Doxxing. Harassment. Death threats.
The internet has never been a completely safe place, but in the charged climate of the past several years, online platforms have increasingly become a forum for campaigns that wreak havoc on people’s lives. Just ask anyone who has been on the receiving end of the threats unleashed by one of President Donald Trump’s tweets or other social media posts.
Online threats against nonprofits and funders aren’t a new phenomenon. But since the Trump administration’s attacks on the sector beginning in January — and particularly since the violent killing of right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk last month — those threats have become more widespread. Fortunately, there are things that private foundations, individual large donors, and nonprofits can do to protect themselves and each other.
Compiling this report was made difficult because so few people were willing to speak unless the conversation was off the record, and others didn’t feel free to talk at all. To be fair, this makes it difficult to provide an accurate account of whether actual targeting or fear of being a victim is the bigger issue. But between the conversations I did have, as well as the caliber and range of people who would speak only off the record, it feels reasonable to believe that Solidaire Network Executive Director Rajasvini Bhansali was correct when she told me: “Everything you’ve heard [about right-wing threats], times it by 100,” particularly in the case of nonprofits.
Funders are also feeling the heat. “There have been efforts to attack progressive funders for a long time, but there has been this major escalation in the last few weeks” since the Kirk killing, Bhansali said. That’s hardly surprising given that the vice president has specifically cited two of the country’s top foundations as targets, and Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, has vowed that the administration will find those he called “domestic terrorists” and “take away your money, take away your power,” regardless of whether or not those people and institutions have broken any laws. Miller didn’t specifically cite nonprofits or private philanthropy during that interview, but it’s hard to imagine that the philanthrosphere is immune from his threats against “The Democrat [sic] Party, its pundits, its allies.”
Nor are the attacks all coming from the apocryphal small group of right-wing computer geeks living in their parents’ basements, or coming only from online communications. There are phone calls and letters, too. “These are full-on, coordinated attacks,” one foundation leader said. “It’s not a handful of bad actors.”
Individuals and organizations with millions or billions of dollars may have more resources to deal with the rising threats than their nonprofit grantees, but they’re not immune. An IT professional whose work involves helping others prevent and respond to doxxing also said that, in their experience, the cyber attacks don’t seem random; instead, they’re “coordinated and targeting key figures during key events.” According to this source, they and their peers have seen doxxing surges that “target groups actively organizing protests, timed around those events” — for example, when Roe was overturned, and during the pro-Palestinian campus protests. “Some of this is from the federal level, some is from state leaders or neighborhood-level activists,” they said.
Many Inside Philanthropy writers have called on funders and donors to be more forthright and courageous during these times. I’ve certainly done so on multiple occasions; so has our founder and Editor-in-Chief David Callahan. At the same time, it would be callous not to empathize with the safety fears of foundations and individual donors, particularly since “the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of domestic terrorism and violent extremism,” according to a 2024 study of National Institute of Justice Data that the Trump administration removed from the Justice Department’s website last month.
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So what should funders do, given the rising number and increasing virulence of the threats being made against them? The experts who spoke with me were unanimous that prematurely caving in is not the answer.
“If we think that pulling funding from groups that are in the crosshairs will keep us safe, they’re wrong,” said Solidaire Network Communications Director Barni Qaasim. Solidaire, a philanthropy-serving organization for progressive funders, has been dealing with online and state harassment since 2024, when Solidaire Action was named in a House Oversight Committee letter listing funders and supporters of Palestinian civil rights during last year’s campus protests.
My conversations with nonprofit and foundation leaders made two things clear. The first is that progressive and moderate funders need to invest in greater online security in addition to compliance work to ensure they are following legitimate laws and IRS regulations to the letter. The second is that they should provide funding for their grantees to do the same. Fortunately, expert help on these fronts is available. “As always, anytime there’s a risk in our sector, a new industry can get created,” Bhansali told IP. In addition, she said, there are several guides online that are available via Solidaire’s Block and Build Funder Coalition of foundations and philanthropy-serving organizations. Doxxing-prevention advice is also available from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Association of University Professors. Other digital hygiene tools include encrypted communication and password security apps and using VPNs to make it more difficult to trace an organization’s online activities.
When it comes to preparing for government attacks, Bhansali counsels her peers to “make sure your policies are right, make sure you’re not being hunted down for a technicality, and fund your grantees to do the same.” At the same time, don’t comply in advance and avoid sharing any information beyond what the regulations require, she recommended. While there are legitimate IRS regulations that funders have to follow, “make sure you’re not doing preemptive obedience and giving away data that is potentially dangerous in the wrong hands,” she said.
Finally, remember that there’s strength in numbers. Last week, three coalitions representing more than 800 local and national philanthropies and nonprofit organizations did just that. Solidaire’s Block and Build Funder Coalition of foundations and PSOs “committed to resisting authoritarianism, defending movements for justice and safeguarding civil liberties,” which was convened last year, had 375 participants representing 175 philanthropic organizations as of last month. Bhansali said that roughly 39% of the group’s members are private foundations; 18% are philanthropy-serving organizations; 11% are movement organizations and 6% are “big intermediaries.” Block and Build members have grantmaking budgets ranging from a few million to hundreds of millions of dollars. Among its efforts, the coalition has created a safety and security toolkit for funders.
Banding together isn’t just about surviving today; it’s also about taking the long view. “What we’re trying to have folks understand is that this is a moment to protect one another and keep moving,” said Borealis Philanthropy Director of Communications Kholi Murchison. “Because the goal isn’t just to survive these attacks; it’s to ensure that our communities and the movements that are coming out of these communities thrive despite the onslaught right now.”
The Movement Strategy Center, which provides philanthropic support services to social justice organizations, echoed the call to stand together. “In this time of authoritarianism, we need philanthropy to stand with front-line causes and organizations that will not abandon the work of justice,” the organization said in a statement in response to Inside Philanthropy’s questions. “We need to stand up and insist on the rule of law, the honoring of commitments for free speech, and the guarantee of our constitutional rights even in the face of illegal attacks.”
There are a lot of legitimate critiques about philanthropic organizations and donors, from the funding that helped contribute to — or failed to prevent — the current dangerous moment to the fact that a few institutions are invested with such vast wealth without real accountability to the taxpayers that help support them. The choices that funders make now and in the weeks and months that follow will decide whether future generations remember them as finally being part of a real solution to authoritarianism and extremism or, possibly, whether they will exist or be remembered at all.
