It’s a dire time for the Hollywood nonprofits dedicated to advocating for minorities, women and other underrepresented demographics across the industry. Many of the major studios and networks at publicly traded companies have already rolled back or eliminated their in-house diversity, equity and inclusion programs since Donald Trump signed an anti-DEI executive order shortly after returning to the White House in January.
That directive also sought to rein in institutional grantmaking by signaling to the biggest private philanthropic foundations that their support of such programs could lead to regulatory scrutiny. Meanwhile, another administration directive has significantly stymied federal funding to the tax-exempt sector.
Now many organizations doing this work, from Women in Film and Color of Change to Gold House, are facing a crisis. If not yet through a direct hit to philanthropic financing than the secondary ramifications of an all-out war on progressive policies in the private sector.
“The ground has quickly shifted,” says consultant Scott Curran, who works with entertainment-oriented nonprofits advancing progressive causes. “The higher profile you are, the bigger the target you are, especially in this environment. The goal isn’t always to stop the work. It’s to create a chilling effect so that the people doing it stop the work themselves.”
Agrees Felix Schein, who runs his own advisory firm assisting foundation grantees engaged in advocacy efforts, “I’ve yet to talk to anyone who isn’t having this conversation. There’s a palpable concern about the government being weaponized against them for political purpose.”
These media-savvy nonprofits, which issue reports spotlighting inclusivity headway (or lack thereof) and run mentoring and networking programs, know how to get their message out. They’re used to leveraging celebrities, generating petitions, hosting events and — perhaps especially — talking to the press. But they’ve clammed up. None would speak to The Hollywood Reporter for this story. (The CEO of one top organization agreed to an interview, only for it to be canceled minutes before it was set to begin following consultation with a lawyer.)
Trump’s Jan. 21 anti-DEI order specified that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi coordinate with Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, to submit a report within four months recommending a “proposed strategic enforcement plan” against the private sector. The intent is to identify the “most egregious” DEI practitioners for possible federal lawsuits and civil compliance investigations.
“The Department of Justice enforces federal civil rights laws, so they would be going after organizations that are discriminating on the basis of race,” explains Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, where Vought previously co-authored the anti-DEI initiative Project 2025, which has served as a policy blueprint for Trump’s second term. “If you have a Hollywood organization and they are telling producers and companies that they have to meet certain racial and gender quotas in their hiring, they are advocating that those production companies violate civil rights laws.”
There’s an understanding among DEI-advocating nonprofits that their ideological nemeses are utilizing bots to flag certain key terms in their public-facing literature. So, some of them have been altering the language on their websites in the hope of avoiding this digital dragnet. “It’s risk mitigation,” explains Curran. “Reframe, not retreat. Concede the words; continue the work. ‘The great melting pot’ was an idea long before ‘DEI.’”
Philip Hackney, a former IRS lawyer who’s now a scholar of nonprofit law at the University of Pittsburgh, sees the move as understandable but pitiable. “When you scrub your website you undermine yourself, because you have said you held these principles and now you’ve taken them down,” he says. “It’s also unclear if it’ll work, so you’re left without your principles, and you still have the problem.”
The IRS’ evolving role is unclear. Trump’s pick for its commissioner is Billy Long, a loyalist Republican who while representing Missouri in Congress pressured the agency to strip an animal welfare group of its non-profit exemption in retaliation for its support of a ballot measure in his state which he opposed. However, the government cost-cutting task force run by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is substantially reducing IRS personnel. This will make all enforcement activity — politicized or otherwise— much more challenging.
Rick Cohen, chief operating officer at the National Council on Nonprofits, a trade association which recently sued the Trump administration over the federal funding freeze, observes that the exemption division at the IRS was underfunded and understaffed even before the latest moves to reduce headcount at the agency. So, he questions whether a slew of additional ideology-driven audits and exemption revocations would even be doable, on a practical level, given the laboriousness of the tasks. “It would just take a lot more staffing to add on that new activity,” he says.
Still, notes Ellen Aprill, a senior scholar at UCLA’s Lowell Milken Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofits, the mere fact of being targeted is often severely damaging to many organizations. “It’s a stigma, especially with donors who have other places they can give,” she explains, “and it takes time and money to fight.”
Schein thinks this presidential term will mark a shift in how some nonprofits go about their work. “I can see these organizations moving from a 501c3 status to a limited liability corporation or a political action committee,” he says, adding that Musk helped elect Trump — and got himself his own singularly powerful position wielding ideological influence over the country, including its tax-exempt sector — through his America PAC. “They may come to think, ‘If we’re going to be treated as political, then let’s just be political.’”
After all, Schein adds, Musk “bought the co-presidency through legal political means.”