The Trump administration’s massive cuts to nonprofits and government agencies, as well as repeated attacks on democratic norms and practices, have left civic engagement grantmakers with two fundamental paths forward. They can wait out the era, maintaining their predetermined payout ratios and reallocating support to areas of greatest need while hoping the courts act as a bulwark against the administration. Or they can drum up additional funding to distribute as soon as possible, even if doing so potentially complicates their efforts in the future.
The New York City-based Henry Luce Foundation has thrown in with the latter option. Noting that its grantee partners “are under significant financial, legal and political stress now,” in mid-June it announced it would be increasing its grantmaking budget by up to $25 million over the next two years to create “a pool of dedicated funds to help address the critical challenges facing democratic institutions and civil society.”
The Luce Foundation’s announcement was striking because it won’t be dipping into a pool of emergency funds that had already been set aside as part of its budget, as it did not have an emergency fund. Moreover, the two-year, $25 million increase was “in addition to the foundation’s regular spending target of 5% of our average endowment value over the preceding five years,” said the foundation’s interim president, Sean Buffington. He and his team analyzed the impact of the increase on the Luce Foundation endowment and “ultimately judged that present needs justified the additional spending now, recognizing that it could well have an effect on future capacity.”
A quick overview of the Henry Luce Foundation
Established in 1936 by Henry R. Luce, the cofounder of Time, Fortune, and Life magazines, the foundation seeks to “deepen knowledge and understanding in pursuit of a more democratic and just world.”
Since its inception, it has awarded nearly 6,000 grants totaling more than $1 billion to organizations focused on strengthening Asia studies, encouraging interfaith understanding, raising the visibility of American art in museums and universities, and closing the gender gap in the STEM field. According to the Luce Foundation’s Form 990 for the fiscal year ending December 2023, it had $1.1 billion in net assets and disbursed $45.8 million in grants.
One of the foundation’s seven program areas, Democracy, Ethics and Public Trust, funds “institutions and projects designed to create equitable and accessible media and information ecosystems, and by fostering enthusiastic community participation in policy development.” In 2024, the program awarded a total of $4 million through 31 grants with a median size of $129,000.
How the Henry Luce Foundation’s grantmaking increase came together
Buffington first proposed increasing the foundation’s grantmaking budget in a March 2025 board meeting. “We were already seeing actions being taken or proposed that were affecting our grantees and our priorities,” he said. “Philanthropy exists to fund the communities and organizations that actually carry out the work that foundations value. If they can’t carry out that work, we’ve failed.”
The board appointed a small ad hoc committee to work with staff to consider Buffington’s proposal before the June board meeting. During those months, the ad hoc committee met on its own and with the board co-chairs. Meanwhile, Luce Foundation staff organized focus groups with grantees to understand how they and their fields were being affected by the Trump cuts. This information was compiled and synthesized into a report that was presented to the board in advance of its June meeting, along with a specific recommendation for the board’s consideration.
“Many of our grantees were being affected by government spending cuts, but we could not fill the gaps created by federal funding changes,” Buffington said. Instead, leaders committed to “be more strategic, focusing on addressing the effects of policy changes that would negatively affect the foundation’s core priorities.”
The Luce Foundation’s approach is a reminder that the issue of whether philanthropy can “fill the gaps” isn’t an exercise in zero-sum thinking. Like most funders, it couldn’t match every federal dollar that isn’t hitting grantees’ checking accounts, but its leaders didn’t use it as an excuse to do nothing or reallocate funding at the expense of existing grantees.
The board signed on to the new approach in June. The increase is to be granted over the next 24 months. “Whether the board will decide to increase again is not yet determined,” Buffington said.
I also feel compelled to note that the foundation’s messaging suggests that a grantmaker can urgently call out threats to civil society without explicitly naming the instigator of those threats. Its press release notes that “the values we cherish as a foundation” are “being questioned, undermined and attacked beyond what we have seen in our lifetimes.”
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The Luce Foundation announced two grants from its new pool of funds
The Luce Foundation’s mid-June press release announced it disbursed two grants at $1 million apiece from its new pool of funds “to support activities that strengthen democratic culture or that help to protect and enhance the areas that have long been the focus of our grantmaking.”
The first organization and previous grantee is the Graduate Education and Training in Southeast Asian Studies, a consortium that’s committed to enhancing graduate education in Southeast Asian studies across North America. The second, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, is a pro bono legal services organization for journalists and newsrooms in the U.S.
“Both grants relate to core priorities of the foundation,” Buffington said. “GETSEA supports next-generation scholars of Southeast Asia, for whom federal funding is precarious; RCFP supports the rights and prerogatives of journalists and journalistic organizations — a focus of Luce democracy funding.”
A foundation that’s drastically boosting its grantmaking may staff up so it can efficiently move more money out the door. However, the Luce Foundation’s grantmaking increase “has not resulted in additional staff being hired,” Buffington said. “It’s important to the foundation to try to maximize the funds that go to support our priorities and our partners.”
Funders are trying to balance present-day threats with long-term needs
The Luce Foundation’s funding increase comes at a time when democracy funders are grappling with how to confront short-term threats to civil society while ensuring they’ll be able to support grantees years, if not decades, from now.
Democracy funders supported with significant incoming contributions from their founding donors — think George Soros’ Foundation To Promote Open Society ($80 million in 2019) or Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund ($71 million in 2022) — have the financial flexibility to move more money out the door without imperiling their perpetuity, compared to those that rely on investment income. The Luce Foundation falls into the latter category. It only received $1.3 million in combined contributions from fiscal years ending June 2014 to 2023, underscoring leaders’ commitment to current partners by signing off on a grantmaking increase that could affect future grantmaking capacity.
It’s been a little over a month since the Luce Foundation’s announcement, so, as one would expect, Buffington wasn’t able to impart any lessons learned just yet. That said, at a time when it’s hard to know if funders are ramping up grantmaking en masse, he and his colleagues “were very glad that so many in the fields we serve took notice and said that they felt supported just by the news of Luce’s decision.”
As for Buffington’s grantmaking peers, “those we have heard from are wrestling with the same questions we have: how to address immediate needs in a way that is strategic and how to balance urgent needs now against the urgent needs our partners will face in the years to come.”
