New Report: Ford Foundation, Soros Among Top Five LGBTQ Donors in 2014

February 29th, 2016 4:07 PM

Thanks to liberal donors, LGBTQ "issues" have been gaining momentum in both the United States and abroad for years.

A new tracking report released in late February 2016 by Funders for LGBTQ Issues showed that in 2014 alone, funding for gay, lesbian, transgender, and queer issues reached a record breaking $153.2 million.

In the year leading up to the Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage, both the Ford Foundation (not related to the Ford Motor Company) and George Soros’s Open Society Foundations were among the overall top five donors to LGBTQ groups. Combined they gave $21,850,089 in 2014. They were also the top two donors among non-LGBTQ private foundations, and the Ford Foundation was the second largest donor to LBGTQ issues in the United States. 

Soros and The Ford Foundation also promoted the liberal gay, lesbian, and transgender agenda internationally. Soros was the top funder for LGBTQ issues in Western Europe, Canada, the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe, including Central Asia and Russia. The Ford Foundation was the top funder in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, as well as Asia and the Pacific.

"Last year's victory for marriage equality was an inspiring step forward for LGBTQ rights, but it was a benchmark, not a finish line,” Ben Francisco Maulbeck, the president of Funders for LGBTQ Issues, told Philanthropy News Digest on Feb. 28.

"While this increase in LGBTQ funding is heartening news, I'm much more concerned about our finding that LGBTQ funding is likely to decrease by as much as 10 percent in the next year or two," Maulbeck also noted.

Even if funding decreased 10 percent, as Maulbeck feared, LGBTQ issues would still receive $137,923,823.