Issue Highlights
Judge Strikes Down Florida Ban on Transgender Care for Minors - The New York Times
Key parts of a Florida law that bans gender transition care for minors and imposes hurdles on adults seeking such care are unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.
Six Questions for Morgan (Mo) Willis and MARS. Marshall, Co-Directors at Third Wave Fund | Inside Philanthropy
IP spoke with Mo and MARS. about their backgrounds, work at Third Wave Fund and hopes for philanthropy. Here are some excerpts from the conversation, edited for length and clarity.
LGBTQ Social Justice
UN Women Calls Gender-Criticals An Extremist Anti-rights Movement
United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women announced that trans rights are not opposed to women's rights for Pride Month.
Congo has no anti-gay law, but justice minister demands crackdown anyway
he ordered public prosecutors to prosecute homosexuals even though the country has no anti-gay law.
Anti-LGBTQ crackdowns, war loom over Pride Month events
Yaga Piuson, an activist in East Africa, said LGBTQ people who live in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya and the Gorom Refugee Settlement in South Sudan plan to organize Pride events. Piuson said there will not be any Pride events outside the camps in the two countries
“It’s too bad and deadly to organize it outside the camps,” said Piuson.
Judge blocks Biden's Title IX rule in four states, dealing a blow to protections for LGBTQ+ students
The order by a federal judge halts the Biden administration's rule from taking effect in Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi and Montana.
NORC Poll: 77% Say Elected Officials Use Transgender Issues As A Distraction
A new NORC poll shows support for protecting transgender access to medical care and finds that 77% of people in the United States think politicians use trans people as a distraction.
Florida laws, hate crimes put it near-last in LGBTQ+ safety
Home security and safety blog SafeHome.org released their annual report of the best and worst states for LGBTQ+ safety, noting hate crimes have risen and more anti-LGBTQ+ bills were passed last year.
Experts ranked the 50 states on a composite safety score comprising a law score and a hate crime score.
ACLU outlines ‘roadmap’ to defending LGBTQ rights in a second Trump term
the ACLU anticipates mounting legal challenges to the would-be Trump administration, discouraging Congress from passing laws restricting LGBTQ rights, and collaborating with states to strengthen non-discrimination laws and expand access to gender-affirming care. Moreover, the ACLU says a second Trump presidency would necessitate strong organizing efforts to build broader political coalitions to take on the fight for LGBTQ rights, reproductive justice, immigration rights, and other areas.
As LGBTQ Rights Come Under Threat, Lambda Legal Mounts Effort to Raise $180 Million
The group is urging donors to support its efforts to take on more cases, particularly at the state level,
Great Apes & Gibbons
As Wall Street assigns a dollar value to nature, Indigenous economics charts different path
n attempt to financialize nature like this — which doesn’t account for the full intrinsic value of ecosystems, and further incentivizes destruction of nature for profit — will likely be revived in the future.
Opinion: Georgia’s gorilla conservation leadership is making a difference in Africa
The Fund has found success by deploying a daily protection strategy, which ensures that gorilla families are safe from poachers, snares and other threats to their livelihoods. Once mountain gorillas are habituated to human interaction, Fossey Fund trackers keep daily tabs on the gorillas’ location, health, appearance and changes in the groups’ populations.
Fate of Retired Research Chimps Still in Limbo - The New York Times
The National Institutes of Health, which owns the chimps at the Alamogordo Primate Facility in New Mexico, has no plans to move the animals to sanctuary, despite a ruling from a federal judge.
How Baby Orangutans Become Master Treehouse Architects | Scientific American
To understand this behavior, researchers followed 45 orangutans at Indonesia’s Gunung Leuser National Park for 13 years. “It was very cool to see more focus on material culture and tool-use behavior that isn’t the standard ‘sticks and stones,’ like the caveman tools that we usually focus on,”
Philanthropy
LGBTQ Funding Doubled in a Decade, Yet Falls Short Amid Rising Attacks
A record number of bills last year censored school curricula, targeted trans athletes, and weakened protections for LGBTQ people, but funding for those groups actually stagnated despite progress over the previous decade.
The Heising-Simons Foundation Wants to End the Criminalization of Immigrants. What’s It Funding? | Inside Philanthropy
In addition to its national grants, Heising-Simons supports immigrant justice work across four key states: California, Texas, Georgia and North Carolina. According to the foundation, these four states are “of national importance to shrink and ultimately dismantle carceral systems and reimagine new approaches to safety, justice and accountability.”
Borealis Philanthropy’s bold plan: Investing billions to support BIPOC journalism | Editor and Publisher
E&P got an early preview of the study Bell launched as part of her work as the director of the Racial Equity in Journalism (REJ) Fund at Borealis Philanthropy. Titled “Repair, Reimagine, and Rebuild: Modeling the Future of News For and By Black, Brown, and Indigenous Communities,” the report proposes it will take somewhere between $380 million to $7.1 billion annually to truly fund BIPOC journalism across the U.S.
Faith-Based Funding Can Help Protect Democracy | Inside Philanthropy
PACE’s Faith In/And Democracy initiative surfaced thousands of faith-based organizations across a wide variety of traditions already doing pro-democracy work — often without the label — and granted $1 million to over 30 of these organizations between 2019 and 2022.
Funder collaboratives are key to a vibrant, just, and inclusive democracy
how a constituency-led collaborative fund helps strengthen grassroots movements, as well as considerations for funders in investing in frontline communities, civic engagement, and efforts to fight disinformation.
CEP’s Latest Report on Nonprofits Reveals “A Wild World” of Burnout, Raising Questions for Funders | Inside Philanthropy
Roughly three-quarters of respondents said that staff burnout “is at least slightly” impacting their ability to work toward their mission, and a quarter reported that burnout is “moderately or significantly impacting” their work. This is happening despite the fact that the majority of those surveyed reported having a balanced budget or even a surplus in the last fiscal year. These issues taken together may explain why half the nonprofit leaders felt more concerned about their own burnout than they were at the same time last year.
Language justice: an invitation to get out of our comfort zones and build together - Alliance magazine
Foundation for a Just Society (FJS) believes that bringing a language justice lens to our work as funders is essential to advancing social justice.
Opinion | Effective Altruism Is Flawed. But What’s the Alternative? - The New York Times
If you aren’t wrestling with how much you give and to whom, you’re not doing the job right. (And giving is a job.)
Here We Go Again (and Again and Again): Let’s Stop Looking for the One ‘New Approach’ to Philanthropy - The Center for Effective Philanthropy
There are no silver bullets when it comes to the practice of philanthropy. It’s complicated and goal- and context-dependent. It requires humility.