Since the start of Donald Trump’s second term, his administration has targeted huge swaths of the nonprofit sector for upholding the very principles they exist to protect—from embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion to defending the rights of non-citizen Americans to standing up for the freedom and independence of the press. The Donald Trump administration signaled early on, via a sweeping executive memorandum issued in February, its intention to target nonprofits “that undermine the national interest” for “review” and defunding. Many nonprofits face a very real bind when it comes to self-censoring to avoid this arbitrary and potentially existential targeting by the Trump administration, on the one hand, and stand publicly by their values, on the other.

NPQ reported as early as February that while Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team was slashing grant funding across the government, many nonprofits were actively “scrubbing” their websites of language that might draw the scrutiny of the Trump administration.

In a survey released that same month, The Chronicle of Philanthropy found that nearly two-thirds of nonprofits and nearly a third of foundations were concerned about retaliation if they spoke out about Trump administration policies.

Now, a recent report by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP), based on a review of nearly 800 foundation websites, finds that 73 percent have been silent amid unprecedented attacks on democratic norms and marginal groups. And nearly 10 percent of the foundations have actively scrubbed their websites of content that might court controversy, showing the extent of this increasing self-censoring.

“Some funders have rewritten home page headers, menus, and even entire blocks of content to remove references to race, diversity, equity, or inclusion,” the report noted. “Others have gone further, disappearing sections of their website that had formerly described their ‘commitment’ to diversity and inclusion in their funding.”

The NCRP study focuses on Candid’s Foundation 1000, the largest private and community foundations in the United States that collectively give more than $25 billion annually.

Read the full article about self-censorship in philanthropy by Ted Siefer at Nonprofit Quarterly.