This LGBTQ+ nonprofit just raised $285M to challenge legislative attacks on queer lives – Advocate.com

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Launched three years ago in anticipation of escalating federal attacks, the campaign surpassed its goal by more than 100 million dollars.
“We will not go back,” Lambda Legal CEO Kevin Jennings told The Advocate.
In what Lambda Legal is calling the largest fundraising campaign in LGBTQ+ history, the 51-year-old legal advocacy group has raised $285 million through its “Unstoppable Future” initiative — a staggering financial and political show of force at a time when the rights of LGBTQ+ people and those living with HIV are once again under coordinated assault.
Launched three years ago in anticipation of escalating federal attacks, the campaign surpassed its goal by more than 100 million dollars. With over $80 million in current-use cash and an additional $200 million in legacy commitments, the campaign provides Lambda Legal both the immediate means to litigate against the Trump administration and a long-term financial foundation for the years ahead.

“Here’s the headline,” said Lambda Legal CEO Kevin Jennings in an interview with The Advocate. “With this campaign, the LGBTQ+ community and our allies have said to our opponents: ‘We will not go back.’”
Jennings described the effort as unprecedented, not only in its scale but also in its composition. “This campaign was driven — 95 percent of the gifts came from individuals,” he said. “It wasn’t foundations, it wasn’t corporations, it wasn’t law firms.” He said that while those entities did contribute, among nearly 200 donors were 17 individuals who each gave 1 million dollars or more in cash. A 25 million dollar donation from the Kathryn G. Graham Trust marked the largest in the organization’s history, according to a Lambda Legal press release.

Before this campaign, Jennings noted, “Lambda Legal had received something like three seven-figure gifts in its entire history. And we have gotten 14 seven-figure gifts and three eight-figure gifts as a result of this campaign.” Jennings said the organization experienced a "Trump bump," with a surge in donations following the November election.
The fundraising eclipses the previous record-holder — the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s 57 million dollar capital campaign in 2019, as reported by the Chronicle of Philanthropy — and reflects a sharpened understanding of where power must now be concentrated. “We’ve lost control of two of three branches of government — the executive and the legislative,” Jennings said. “The only hope now is the judicial branch.”

Lambda is using the funds to expand its legal team by 42 percent, growing from 36 to 51 attorneys and doubling its docket capacity. The money will also support a significant scale-up of its public education programs and its LGBTQ+ legal help desk — the only one in the country staffed by attorneys.

“I always say that you have four assets: your voice, your vote, your time, and your money,” Jennings said. “Call your legislators. Vote only for pro-equality candidates. Volunteer. And if you’re lucky enough to have resources, find a group you believe in and write a check.”
Lambda currently has six active lawsuits against the Trump administration and plans to file more. Just hours before speaking to The Advocate, Jennings confirmed a win in San Francisco AIDS Foundation v. Trump, a case challenging the defunding of HIV service providers that serve diverse constituents, including transgender communities. A federal court issued a preliminary injunction halting the enforcement of three executive orders that targeted transgender Americans and diversity programs. The court found that the orders—especially those barring funding to organizations promoting “gender ideology” or “equity”—likely violated the First and Fifth Amendments and contradicted statutory mandates, such as the Affordable Care Act’s nondiscrimination provision.

“The judge said today, basically from what I’ve read in the car here, that you just can’t do that. That violates the First Amendment, it violates the Equal Protection Clause,” Jennings said. “There is still the rule of law in this country.”
The injunction allows plaintiffs, including SFAF, to continue serving transgender and HIV-positive clients through federally funded programs that had been jeopardized. “Some of the agencies we represent would have had to close if the ruling had gone the other way,” Jennings noted. “This is a huge win—not just legally, but morally.”
Not every case ends in victory. The U.S. Supreme Court recently lifted a nationwide injunction in Lambda’s case challenging Trump’s ban on transgender people’s military service. Jennings rejected the notion of defeat: “We’re not going to win every fight. We’re going to fight every fight. We’re going to win some, we’re going to lose some, but we’re going to keep fighting. We have not suffered a final defeat. We have suffered a setback.” The case now returns to the district court, where Jennings said that Lambda Legal will fight hard.

And yet, the tone Jennings strikes is one of determined optimism. “Lambda Legal is no longer a legal organization,” he said. “Lambda Legal is in the hope business because the ultimate goal of the other side is to make us feel hopeless. That there’s nothing we can do.”
“If Amy Coney Barrett lives as long as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she’s still on the Supreme Court bench in 2059,” he added. “We’re going to need Lambda Legal for decades to come.”

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