinians” in the wake of October 7 — a post she says the executives cited as the justification for ending years of support — she could already feel the executives rushing to end the call.
“Can we slow this meeting down?” she pleaded. But when the 30-minute Zoom call ended, she understood that $250,000 — a quarter of her organization’s annual budget — had vanished.
The funding cut from the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund — a left-leaning social justice funder set to wind down its grant making by 2028 — is the latest in what nonprofit leaders describe as progressive philanthropy’s unsteady relationship with political speech related to the war in Gaza.
Leaders estimate that millions of grant dollars have been quietly stripped from progressive nonprofits related to their reactions to the October 7 massacre of over 1,200 Israelis and Israel’s retaliatory military campaign that has killed upwards of 50,000 Palestinians. Alongside President Trump and his allies’ recent quest to root out alleged antisemitism by deporting foreign students and threatening nonprofits’ 501(c)(3) status, progressive nonprofits have found themselves in a messy and increasingly dangerous bind.
Nonprofit leaders say that just when a united front against the Trump administration’s most aggressive policies feels critical, internal ruptures among staff and with funders have forced some organizations to choose between speaking out and securing the resources needed to defend their communities.
18 Million Rising considers its community to be global, and since December 2023 has put resources behind an Asians for Palestine campaign. On the January 30 Zoom call, executives told the group’s executive director that their board took issue not with the broader campaign, but with the Instagram post itself, which described Palestinians as “rising up against Israeli settler colonial violence” and which they interpreted as “welcoming” the October 7 attack — a claim that Shauf-Bajar sharply denied.
“It wasn’t a statement of celebration,” she said, noting that the post aimed to address what she called the “root causes” of the violence and concluded with calls for an end to both Islamophobia and antisemitism. “It was a statement of solidarity to the Palestinian people which also acknowledged that — because of the genocide and the occupation — both Palestinians and Israelis have been killed and have been hurt.”
Her organization, one of the largest Asian-American advocacy groups in the country, now faces difficult decisions about its financial future.
“I felt this moment of betrayal,” said Sahuf-Bajar, who recalled telling one of the Wellspring executives: “This statement represents our solidarity to the Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim people. I have friends that lost over 60 people in the first three months — this isn’t just a statement.”
A Progressive Foundation, a Pro-Palestinian Nonprofit
Wellspring Philanthropic Fund, created in 2001 as the Matan B’Seter Foundation (Hebrew for “anonymous gift”), operates as one of philanthropy’s more secretive institutions.
Providing hundreds of millions in grants each year, it has built a reputation as a major funder of progressive organizations focused on racial justice, LGBTQ rights, and global human rights, including many that have been vocally critical of Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza.
Wellspring is believed to be funded primarily by the reclusive California hedge fund billionaire C. Frederick Taylor (whom the Orange County Business Journal estimates has a net worth of at least $3.6 billion), and is led by his brother John Taylor, both of whom sit alongside a third brother, W. Miles Taylor, on Wellspring’s board. In part driven by John Taylor’s pending retirement, Wellspring has announced plans to wind down its philanthropy, which had assets of $180 million in 2023. It will make its last round of grants this year in advance of its 2028 closure.
Back in 2020, the same year that Shauf-Bajar took over as executive director of 18 Million Rising, her organization began receiving funds — totaling $700,000 through 2024 — from Wellspring’s Racial Justice Program via grants to its fiscal sponsor, Allied Media Projects.
“It was a wonderful relationship,” Shauf-Bajar said, noting that Wellspring’s program officer for 18 Million Rising would visit the group’s Oakland office in person and was “a cheerleader” for their work.
Nothing about that relationship seemed to change in the weeks after October 12, 2023, when 18 Million Rising published its statement on Instagram.
But in early January 2025, Wellspring requested that Allied Media Projects, 18 Million Risings’ fiscal sponsor, return a newly-issued $250,000 grant. Three weeks after the Zoom call with Shauf Bajar, Wellspring mailed a brief note confirming its decision to end the relationship.
In response to a request for comment about this decision, Wellspring — which rarely speaks to the press and declined requests for an interview — provided a statement denying that it withdrew support from any grantee over a pro-Palestinian stance, but alluding to certain red lines.
“Wellspring has not cancelled support for any organization based on expression of sympathy for the human rights of the Palestinian people or criticism of policies that violate those rights,” the statement said. “As a human rights funder whose work is grounded in respect for the dignity and worth of all people, we will not support any organization that, considering the context, appears to cheer or celebrate a massacre of civilians, such as happened on October 7, 2023.”
Shauf-Bajar rejected this characterization.
The attack on October 7 and the ensuing war on Gaza has sparked intense debate over the contours of antisemitism and the boundaries of free speech. The phrase “From the River to the Sea,” for example — which appeared as a slogan in the Instagram post that 18 Million Rising shared — has become emblematic of a debate over where pro-Palestinian rhetoric veers into antisemitism.
At the time of the post, Israel was still reeling as it counted its dead and hundreds of its citizens remained missing or taken by Hamas as hostages. The Israeli military had begun its “total siege” on Gaza, sparking a mass humanitarian crisis from a retaliatory bombardment that, in those first few days of the war, killed upwards of 1,000 Palestinians and displaced over 200,000.
Where a funder like Wellspring may have seen a post like 18 Million Rising’s — which did not explicitly mention the October 7 attacks — as unforgivably insensitive toward Israel’s fresh grief, some advocacy groups focused on the crisis in Gaza. Those opposing pressures — which few organizations have managed to navigate adeptly — have led to widespread fissures among nonprofit staff and leaders, students and professors, and donors and grantees.
Still, at a time of escalating political tensions, it’s disheartening to see infighting among groups that fundamentally agree on most issues, said Lyle Matthew Kan, interim president of Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, which partnered with 18 Million Rising on a funder briefing about Palestinians.
“What I would say when we see so many funders pulling back is that we really still aren’t trusting our movement leaders to make bold decisions,” he said. “We’re scared, and I worry that leads us to a form of paralysis and an inability to meet the moment.”
A Pattern of Defunding
Between October 7, 2023, and June 2024, informal tallies place the number of grant dollars lost by pro-Palestinian organizations at upwards of $8 million, but few nonprofits during that period or since have publicly shared their stories for fear of retaliation.
“I’m both surprised and not surprised” by Wellspring’s decision, said Rebecca Vilkomerson, co-director of Funding Freedom, an initiative tracking philanthropy’s response to the war in Gaza and former head of the pro-Palestinian group Jewish Voice for Peace. “There have been a lot of funding cuts based around organizations speaking out,” but whereas “most foundations have been able to obscure the reasons that they’re cutting funding,” she said, “this is one of the more clear-cut examples that we’ve seen.”
Such cuts fit into a decades-long trend affecting pro-Palestinian groups, Vilkomerson said, cuts that have increased significantly in “scale and intensity” since October 7, leading to fissures across the progressive world.
“If foundations can’t say that genocide is wrong, then we have very little to work with,” she said.
Last year, investigations by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International — which received $5,574,000 and $1,420,000 respectively from Wellspring in 2022 — concluded that Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza has amounted to genocide, while simultaneously acknowledging the brutality of the October 7 attacks.
“What this all comes down to is best practices in centering the relationships,” said Kan, of Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, who noted that the issue with Wellspring’s approach wasn’t necessarily the disagreement itself, but how it was handled.
When a major funder “flagged” a large grant over a Palestinian-focused program at AAPIP, Kan negotiated rather than accept an ultimatum. “I was very clear about why we were going to do it, how we were doing it, open to suggestions, to hearing their concerns, to having a real dialogue with them and their team,” he said. The funding was ultimately preserved.
Over the past year, 18 Million Rising — like organizations across the country that have made pro-Palestinian statements — has found itself on the radar of pro-Israel watchdog websites like Canary Mission, which purport to flag antisemitic, “pro-terrorist,” or “anti-American” activities but often cast a wide net related to pro-Palestinian speech.
One of those groups listed 18 Million Rising first in an alphabetical list — which also included groups like the Human Rights Campaign, Indivisible, and PETA — with a link to the Instagram post that Wellspring’s board took issue with. It’s the kind of online targeting that advocates worry could be influencing funding decisions and fostering a “McCarthy-like” atmosphere even at progressive foundations.
One philanthropy professional familiar with Wellspring who asked for anonymity for fear of retaliation said private and family philanthropy is structurally unaccountable, a “benevolent dictator at best.”
“There’s a real contradiction in philanthropy right now,” the source added. “Funders talk about trust-based relationships, but when political pressure mounts, grantees can suddenly fall off a cliff. The trust only extends as far as comfort allows.”
Progressive Groups Under Siege
As Trump’s second administration takes shape, the pressure on progressive nonprofits is coming from multiple fronts. The president has already slashed billions of dollars from elite universities using a rationale of antisemitism on campuses, and the Department of Homeland Security has detained dozens of non-citizen activists for their involvement in pro-Palestinian protests.
Meanwhile, it appears likely that Congress will consider the so-called “Nonprofit Kill Bill” or H.R. 9495, which passed the House of Representatives in November and could strip nonprofits of their 501(c)(3) status if they are deemed to be “terrorist supporting organizations.”
Given the challenges many progressive organizations are facing to both the causes they care about — like immigrant and LGBTQ rights — and threats to their own ability to operate, “this is not a time to be punitive,” said said Russell Roybal, chief impact officer at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, who has seen numerous grant makers pull funding over their pro-Palestinian statements. “This is not a time to stifle or silence dissent. This is a time to engage in dialogue and to honor the relationships that funders have with their grantees.”
The nonprofit Rising Majority, a coalition of progressive organizations that includes 18 Million Rising, itself lost the chance to renew a $250,000 grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation over a pro-Palestinian letter it circulated that received hundreds of signatories in 2023.
The coalition’s 60-plus members include many small progressive organizations led by people of color that of have lost funding over their pro-Palestinian stance or a broader philanthropic pullback related to DEI and racial justice, said Loan Tran, Rising Majority’s national director.
“Foundations should be very clear that this is a moment of decision-making, where they either take down some of the barriers to this work of fighting authoritarianism or they stack the opposition even more because of the level of power and influence that they have,” said Tran, noting the need to match the growing level of influence and investment of Trump-aligned billionaires like Elon Musk. “We need the heavy hitters to show up.”
As Shauf-Bajar contemplates her organization’s uncertain future, she worries as well about a broader unraveling of progressive infrastructure. The loss of $250,000 will likely force 18 Million Rising to make painful cuts to staff and programs that focus on Asian American political organizing and immigrant rights at a time when their community faces increasing threats.
“We’re seeing foundations that have unfortunately been our lifeline to do this work pulling back on a large scale,” she said, noting that 18 Million Rising has only a few institutional philanthropic backers left. “Instead, it’s silent — it’s really scary.”
