While philanthropy frequently searches for new approaches to creating a democracy that works for all, the roadmaps to the world we are trying to realize already exist within trans organizing.
On this Trans Day of Visibility, we honor the beauty, wholeness, and brilliance of trans life. We also make visible something equally important: the strategies trans organizers have built to create greater safety, care, and sovereignty for us all.
By necessity, these leaders have built the exact models of care and collective power that a healthy democracy requires: equitable access to housing, safety, food, health care, opportunity, community and more. Their work offers a blueprint for the democratic future we are fighting for.
For generations, trans leaders—especially BIPOC, disabled, and trans women and femmes—have stepped in to provide access and stability when institutions have failed to do so. Navigating overlapping systems of oppression, they have had to build their own infrastructure: creating mutual aid, providing access to healthcare and housing, and reclaiming narratives through art and culture. In a world that seeks to invisibilize trans folks, they continue to build power and pathways toward a future where everyone belongs.
(Photo credit: LA Spoonie Collective)
LA Spoonie Collective: How to Build with Every Body In Mind
There are so few spaces where disabled trans folks can be in community and speak about what they’re navigating across healthcare, housing, and daily life. The LA Spoonie Collective, led by disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent queer and trans BIPOC organizers in Los Angeles, brings people together to share experiences, learn from one another, and dream up the future. Through workshops, panels, and community gatherings, they bring people into conversation across race, gender, and disability—nurturing relationships, sharpening strategies, and growing trans and disabled leadership.
(Photo credit: Marsha’s Plate Podcast)
Marsha’s Plate Podcast: The Power of Telling Our Own Stories
Too often, stories about trans folks—especially Black trans folks—are told from the outside, filtered through media that reduces their humanity to statistics and stereotypes. Marsha’s Plate Podcast hosted by Black trans advocates Diamond Stylz, Bre Starr, and LJ, pushes back against. Each week, they speak about what’s shaping their lives—from housing and work to safety, policy, and culture. By building their own platform, they create space for trans folks to speak for themselves, deepen understanding, and engage the issues affecting their communities—expanding who gets to be heard and how people take part in shaping what comes next.
(Photo credit: TAJA Coalition)
TAJA Coalition: Keeping Our Most Vulnerable Safe
In 2015, after the murder of Taja Gabrielle de Jesus, trans organizers in San Francisco came together to respond to the violence trans women—especially trans women of color—continue to face. The Transgender Advocates for Justice and Accountability Coalition (TAJA) was founded to carry that work forward. Through research, advocacy, and initiatives like the Not One More campaign documenting violence against trans women, they make that violence visible, push for accountability, and organize for change—coming together to keep their communities safe when systems fall short.
(Video credit: USA Today)
Trans Sistas of Color Project: Building Pathways to Economic Stability
In Detroit, trans women of color face steep barriers to stable employment, education, and housing—barriers that limit access to safety, income, and opportunity. The Trans Sistas of Color Project (TSCP), invests directly in the leadership and wellbeing of trans women of color, offering GED classes, self-defense training, legal advocacy, and programs that help community members build skills and advocate for themselves. TSCP helps their community members build stability and move toward prosperity and independence on their own terms—expanding access to the opportunities that make full participation in society possible.
(Photo credit: Peacock Rebellion)
Peacock Rebellion: Empowering and Sustaining Movements For the Long Haul
Movements don’t sustain themselves on strategy alone—they need spaces where folks can gather, share skills, rest, and care for one another. Peacock Rebellion, an Oakland-based collective of queer and trans BIPOC artists, healers, and organizers, builds those kinds of spaces through trainings, storytelling, performances, and community gatherings.Their programs equip people with tools for organizing while also holding space for joy, healing, and artistic expression. By bringing people together across movements, Peacock Rebellion strengthens the relationships, skills, and shared culture that help movements endure—offering a model for how to sustain this work for generations to come.
The Blueprint Exists—Fund It
What we see across these groups is not just a set of programs, but a way forward. From storytelling and community care to safety, economic stability, and cultural expression, trans-serving organizations are—and always have been—building the conditions people need to live, participate, and thrive.
In philanthropy, we often search for new solutions when what we need already exists in the work of organizing. For this work to continue and deepen, it must be meaningfully resourced. In 2023, for every $100 awarded by U.S. foundation only 3.5 cents supported trans and gender non-conforming communities—a 23% decrease from the previous year. This disparity is what makes the difference between serving a small community and being able to grow and sustain this work at scale. Here are ways we encourage our funder peers to resource BIPOC trans servings organizers in ways that strengthen and nourish their leadership:
- Grant multi-year, flexible, and unrestricted funding. Trust that trans-led organizations know best how to serve themselves and their communities.
- Make space for trans leadership and guidance. Elevate BIPOC trans voices. Pursue a participatory grantmaking process, to ensure that funding decisions are held, with care, by the communities your resources aim to serve. Ensure your own staff are representative of these communities, too.
- Create dedicated funds to resource trans leadership movements at the intersections, across all of your issue areas. Recognize that only by centering BIPOC, disabled and trans folks in our decision-making can we build a democracy that works for all.
- Support work in areas and geographies that have been historically under-resourced, such as the global South, or rural areas.
- Embrace trans-joy as a framework. Shift from emergency-only funding to seeing yourself as an accomplice in co-creating a future where trans folks thrive and get to grow old. This will require abundant funding and abundant time. Commit to the long haul.
And finally, partner with Borealis to resource a national network of grassroots organizers laying a blueprint for transformative and systemic change. Together, we can reimagine philanthropy as a force that builds power, strengthens movements, and supports the infrastructure needed to protect and expand multiracial democracy.