We’re Doubling Down. Will You Join Us?
Borealis Philanthropy deepens its commitment to the Fund for Trans Generations — and calls on philanthropy to meet this moment of rising transantagonism.
Trans people are living inside a legislative siege.
Currently, more than 600 anti-trans legislation bills are being considered across 42 states, as well as at the federal level, nearly half of which target healthcare and education. By the end of 2025, 29 states had adopted at least one law restricting access to gender-affirming care, school sports, bathrooms, or gender-affirming pronouns in schools.
Federal workers may lose insurance coverage for gender-affirming care. Trans students face mounting threats to Title IX protections. Schools are under pressure to ban trans students from bathrooms and sports teams aligned with their gender identity. At the same time, in Kansas, lawmakers forced a bill stripping trans people of the ability to access accurate identity documents to passage by suspending legislative rules and prohibiting public participation.
We’re not up against abstract policy fights. These are concrete, applicable laws, which determine whether a teenager can see a doctor, a woman can use a public restroom without fear, a neighbor can hold a job or access housing without discrimination, and a child’s family can stay intact.
This is a coordinated, funded campaign against the everyday lives of trans people. And because trans folks, especially BIPOC trans folks, exist at the nexus of multiple struggles for justice, an attack on trans rights is an attack on our entire movement ecosystem. Philanthropy cannot respond with incrementalism.
This is why Borealis Philanthropy is doubling our Fund for Trans Generations up to $4 million a year.
Since its inception in 2016, the Fund for Trans Generations (FTG) has moved over $17 million to BIPOC trans-serving organizations working at the intersection of community safety, health care access, housing stability, and movement power. Through participatory grantmaking led by trans and nonbinary leaders, the FTG has resourced a network of local and national organizations which are offering emergency shelter, building mutual aid networks, defending democratic rights, expanding access to gender-affirming care, and developing new generations of trans organizers and advocates.
Today, Borealis Philanthropy is announcing that we are anchoring FTG with a $6 million allocation of our 2025 MacKenzie Scott Grant. And we’re asking the sector to match this commitment.
This deepened resourcing is necessary now. Organizations on the frontlines of trans justice need more resources, not fewer.
In 2023, for every $100 awarded by U.S. foundations only 3.5 cents supported trans and gender non-conforming communities—a 23% decrease from the previous year. Organizers need funding now, not eventually. And they need funding that is flexible, long-term, and rooted in trust — not conditioned on crisis cycles.
Doubling the FTG is a necessary answer to this moment’s myriad of questions. And we’re asking philanthropy to join us.
Below are three ways to join this commitment.
We are not the only ones who can act. This is a call to every funder, donor collaborative, and philanthropic institution that has named trans justice or democracy defense as a priority — the time to demonstrate that priority is now.
1. Match our dollars by resourcing the Fund for Trans Generations.
The FTG is a proven resourcing vehicle with deep relationships across the BIPOC trans-led landscape. Your investment in FTG goes directly to the organizations that have built the trust, networks, and staying power to weather this moment, create blueprints for us all, and build toward what comes next.
Borealis is anchoring FTG with a $6 million allocation from our 2025 MacKenzie Scott grant — committing an additional $2 million to the fund’s grantmaking budget over the next three years.
A funding match from partners like you could quadruple FTG’s grantmaking budget, creating the necessary infrastructure for durable multi-year funding, and ensuring up to $12 million for trans movement-building through 2029.
What will that look like on the ground?
- Longer term investment in more organizations receiving multi-year, unrestricted grants that let them plan, hire, and build — rather than survive grant cycle to grant cycle.
- Rapid response funding that can meet emergencies without diminishing core grantmaking.
- Sustainable funding of leadership development for more emerging trans leaders in the regions where they are most needed and most under attack.
2. Fund more work through the Trans Futures Funding Campaign.
The Trans Futures Funding Campaign (TFFC) is a coordinated philanthropic organizing strategy founded by trans-led intermediary funders to grow resources for transgender communities, with a priority focus on regions facing the heaviest legislative attacks. TFFC’s steering committee includes some of the most trusted intermediaries in the field: the Fund for Trans Generations at Borealis Philanthropy, Third Wave Fund, Transgender Strategy Center, Trans Justice Funding Project, Southern Equality Fund at Campaign for Southern Equality, Transgender Law Center, Grantmakers United for Trans Communities, Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, and Out in the South at Funders for LGBTQ Issues. Funding through TFFC means funding through infrastructure that was built by and for trans movement leaders — with multi-year, unrestricted grants as the standard.
3. Fund trans-led organizations directly.
Some of the most critical work in trans justice is happening at the local and regional level, at organizations that are often under-resourced and under the radar of national funders. If you are a funder with existing relationships in communities that are under siege, this is the moment to increase, extend, and trust those relationships. Consider direct, multi-year, unrestricted commitments. Consider rapid response support. And ask your grantee partners what they actually need.
Why intermediaries matter here
The landscape facing trans organizations is not just legislative; it is relational, geographic, and structural. Many of the organizations doing the most critical work are small, BIPOC-led, and operating in states where the environment is most hostile. They do not have the capacity to cultivate national donor relationships while simultaneously keeping their communities alive, and implementing strategies that will defend us all. That is exactly what intermediaries exist to do: translate the urgency of the frontlines into language and relationships that move institutional resources faster, more efficiently, and more accountably than most funders can do alone.
When you fund the FTG, you fund organizations like Baltimore Safe Haven, which provides housing and life services to trans women in Baltimore, and Organizacion Latina de Trans en Texas, which provides health care and legal support for Latine trans people in one of the most antagonistic legislative climates in the country. These organizations are doing this work regardless of whether philanthropy shows up or not because their communities’ safety and survival depends on it. But they are being stretched to their limits and without the sustained long-term investment these leaders deserve, everything they have built is at risk of collapsing.
This is the moment.
The legislative assault on trans communities is not slowing. But neither are the organizations, leaders, and movements that have been building toward trans liberation long before this political moment.
Borealis Philanthropy is doubling down because we believe that trans communities deserve more than a philanthropic response calibrated to political cycles. They deserve a philanthropic sector that treats their safety, joy, and self-determination as the irreducible baseline it is.
We hope you’ll join us.
Donate to the Fund for Trans Generations