My organization fell victim to this.
In 2020, 904WARD was a volunteer-led organization hosting Race Cards conversations and soil collection ceremonies honoring victims of racial terror lynchings. When George Floyd was murdered, the national mood shifted. Donors, local and national, said they wanted to truly address racism. Billions were pledged across the country. We were told to staff up, scale up, and show up to actively combat racism in Jacksonville. We grew to six employees, an annual budget of over $1 million, and expanded programs and collaborations to address inequities across the state.
Then, Gov. Ron DeSantis’s “anti-WOKE” legislation passed in 2022. Then came the Trump administration’s war on DEI. Donors began sending apology emails of “We still believe in your mission, but…” Foundations quietly rewrote their funding criteria. By the end of 2025, 904WARD’s board had voted to return to being an all-volunteer organization.
This is what trend funding does. Not only does it fail to help to truly address the problem, it also destabilizes organizations that are committed to doing the work.
While an estimated $50 to $200 billion was pledged after George Floyd’s murder to support Black-led and Black-serving organizations, it is estimated that only $3.8 billion was actually distributed. Donors gave from emotion and social pressure without genuine commitment, without understanding the depth of the work, and without a plan to stay. When the moment passed, the money followed. Organizations that had responsibly built capacity around those dollars were left worse off than before the funding arrived.
Performative funding is the flip side of performative DEI. Both signal values. Neither does the work.
Philanthropy loves to frame this as a capacity problem, stating that Black-led organizations are too small, too under-resourced or too hard to find. However, the Candid/ABFE research confirms what practitioners have known for decade: the problem isn’t capacity; it’s commitment. Foundations that had no relationships with Black organizations before 202 scrambled to write checks when the streets demanded it. They retreated just as quickly when the political winds shifted. That’s not equity work. That’s a crisis response and a popularity contest dressed up as a strategy and a position.
Here’s what I want funders to sit with: if your giving disappears when it becomes politically inconvenient, you were never truly committed to the mission. You were just committed to the moment. And communities paid the price for that difference.
Systemic issues like racism, poverty, and educational inequity were not built overnight. They also will not be dismantled by a two-year funding surge followed by silence. Giving as part of a trend doesn’t make you part of the solution; it makes you part of the cycle.
True change requires planned, sustained, relationship-driven investment. It is divorced from the headlines, sustains through the backlash, and remains long after the moment of popularity has passed.
That has to be the standard in order for true change to occur. And it’s long overdue.
