2025 was a tumultuous year for LGBTQI+ people and the nonprofits advocating on their behalf. Millions of dollars in funding disappeared from the landscape as anti-LGBTQI+ violence and rhetoric escalated globally. But there were wins amongst the losses. 38 countries now recognize marriage equality, 77 countries provide legal protection against employment discrimination, and six countries have banned nonconsensual surgeries on intersex children (Outright International).
2025 taught us that progress and setbacks can happen simultaneously, and this Pride Month, Global Impact is spotlighting three of our Charity Alliance members who continue to fearlessly champion LGBTQI+ rights in the face of adversity.
1. Outright International
Outright International is a global human rights organization dedicated to strengthening the LGBTIQ human rights movement by documenting human rights violations and advocating for inclusion and equality.
This year the theme of their annual global Pride campaign, Outright Proud, is “Everyone, Everywhere.” This call for solidarity encourages all who are able to get involved and fight back against funding cuts and escalating violence targeting the community.
They have released a 2026 Outright Proud toolkit their supporters can download for free, filled with helpful resources like social media messaging templates and fundraising guides for peer-to-peer and corporate campaigns alike.
Learn more and get involved by watching the video below.
2. Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
For more than 80 years, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) has advanced human rights and social justice around the world by partnering with grassroots movements on the frontlines to confront oppression and co-create a more just future.
Since the Russian invasion in February 2022, there have been thousands of Ukrainian civilian casualties, and millions more evacuated and displaced. Displaced Ukrainians of color and LGBTQI+ Ukrainians are particularly vulnerable as they continue to face racism, homophobia, and transphobia now as refugee migrants.
To address these inequities, four activists came together in March 2022 to form Queer Svit, a Black, queer-run organization that provides services to BIPOC and LGBTQI+ people affected by Russian aggression and imperialism.
Co-founder Anna-Maria Tesfaye shares, “our organization seeks to empower marginalized communities by providing opportunities to voice their concerns and needs,” and outlines their key objectives: “we ensure the right for our community to self-identify with legal gender marker changes…we address racism at border crossings in Ukraine. We also deliver food and medication to communities at the border.”
New grassroots organizations like Queer Svit often have difficulty securing and sustaining funding due to a lack of prior funding history. Thankfully, UUSC stepped in.
“UUSC took a chance on us and recognized the potential of our work,” Anna-Maria explains. “Our partnership with UUSC has been transformative. Our organization is sustainable, allowing us to continue our mission.”
These transformative partnerships between larger and smaller organizations are key for this cause and our sector. As Anna-Maria notes, “Institutions working together is what generates change.”
3. American Jewish World Service
American Jewish World Service (AJWS) is the leading Jewish organization working to fight poverty and pursue justice globally. Through philanthropy and advocacy, they address the world’s most pressing issues from natural disasters to hunger to human rights.
When Uganda passed its Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA) in 2023, there was international outcry about the severe punishment (including the death penalty) it would impose for same-sex activity.
A quieter impact of the harsh law was the forcing of LGBTQI+ Ugandans out of the public eye. Ugandan LGBTQI+ rights activist Pepe Onziema described this phenomenon as “self-censor[ing] into invisibility.” Pepe says, “In the shadow of the AHA, queer life in Uganda is reduced to a headline, a debate, a controversy. But our lives are not legislation. They are layered, intimate, political, spiritual, messy, joyful, frightened, brilliant.”
Enter AJWS grantee Kuchu Times, Uganda’s only queer-focused media group, which publishes stories about queer life across Africa and news that affects pan-African LGBTQI+ communities, as well as providing critical information and resources by and for queer Africans.
Kuchu Times has amassed a social media following with thousands of followers and is only continuing to grow. In 2025, Pepe Onziema partnered with Kuchu Times to create Legacy Pulse, a podcast where “each episode is a living archive: conversations that document how we endure, how we organize, how we grieve, and how we imagine futures that feel almost impossible,” according to Pepe.
The podcast serves as a powerful tool to fight back against the silencing and erasing of LGBTQI+ narratives. “It’s about preserving our testimony while we’re still here to tell it,” Pepe says. “It’s a historical record. I want there to be proof that even at the height of repression, we were thinking, loving, organizing, and imagining freedom.”
Pepe’s words ring true for each of these Charity Alliance members and their partners who have been working tirelessly in the face of seemingly unsurmountable oppression to keep organizing and imagining freedom for the world’s most marginalized communities.
This Pride month, please consider donating to Outright International, UUSC, or AJWS to support their resilience for LGBTQI+ communities worldwide.
Thank you Outright International, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, and American Jewish World Service for providing content for this blog.
