‘The 100 deadly words’

Nonprofit groups navigate the Trump administration’s attacks on diversity and equity

by

Grant writing has always required a delicate touch, but when Prenicia Clifton sits down now with an application, there are entire words she avoids, including “Black,” “marginalized,” “underrepresented,” “minority” and “women.”

“I call them the 100 deadly words,” says Clifton, the founder of Seein is Believin, a nonprofit that provides youth mental health programming. “Every time I write a grant now I’m very mindful of the things I say. I even run it through ChatGPT to make sure that there are no dangerous words when I’m applying for larger grants.”

“It’s sad that my identity is now considered a dangerous word,” adds Clifton, who identifies as a Black cis gendered woman living with disabilities.

Immediately after returning to office in January, Donald Trump issued several administrative orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs in both the public and private sectors. The orders directed federal agencies to terminate DEI offices, positions and programs in the federal government and equity-related grants and contracts. They also, according to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, directed agencies to challenge organizations, including nonprofits and philanthropic foundations, “that are designed to advance equity, including by threatening legal action, with the obvious goal of chilling their programs.”

Groups in the Madison area are feeling the chill.

“What we have found is that a lot of the time funders and businesses aren’t being upfront about the fact that they are not funding certain groups,” says Lisa Dugdale, executive director of the Center for Community Stewardship, which provides fiscal sponsorship and administrative assistance to community organizations.

“Nobody is out there being explicit, saying ‘I’m not funding you because you have Black in your title,’” adds Stuart Hee, operations manager at the Center for Community Stewardship. “Almost everybody is coming up with some excuse.”

Most often funders say they are shifting their priorities, says Hee. But some, he adds, have told nonprofit leaders in off-the-record conversations that they would need to change the language in their mission statement or name in order to receive continued funding.

That is not something that Sabrina Madison, founder of the Progress Center for Black Women, and a city alder, is willing to do.

“No matter what happens in Washington or how local companies shift their equity mission to align with the Trump administration, we’re not bowing down to him,” Madison said at a news conference Oct. 15 in the downtown offices of the Progress Center. “We can’t because Black women, especially, depend on us.”

Madison acknowledged that the political climate was challenging. “The federal government has changed how equity-based grants are reviewed and awarded. Programming like ours that explicitly and boldly serves Black women is now being categorized as high risk.”

Rather than retreating, Madison said the Progress Center would be expanding its Ambition Program, which helps Black women advance their career goals, to career and wellness hubs at the Meadowlands Apartments and at a local shelter. The hubs connect women to housing, job training and education resources.

Madison said the Progress Center has not sustained a federal funding cut, but some of the programs their clients rely on — including assistance for housing and eviction prevention — have.

Madison announced the launch of a fundraising effort to ensure that the Center’s work continues even as public and foundation money dries up. “I don’t want to finesse what we do and who we serve in order to be funded,” she said. That would send a bad message to the women they serve who the Center coaches to “stand up for themselves.”

Jeff Burkhart, who runs a nonprofit consulting business, Mission Forward, organized a gathering in June to discuss nonprofit funding cuts. About 50 people attended, mostly nonprofit leaders. Many said they were facing pressure to avoid certain words and actions related to DEI.

“For organizations serving immigrants, BIPOC communities, and women, even their names and mission language now attract scrutiny,” Burkhart wrote in a summary of the event. “Nonprofit teams constantly weigh what words to use, whether their documents and emails could be subpoenaed, and whether personal activism might jeopardize the organization.”

Some leaders, he added, have “rebranded programs to neutral terms” to secure grants and appropriations. For many it’s a business decision, Burkhart says in an interview, “about whether they are going to use the language they use or lose their funding.”

Philanthropies are not providing much of a buffer, he adds: “There are not a lot of foundations who are coming out really strongly against the tide of the Trump administration.”

Just a few years ago the Black Lives Matter movement spurred philanthropic groups to prioritize funding for organizations doing social justice work and those who were run by people of color. “I think we got used to the idea of being pretty bold in that way of supporting Black and brown communities and feeling like that is the kind of leadership we need to have,” he says.

But, he adds, “It’s been a pretty dramatic shift over a pretty short period of time. Now we’re back to a much more challenging situation.”

Still, says Burkhart, participants at the June meeting were hopeful about working together to address the challenges. And some of the same players are involved in a new collaboration between United Way of Dane County, Madison Community Foundation and UW-Madison Center for Community and Nonprofit Studies to assess and address the impacts of federal policy changes in Dane County and the state.

The project will focus on select areas, including housing and food, health, immigration, education and civic health. 

“We’re looking at the impacts of federal policy changes on communities and the nonprofits that serve them,” says Mary Beth Collins, executive director of the Center for Community and Nonprofit Studies.

The group has begun gathering some baseline information: for instance, 32% of nonprofits who filed a 990 (an annual IRS form required of tax-exempt groups) in Wisconsin reported receiving government grants, according to Candid, a directory of foundations. Also, according to analysis by the Urban Institute, 64% of Wisconsin nonprofits have government grants at risk; similarly 63% of nonprofits in Dane County who filed a 990 received government grants.

The goal is to create some reporting, even if it is not fully conclusive, “to offer useful overview information to the general public, communities and the nonprofit sector to begin to make sense of things,” says Collins. And, she adds, “to stage some important conversations in early 2026 with philanthropy and nonprofit organizations, elected officials and others.” 

Madison, of the Progress Center, is not counting on much help from traditional funders in the near term. She is instead looking to build a “Community Resilience Fund” by securing 1,000 supporters who will each pledge a minimum of $20 a month for 1 to 3 years to produce $20,000 a month in “sustainable community-backed funding.” That would cover salaries and stabilize the group’s programming, she said at her October news conference.

“We’re not pivoting out of fear, but out of vision, urgency, and love for Black women in this community,” she added. “We’re not asking just for donations. We’re building a more stable movement, for the long term, especially for the next three to four years. One that makes equity, stability and wellness non-negotiable.”