Trump’s war on DEI means chaos and uncertainty for nonprofits

Yawu Miller

Yawu Miller is the former senior editor of the Bay State Banner. He has written for the Banner since 1988.... VIEW BIO

Back in January, President Trump issued an executive order directing federal agencies to ensure that organizations receiving federal grants certify that they “do not operate any programs promoting DEI,” making clear that the president considers diversity, equity and inclusion programs to be illegal and immoral.

Here in Boston, Cory Yarbrough faced a difficult decision.

The executive director of 826 Boston, a Roxbury-based nonprofit that provides tutoring for K-12 students, teaches them writing and publishes anthologies of their work, had to decide whether to continue working with the federally funded AmeriCorps program. AmeriCorps, a federal agency, annually provides 826 Boston with about $250,000 in funding for service members who tutor in the schools the nonprofit serves.

“We received an email stating that we had to certify that our service members don’t engage in DEI,” Yarbrough said.

He consulted an attorney. While Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is a catch-all term that most frequently applies to nondiscriminatory hiring and human resources programs, under the Trump administration, the term has broadened to include any discussions or curricula that mentions racial discrimination.

Because Yarbrough’s AmeriCorps members provide assistance in school classrooms, the Trump administration executive order meant they couldn’t be part of any lesson that mentions struggles against oppression or civil rights or even lessons in which students write about their own identity.

“We determined that we wouldn’t be able to fulfill our mission,” Yarbrough said. “As an organization, we determined that we are DEI.”

The organization’s decision to forgo the AmeriCorps funding has left 826 Boston scrambling to identify alternative funding sources to place tutors in Boston schools.

“We’re looking to diversify our sources of revenue,” Yarbrough said.

The Trump administration’s war on DEI appears to be part of a broader push to bring large institutions to heel. Major universities such as Harvard and Columbia made sweeping concessions to the administration under the threat of losing federal funding for research grants, agreeing to clamp down on demonstrators protesting Israel’s killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank over the last year and putting academic departments including Middle Eastern Studies under receivership.

The South End-based CDC Inquilinos Boricuas En Accion had $1 million in HUD funding for the construction of its La Casa Multicultural Arts Center temporarily frozen as the federal agency is undergoing restructuring via the Department of Government Efficiency. PHOTO: Yawu Miller photo

Other institutions, such as Princeton University and Mount Holyoke College, have vociferously pushed back on the Trump administration with pledges to maintain their academic freedom.

For some Boston-area nonprofits, the loss of funding has come without the opportunity to make concessions to the Trump administration. Several community development corporations have faced sudden loss of federal funding because of cuts made by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a quasi-federal office headed by Tesla CEO and Trump donor Elon Musk.

Massachusetts Association of CDCs Executive Director Emily Haber said local CDCs have lost grant money from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for food security work. At Inquilinos Boricuas en Accion, the South End-based CDC, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development froze a $1 million grant awarded for the ongoing construction of a cultural center. The funds were subsequently released, but the ordeal injected a measure of chaos into the multimillion-dollar project.

The Codman Square CDC is suing HUD after the agency pulled funding for a green retrofit program that enabled the CDC to make buildings more energy efficient.

“There’s tremendous uncertainty for CDCs right now,” Haber said. “Will folks have to change language in their contracts around their targets for women and minority businesses? We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen.”

Further complicating matters for CDCs undertaking construction projects, the Trump administration’s tariff regime threatens to raise costs on building materials, which could increase the cost of producing housing. Add to that layoffs that reduced HUD’s staff by half, and the atmosphere of uncertainty has become unbearable, Haber said.

“The problem is, every single day you don’t know what’s coming next — what will be the next executive order,” she said. “It’s chaos. It’s intentional and it’s causing so much fear.”

At the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts Bay, a Department of Justice program that funded training for clergy to help people facing domestic violence was frozen, only to be reinstated weeks later.

“For now, we appear to be okay,” said ULEM President Rahsaan Hall.

At 826 Boston, Yarbrough said he believes his organization can continue to provide services in Boston schools if funders and community members step up. He’s asking community members to make contributions to 826 Boston, including through purchasing on the nonprofit’s website the anthologies of works his students have written. For Yarbrough, forgoing federal funding was a choice, but was central to the nonprofit fulfilling its mission.

“I’m just glad we’re in a position where we can take a stand,” he said.

This article originally appeared on theflipside.news.