Trump’s funding cuts spell disaster for global LGBTQ+ groups, many ‘may not survive the coming year’

A survey of LGBTQ+ rights groups around the globe shows the vast majority of them lost funding since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term.

Outright International released a report on September 10 showing nearly 89% of groups responding to a survey said that since January 2025, they have lost foreign aid from the United States. The advocacy group spoke with representatives from 229 organizations in 94 countries, 203 of which said funds had been cut since the inauguration.

“In February 2025, days after the U.S. government froze nearly all of its foreign assistance, Outright International published Defunding Freedom, a rapid assessment of the initial shock to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) organizations worldwide,” the report states. “Eighteen months later, this report returns to that question with evidence in hand, and the answer has changed in kind. What was initially framed as a temporary freeze has hardened into a structural transformation of the funding landscape.”

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The Trump administration announced drastic cuts in foreign aid almost immediately after Trump’s return to power, and cuts to HIV/AIDS treatment around the world have been devastating. Prior studies have shown that cuts specifically to PEPFAR, a government program launched by former President George W. Bush, forced 1,700 sites providing HIV care around the world to close.

The Outright report showed the sweeping impact to all kinds of providers of service to LGBTQ+ people internationally. Some 49% of organizations surveyed lost more than half of their total operating budgets because of draconian aid cuts, and 75% of groups lost more than a quarter of their funding. Now, 73% of all the groups say they are working with budgets of less than $250,000.

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The cuts have been especially consequential in parts of the world with anti-LGBTQ+ laws in place, some of those new ones such as in Ghana and Uganda. The funding cuts also have disproportionately hurt the most marginalized groups within the queer population.

“Trans, nonbinary, and genderdiverse people (71%) and lesbian, bisexual, and queer women (61%) were named most frequently among those bearing the deepest impacts,” the report found. “For communities navigating overlapping forms of marginalization, LGBTIQ organizations were often the only system built to serve them at all.”

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Ultimately, 40% of organizations say the funding cuts place their existence at severe or immediate risk, with 10% saying they could face immediate closure. About 36% of groups said they may close within the next 12 months. Only 3% of organizations say they remain in stable condition financially.

“A substantial share of the movement may not survive the coming year,” the report notes, adding, “These risks concentrate where the cuts were deepest and the financial cushion thinnest.”